I ended up finding this article about rotoscoping history and the general ideas behind it, so I figured it would be a good addition to my blog. I've included it in it's entirety here:
The Rotoscoping Saga
Fleischer started it all.Max Fleischer is unarguably one of the first few animators who have dazzled audiences of all ages starting 1914. Bringing “Betty the Boop” and “Popeye the Sailor” to the silver screen would guarantee him a chapter in the history books, however Max’s greatest achievements wasn’t set on what he put on the screen but on “how”.
The technique called
rotoscoping is the brain child of Max Fleischer where he used it in his “Out of the Inkwell” series together with his brother Dave.
Rotoscoping then was an impressive technique used in producing lifelike animations. As a matter-of-fact, in the “Out of the Inkwell” series, Dave Fleischer was the live reference of the character Koko the Clown.
The
rotoscoping process, at this time, works like this: A live action scene with the actor is shot and will be animated using a transparent easel. The film is then played back frame-by-frame on the underside piece of a glass. On the top side of the glass is the artist who manually traces the live-action sequence per frame of the film. These drawings are then cleaned up and are combined together producing a realistic effect animation.
Rotoscoping was used in several films made by Fleischer which have made a mark in the animation industry. To mention a few are Betty the Boop, Superman, Popeye the Sailor, and Out of the Inkwell (Koko the Clown).
The competition with Walt Disney.
Year 1937 was the beginning of Walt Disney’s rotoscoping milestone. Disney animators have delicately employed the tedious art of rotoscoping in the classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs film. After Snow White, rotoscoping was used in more Disney films and this includes Cinderella in 1950’s.
However, some of the Disney animators looked down at rotoscoping, since some referred to it as a “crutch” for the artists who lacked the skill in animation. Grim Natwick even said that rotoscoping was only used as basis for their work; however the elaborate portions in creating an animation were done beyond rotoscoping.
Later on, Disney didn’t used rotoscoping for the actual tracing rather they use rotoscoping in studying human and animal motion.
Ralph Bakshi and rotoscoping.
When 20th Century Fox refused the $50,000 increase for Ralph Bakshi’s Wizard film in 1977, Ralph turned to rotoscoping to finish the film. He used rotoscoping in the film Wizards magnificently by applying stock footages of the World War II for the battle scenes. After the release of Wizards, he undertook Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings”. His adaptation of Lord of the Rings has been the first successful attempt to film an epic novel.
The LOTR relied heavily on rotoscoping unlike Wizards and the film’s original distributors regarded Bakshi’s LOTR to be a flop. They even chose to release the uncompleted story as a stand alone film rather than fund the coming sequels.
The junction between live-action and animation meant nothing at that point for Bakshi. His intensive use of rotoscoping have been questioned and criticized. While rotoscoping was known to bring a sense of realism in an animated film, he used rotoscoping for no apparent reason but to significantly just cut cost. Bakshi continued his rotoscoping trend through “American Pop” and “Fire Ice” only then regaining the understanding of pastiche in his 1992 Cool World.
The new era: Digital rotoscoping.
Smoking Car Production invented digital rotoscoping for the creation of its critically acclaimed game “The Last Express”. Digital rotoscoping uses 2D information in order to create or support a 3d effect. An animated matte is created and used to block a specific film element so that a 3-D composite can be achieved using a 2-D technique. Digital rotoscoping has gained a US patent for Digital Cartoon and Animation process.
In 1990’s Bob Sabiston developed a computer-assisted “interpolated rotoscoping” called Rotoshop, which Richard Linklater later used in his Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly Film. The same propriety of the rotoscoping process used in both films has been licensed by Richard.
Rotoshop was made to make rotoscoping easier for artists. Rotoshop can conveniently interpolate frames and freeze layers that will save an artist from drawing the same things 24 times for every second of a scene.
Rotoscoping before may have been decried by many animation purists back in the 1914 however it has often been used to good effect.
Rotoscoping has been used as an animator’s reference tool, a time–saver for many visual effects artists and a low cost technique for some under funded film projects.
Rotoscoping, now, is generally used for all digital process of tracing outlines over digital films images to create digital mattes frame-by-frame.
rotoscoping is widely used when chroma keying is not enough to produce an accurate matte and in the preparation of garbage mattes for other matte pulling process.
rotoscoping is aided by motion-tracking and onion skinning software.
