I was one of the fifty animators to work on this film. We used a proprietary vector-based rotoscoping software called ColorEngine that used an interpolation algorithm to “guess” the transition animation between keyframes. The result is a nausea-inducing quality that fits with the theme of paranoia that runs throughout the story.
The production design was very minimal as we would handle the VFX, make-up, lighting, etc, in post. The bulk of my time was in creating the “scramble suits” that the undercover police wear to conceal their identities. The suits are a digital membrane that would fluctuate with images of a variety of people making them the “everyman.”
The following screenshots show the basic process of animating the film.
Behind the Scenes of the process
All material © Warner Independent Pictures
Raw footage in ColorEngine Software
Interpolated Tracing
I then trace over the footage, while flipping forward through frames and adding more line work as needed. The software then fills the blank frames in between.
Interpolated Color Animation
Once the line-work is animated, I would start dropping in flat colors, highlights, shadows, etc, and let the software animate them over the course of the scene.
Scramble Suit Animation
There were about three or four of us handling the scramble suit characters. We quartered Keanu into four people using a variety of reference images of different sexes, nationalities, genders, celebrities, etc. The thematic purpose is to disguise his character as an undercover officer while also being “everyman” that can be afflicted by substance abuse.
The final clips were run through another algorithm by a visual fx animator who would animate masks over the footage and it would organically dissolve in between the animations that we produced.
FINAL FRAMES
Despite a very specific style-guide (and a contract to ensure that the actors’ representations actually resembled them) each artist brought their own signature style to the characters as can be see over the next few frames.