 What is iChicken?
My friend Mike Peck and I are proud ipod owners. Mike is also the proud owner of a stuffed chicken given to him as a gift. The notion of putting the two together seemed to be an interesting idea. Both of us liked computers and creating visual effects. So as an homage to Apple's great ipod commercials we decided to make one of our own. We hope you enjoy it and please feel free to tell your friends.
Click here to see the exclusive interview with the star!
Figuring out the effect
The ipod commercial was a very challenging thing to emulate. For one, the actual commercial was likely shot with film and we only have access to lower resolution MiniDV. Also the actor, in this case, a chicken has very limited motion and is covered in fur. Also the size of the ipod is almost as tall as the chicken which makes carrying the ipod around impossible.
Another challenge was the actual creation of the headphones and wires. The chicken was shot against a green screen and Adobe After Effects was used to provide a suitable matte. A variety of keyers were used and the best one was selected depending on the lighting (which was very poor and primative). The final matte was then darkened with brighness contrast set to -100. Most of the headphones were rotoscoped in After Effects (painted by hand frame-by-frame). The wires were made using rotospline masks which is basically a mask animated overtime outlined in white using the render stroke effect. The ipod is at times a still image used for clarity.
Making a chicken rock!
A big challenge was in trying to get the chicken to dance. The chicken is activated by pushing a button on its hand. After that, it spastically moves around in circles. To provide more control, fishing wire was put underneath both wings and Mike maneuvered the chicken like a marionette. This allowed for more precise control.
Other effects that were physically to challenging to create could be done in the computer.
Editing and Exporting
The footage was rendered out in Adobe After Effects and the individual effects shots were put together in succession. Quicktime was the prefered output format. |
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Green Screening
Green screening is a commonly used techinque to get rid of a background and replace it with another one. The most common usage of green screens is with the weather reports on the news.
A more advanced use of green screen can be seen a a host of films. Green screens can be used with camera tracking information to make a variety of digital environments.
Keying is a process by which the green color is removed and replaced with transparency allowing for the image underneath to shine through. An alpha channel is created which defines the shape of the object as opaque and the background as transparent.
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