BNS | Mitchum Love Thy Pits "Lie"

Together with director of photography Eric Treml, Jonathan and the BNS team used the ARRI Alexa digital camera system to capture their HD source footage during three days of production on-stage.

"We essentially painted animation on people's skin, using a fusion of digital and practical techniques," Jonathan explained. "After exploring different ways of accomplishing the desired effect, we filmed people with real paint on their skin, then we animated artwork using traditional cel animation techniques, where we matched the practical paint used in the live-action shoot. The animation was then composited onto their skin using seamless digital visual effects."

BNS artists tracked the form of the human body using mocha, then animated what they wanted on the body using cel animation with hand-drawn artwork. They then projected their animation onto the tracked body and composited the work in Nuke to make it feel like actual paint. Final color was handled in Autodesk Flame.