Animating Life Since 1917
Nearly a century before James Cameron transformed 5′ 7″ Zoe Saldaña into the nine-foot-tall Neytiri in Avatar, cartoonist Max Fleischer pioneered the first motion capture device in his Brooklyn living room.
Consisting of a projector mounted behind a transparent easel, the rotoscope machine transformed the art of animation by allowing cartoon artists to trace the movement of live performers onto animation cells. The result: fluid, lifelike motion.
Betty Boop of Bamboo Isle
One of the high points of early rotoscop animation is a minute-long dance sequence in the eight-minute short Bamboo Isle, in which performer Lotamuru of The Royal Samoans was transformed into a dancing Betty Boop.
According to The Amazing Rotoscope, a mini-documentary from Fleischer Studios, Betty Boop’s one-minute dance took a year to animate and incorporated 2,500 drawings.
Zoya Zynchenko of MM: E&R
By contrast, my brother Christopher Connolly and filmmaker Andrew Dymond of Bazooka Bunny needed only a few minutes to transform actor Annika Saar into Minute Men character Zoya Zynchanko.
Created using performance capture software, the video debuted last month to promote the forthcoming novel Minute Men: Execute & Run. You can watch the video, and read more about MM: E&R, in the August 24 installment of the Minute Men Newsletter.
That installment also includes a rotoscop challenge featuring the following images:
The Rotoscop Challenge
All of the thumbnails above represent feature films and/or cartoons that employ rotoscoping. How many can you identify?
Folks had little trouble with this one, with many responding via Substack, Facebook, and email to correctly identify the images as (from left to right, top to botton): DK Welchman’s film Loving Vincent, Dave Flaischer’s short Betty Boop’s Trial, Richard Linklater’s adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly, Max Flaischer’s animated feature Gulliver’s Travels, Max Flaischer’s short Snow-White, and a special effects sequence from Alfred Htchcock’s classic The Birds.
[For more on the evolution of the rotoscop process, see All About Rotoscoping: Concept, History, and Application.]
Another Example
A couple of folks posted recommendations for Ralph Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings, reporting that the film’s visuals made lasting impressions on them when they saw the film as kids.
I was a bit older when I saw it, and the fact that I first experienced it on VHS no doubt diluted the magic. Otherwise, I probably would have thought to include it in the initial challenge.
What Do You Think?
Do you have a favorite example of rotoscoping? Drop me a note in this blog’s comment section, and if you’d like to be in on the ground floor of the next newsletter challenge, consider becoming a subscriber via the box below.
Subscriptions are free.
Next installment drops September 2. I’ll meet you there!
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