Rotoscoping

Rotoscoping is an animation technique invented by Max Fleischer in which live-action figures are cut out and re-drawn. This has historically been a valuable invention because animated figure movement could be much more realistic using a rotoscope (the actual instrument used). The Fleischer brothers used this technique to animate Koko the Clown.

The technique was later used by animator Ralph Bakshi for his animated adaptation of J.R.R Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Richard Linklater used a version of the technique for his films Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly.

History
The technique was invented by Max Fleischer, who used it in his series Out of the Inkwell starting around 1915, with his brother Dave Fleischer dressed in a clown outfit as the live-film reference for the character Koko the Clown.

Fleischer used rotoscope in a number of his later cartoons as well, most notably the Cab Calloway dance routines in three Betty Boop cartoons from the early 1930s, and the animation of Gulliver in Gulliver's Travels (1939). The Fleischer studio's most effective use of rotoscoping was in their series of action-oriented Superman cartoons, in which Superman and the other animated figures displayed very realistic movement. The Leon Schlesinger animation unit at Warner Brothers, producing cartoons geared more towards exaggerated comedy, used rotoscoping only occasionally.

Walt Disney and his animators employed it carefully and very effectively in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937. Rotoscoping was also used in many of Disney's subsequent animated feature films with human characters, such as Cinderella in 1950. Later, when Disney animation became more stylized (e.g. One Hundred and One Dalmatians, 1961), the rotoscope was used mainly for studying human and animal motion, rather than actual tracing.

Rotoscoping was used extensively in China's first animated feature film, Princess Iron Fan (1941), which was released under very difficult conditions during the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II.

It was used extensively in the Soviet Union, where it was known as "Éclair", from the late 1930s to the 1950s; its historical use was enforced as a realization of Socialist Realism. Most of the films produced with it were adaptations of folk tales or poems - for example, The Night Before Christmas or The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish. Only in the early 1960s, after the Khrushchev Thaw, did animators start to explore very different aesthetics.

Ralph Bakshi used the technique quite extensively in his animated movies Wizards (1977), The Lord of the Rings (1978), American Pop (1981), and Fire and Ice (1983). Bakshi first turned to rotoscoping because he was refused by 20th Century Fox for a $50,000 budget increase to finish Wizards, and thus had to resort to the rotoscope technique to finish the battle sequences. (This was the same meeting at which George Lucas was also denied a $3 million budget increase to finish Star Wars.)[1][2]

Rotoscoping was also used in Heavy Metal (1981), the a-ha music video "Take on Me" (1985), and Don Bluth's Titan A.E. (2000).

While rotoscoping is generally known to bring a sense of realism to larger budget animated films, the American animation company Filmation, known for its budget-cutting limited TV animation, was also notable for its heavy usage of rotoscope to good effect in series such as Flash Gordon, Blackstar and He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.

Smoking Car Productions invented a digital rotoscoping process in 1994 for the creation of its critically-acclaimed adventure video game, The Last Express. The process was awarded U.S. Patent 6061462: Digital Cartoon and Animation Process. In the mid-1990s, Bob Sabiston, an animator and computer scientist veteran of the MIT Media Lab, developed a computer-assisted "interpolated rotoscoping" process which the director Richard Linklater later employed in the full-length feature films Waking Life (2001) and A Scanner Darkly (2006). Linklater licensed the same proprietary rotoscoping process for the look of both films. Linklater is the first director to use digital rotoscoping to create an entire feature film.

Additionally, a 2005-06 advertising campaign by Charles Schwab uses rotoscoping for a series of television spots, under the tagline "Talk to Chuck." This distinctive look is also the work of Bob Sabiston.

Technique
Rotoscoping is decried by some animation purists but has often been used to good effect. When used as an animator's reference tool, it can be a valuable time-saver.

Rotoscope output can have slight deviations from the true line that differ from frame to frame, which when animated cause the animated line to shake unnaturally, or "boil". Avoiding boiling requires considerable skill in the person performing the tracing, though causing the "boil" intentionally is a stylistic technique sometimes used to emphasize the surreal quality of rotoscoping, as in the music video Take on Me.

Rotoscoping has often been used as a tool for special effects in live-action movies. By tracing an object, a silhouette (called a matte) can be created that can be used to create an empty space in a background scene. This allows the object to be placed in the scene. However, this technique has been largely superseded by bluescreen techniques.

Rotoscoping has also been used to allow a special visual effect (such as a glow, for example) to be guided by the matte or rotoscoped line. One classic use of traditional rotoscoping was in the original three Star Wars films, where it was used to create the glowing lightsaber effect, by creating a matte based on sticks held by the actors.

The term "rotoscoping" (typically abbreviated as "roto") is now generally used for the corresponding all-digital process of tracing outlines over digital film images to produce digital mattes. This technique is still in wide use for special cases where techniques such as bluescreen will not pull an accurate enough matte. Rotoscoping in the digital domain is often aided by motion tracking and onion-skinning software. Rotoscoping is often used in the preparation of garbage mattes for other matte-pulling processes.

Rotoshop
Rotoshop is a computer program used to animated live action frame-by-frame and can be seen in the two Richard Linklater films listed above. Rotoshop can "interpolate between brushstrokes to save time and smooth motion" (link).