2-Day Workshop: Studio Moross – Rotoscoping

During Graphic Design Festival Scotland 2015, Studio Moross led a 2–day workshop with 20 participants from across the world. The result was a collaborative animated music video for Drake’s ‘Hotline Bling’. *The video has been taken down. Sorry!*

Studio Moross: http://studiomoross.com

Photographs by Gordon Burniston.

We spoke to Kate, Olly and Linus about their experience.

So, tell us a bit about the Studio Moross workshop? 

We did a two day rotoscoping workshop – day 1 was a chance to experiment on a 3 second clip of a fellow participant. For the second day we challenged everyone to work on one job together – to create a rotoscoped version of the recent Hotline Bling music video by Drake. Each participant had a 5 second section to animate – it doesn’t sound like much but that’s 63 drawings each…

What did you hope participants would take away from it? 
Rotoscoping in Photoshop is relatively simple, but can be daunting if you’ve never been shown the ropes. We were keen that participants would leave having learnt a practical skill, and the chance to experiment and collaborate with this in a really creative environment.
Working as part of a team was key to success of the project, and we were really impressed with the way everyone worked together.

How do you feel it went?

Everyone was very focused on working, and there were some really great animations produced. On the second day everyone sat in a circle around one huge table. This facilitated conversation and made sure the participants were conscious of their clip working well with the person sitting either side of them. It was a great way of getting everyone to collaborate on one outcome and everyone really understood this – which is evident in the final result.

Why Hotline Bling? 

We wanted there to be an element of comedy to our workshop. While looking for inspiration we googled “Dad Dancing” and Hotline Bling was the top hit. It’s obviously something currently doing the rounds on the web, so we thought it was a fun meme to get involved in.

Was there anything which you feel was particularly challenging? 

The biggest problems we had were with software compatibility! This is even a problem we have in the studio, when certain files don’t work on other computers. There’s always a way around these issues though, so we managed in the end.

Would you do anything differently if you ran the workshop again?

Are we allowed to say no?! We had such a great time, everyone worked so enthusiastically and we’re really proud of the final result. 10/10!

Studio Moross is a London-based agency run by famed multifaceted illustrator and art director Kate Moross, that creates unique approaches to music-based visuals for a range of clients including Disclosure, One Direction, Young Turks, Jessie Ware and Sam Smith.

The studio pride themselves on experimentation and their ability to offer creative solutions with cheeky wit, eye-popping colour and true style. Studio Moross offers typography, illustration, moving image, branding, packaging and web design with consistent flair and personality.