I taken on the challenge to change the skin tone of Reza to a more pale looking, cold blood, flesh eating zombie. I had no idea what I was putting myself through.

I am pretty sure there’s a much easier way to going about doing it, but I’ve not dug deep enough into researching or finding how it is done, but I did it by manually keying out and masking the face, legs, and arms of Reza and then applying a colour grade to his skin to make it look like that of a zombie, and here’s the meanest part. Frame by freakin’ Frrrame… 

Apparently most of the tutorials online are mostly teaching people how to achieve flawless skin tone, or perfect skin, or proper colouring techniques, which is cool and all if I’m learning how to grade for a TV commercial, but there isn’t one on how to change the skin colour of an actor. Either no one has done it before, or everything is usually done with makeup (which is my guess). So, I think I’m travelling into unchartered waters here, or it may very well look like it.

There was definitely a learning curve to it, and it took me all afternoon picking it up, and the rest of the day (and night) to colour change Reza into the zombie for the entire length of the video. There’s is the tracking function for the key mask, but it’s not accurate, and I would have to eventually adjust the points again as shown in the video I’ve recorded my screen. It’s been fast forward at 300%, so you could imagine how long it actually took to do the entire length.

I’m not merely as done as I would like, as some of the key point are still bleeding, and the discolouration is spilled onto the surrounding visuals around Reza, making him look all heavenly or in some ways radioactive with a glow around him. Definitely got to fix that.