Rotoscope+for+Exp+Video+2014

=Rotoscope is a technique used to create life like animation. Video is shot and then the live action is redrawn frame by frame in the computer or by hand to create life-like movements. Check out the FX link and animator blog link below for more on rotoscope technique, its history and some examples of the technique.=

=A brief history of Rotoscoping= By [|Oliver Levine] | April 10, 2011 I’ve been a fan of [|**A Scanner Darkly**] for a long time. It’s one of my favorite novels, and while the movie has its ups and downs, I think it’s successful in a few ways. One of the innovative aspects of the movie is the rotoscoping that we’ve been talking about in class. Well, I’ve done a little research into the technique, and found some interesting facts that are worth mentioning. First off, I think it’s important to know exactly what we’re talking about when we say something is “rotoscoped”. It turns out, interestingly enough, that the technique was created by none other than Max Fleischer, who we talked about earlier in the year in context to his Classic Superman cartoons of the 1940s. How the invention works is actually pretty simple. //**Rotoscoping is an animation technique in which animators trace over live-action film movement, frame by frame, for use in animated films.**// Originally, recorded live-action film images were projected onto a frosted glass panel and re-drawn by an animator. This projection equipment is called, not surprisingly, a rotoscope. In 1915 Fleischer patented the rotoscope after he used it to animate his series of cartoon shorts titled “Out of the Inkwell”. Since then, the invention has become a staple in realistic animations because it’s so difficult to imagine a complicated movement in one’s head and draw it accurately. There could be a book on all of the uses of the rotoscope, so I’ll only give one example of a film that uses rotoscoping in an interesting way… Like a lot of other technologies that made the 20th century what it was, the rotoscope is slowly becoming a relic of it’s time. Even in A Scanner Darkly, the original technique had been totally phased out, the rotoscoping was done on a computer. The computer is by all means a better, more efficient way to get the desired product- but I’d be interested to see more uses of the original rotoscope because of the weird human-like movements it creates when done by hand. Another great example of good rotoscope animation is one of my personal favorites, the 1978 Lord of The Rings cartoon directed by Ralph Bakshi- here’s a clip; notice how human-like the movements are:

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=Here are some fun examples of creative Rotoscope Usage in videos. Many of them are from music videos. = ==The A Ha one is fun because you can see the video portion and the drawn portion. You can choose to render your frames in any style (drawn, painted etc.) The one of the hands knitting is one that I did with watercolor crayons. Very short, but fun. == media type="youtube" key="Pj2NDN9OI5s" width="560" height="315"

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==This is a great video from the National Canadian Film Board website. This site has a lot of great resources. You should definitely check out the site and search there for more Rotoscope videos and animations.==

This is a very lengthy, but well-made tutorial on using Adobe Photoshop for Rotoscoping
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=So now that you have a better understanding of Rotoscope do more research and find some examples of your own. Create a wiki page and link your name here so we can find what you've done. Click here for details on how to complete your wikipage. =

Mackenzie M