Atari Games Corporation

J Cameron Petty

Dennis D Harper

Stephen R Riesenberger

A system for developing stop motion animation sequences including a lighting system, an image capture system and a video processing system. An object is positioned on a stage in a desired pose and is illuminated. A camera records the illuminated object and the image capture system digitally records this image as a beauty shot. The object is then illuminated by an back light which produces a silhouette. The camera then records this silhouette and the image capture system digitally records this image as a matte shot. The object is then illuminated by an overhead light which produces a shadow on the stage. The camera records this image and the image capture system records this image as a shadow shot. The beauty, matte and shadow shots are then processed by the graphics processing system. Subsequently, the beauty and matte shots are combined to produce a final beauty shot whereby only the portion of the image in the beauty shot that has the same position as the silhouette in the matte shot is included in the final shadow shot. Hence, a perfectly matted final beauty shot is produced along with a corresponding shadow shot. This process is repeated for each shot comprised of multiple frames of the stop motion animation sequence.

Growing community of inventors

Mountain View, CA, United States of America

J Cameron Petty