A film industry intends on hiring an animator as a music video Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) needs to be re-created as a digital animation in order prevent Potential copyright breach, or unlawful reproduction of a protected product (ALRC 02.08.2010) alongside prevention of deterioration in quality spoiling scenes from the film, and negation of loss of profit through sharing clips from the film. The product must maintain the features of the lips displayed in the original film (1975) such as shape and size, however the lips must be animated and while maintaining realistic aspects.
Patricia Quinn’s lips can be seen in the opening scene of the film lip sinking “Science Fiction Double Feature” (1975), as a result, when designing the animated lips, movement mimicking the original will need to be taken into consideration. The animated lips must imitate movement to create the illusion of enunciation and create some realism.
The targeted audience of this product are the younger generations such as gen Z, who may be unfamiliar with the timeless classic and through renewing one of the most memorable part of the film, would help bring it forth and continue the films cult status (Rocky Horror Picture Show, 1975), presented from one generation to the next. This will benefit the company, as when the generation brought up with the film begins to pass, a new generation will usurp their place continuing to maintain the film’s success, providing more revenue for events, watching the film at midnight screenings, and creation and distribution of merchandise.
To develop the Frank N Furter lips (1975), each tooth and lip along, with lighting and representation of colour needs to feature realistic aspects for example, light and movement, while maintaining the desired animated aesthetic. Along with some exaggerated realism within the lips, the teeth need to be covered and the tongue needs to be altered, to synchronise the shapes of the mouth itself. When producing concepts, issues of keeping spacing between the teeth consistent, while altering the position of the lips. When covering sections of the teeth, the quality is affected, prompting the question of how to keep consistency throughout the overall structure during movement. The idea of superimposing the new lips over the existing lips, and cropping the excess teeth was one solution, however this proved flawed when changing the position of the mouth, as it moves around the screen. The response to this could involve cutting and skip frames making it hard to identify flaws, despite them not being truly corrected. However, this is still more beneficial as opposed to cell animation which has a negative environmental impact, wasting large amounts of plastic as transparent plastic called “cells” are used once and each cell features one drawing with an outline on one side of the plastic and the colour filled in on the other. Since each frame is a drawing 100s or even 1000s of plastic sheets go into landfill.
