Minor research: cleaning up plates
One important factor i neede to know about merging stop motion animation together was the actual method that was done to create the illusion of a creature running amok. Tke this scene from It Came From Beneath The Sea (1955) in which the octopus attacks los angeles. you can see how it wraps around objects in the foreground while it attacks from behind the object.
The method ray harryhausen had used were pretty amazing. seen below in this diagram, The creature was animated inbetween a glass plate and a transucent rear projection plate. the first plate would actually be painted in areas where the aramature would either be hidden or obscured while the back plate would then project the background scenes such as landcapes and the sky. when it came to editing the reel together, the black peices that were painted over are replaced by what the objects were origionally such as buildings and cars.
Going back to the clip. you can see this process done also with the live action footage, with the sky painted out for the live action footage and for the animation, all the buildings and people were painted out for the illusion of the octopus tentagles about to wrap around the tower.
To translate this method of the merger between stop motion and live action, i decided to look at each plate as "Layers" much like how adobe photo shop would work.
This is the main shot from my minor blackout, in which the whole body of the creature will be seen from. From this angle the creature would be situated in between the buildings and the sky, so like the plates used by ray harryausen, i removed the sky from the image to create my foreground plate, then on a different tab using the same image i had removed the buildings and using various photoshop tools i had created my sky plate. However i was not done yet as i also needed to impliment my live actors onto the scene, so to give more depth to the scene i removed the lighthouse but i only kept the lighthouse railings, then did the prosess again but only this time removing the bars and keeping everything the same. below is each of the plates divided from eachother.
Now when it comes to the animation process, the creature will be placed into this scene inbetween the buildings and the sky