Rotoscoping in cartoons

[dougc]

I have heard the term "rotoscoping' used to describe how some cartoons were made ("Old Glory" and "September in the Rain" , for examples). Can anybody explain how rotoscoping works? Was it a more expensive technique than regular animation?
dougc

[Jack]

I would imagine that it is more expensive. From what I understand of it, rotoscoping is a process of filming live action actors, then sort of tracing it (only using the body of the characters) to get a more realistic look (so humans move in a human-like manner, rather than in a cartoonish manner). It is also used as something for animators to study, rather than trace, so they can have a frame by frame example of how, say, a human runs.

Disney also used it for it's animated movies, and Paramount used it for the Superman cartoons.

Jack:D

[Joe Tully]

Basically, a person is captured on film doing what the animators want to draw. Then, an image of the person from this film is projected onto the animators desk, where the image is traced. The film is moved forward a frame and the person is traced again. By tracing a series of frames of a person's movement, you make a cartoon of a person doing the same movements. Rotoscoping was invented by the Fleischer brothers, it doesn't sound costly to do in itself, but is time consuming, and of course time is money. It is generally used for exact movements.

[Matthew Hunter]

0They have done it in Looney Tune cartoons as well. The Bacall/Bogart action in "Bacall To Arms" is rotoscoped, was taken from a film the two starred in, I had read which one but I forget.
-Matthew

[Eraserhead]

Check out the animated movie, AMERICAN POP directed by Ralph Bakshi. Almost the entire film is done by rotoscoping.

[Jack]

Is AMERICAN POP the one where some boy from each generation is musically talented, but they fail and die?



Jack:D

[PlopKat]

Jack wrote:
Is AMERICAN POP the one where some boy from each generation is musically talented, but they fail and die?


Yes, that is AMERICAN POP. Ralph Bakshi also used rotoscoping extensively in his animated LORD OF THE RINGS.

Matthew wrote:


The Bacall/Bogart action in "Bacall To Arms" is rotoscoped, was taken from a film the two starred in, I had read which one but I forget.


The live action film is TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT.

BTW, I read that Uncle Sam in "Old Glory" wqs animated by hand by Robert McKimson and NOT rotoscoped. That amazes me.

-PlopKat

[Patrick McCart]

Say...if Bob McKimson did the great human animating in Old Glory...maybe he's who animated some characters (or charactures) in Hollywood Steps Out (which remains creditless)

:eek: :eek: :eek:

[J Lee]

The Avery unit at the time "Hollywood Steps Out" was made consisted of animators Bob McKimson, Rod Scribner, Sid Sutherland and Virgil Ross, so McKimson almost definitely did some of the animation on that cartoon (though barring proper credits there's no way to be 100 percent sure).

[Sogturtle]

Y'all~

As one of the verrrrry few people who's ever seen the 1939 press release for "Old Glory" I know that the Schlesinger studio went to great trouble on that baby. The press release went so far as divulging the names of all the storymen responsible, but only mentioned ONE ANIMATOR by name... Robert McKimson. I've never heard of any use of rotoscoping on this film either. An original drawing of Porky (in color) from it was just auctioned off on Ebay.

For "Hollywood Steps Out" Bob McKimson had just transferred to the Avery unit from the Chuck Jones unit (Jones got Bob Cannon from Clampett). As such it is doubtless that Avery handed some of the very fine caricatures over to master animator Bob. One point... Although we know the names positively of only four 1941 Avery animators, there was without a doubt a fifth full-fledged animator working for him... Anybody want to guess??? ;) ;)

[dougc]

As for my comment about rotoscoping in "Old Glory", my source of information was Beck and Friedwald's "Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies" book. In the review of "Old Glory," it states that the historical scenes are rotoscoped.
Although McKimson was an extremely talented animator, the historical scenes, such as the signing of the Declaration of Independence, seem almost too "lifelike" for cartoons of that age.
dougc

[PlopKat]

This is from Michael Barrier's book
Hollywood Cartoons (Oxford University Press, 1999, pages 356-7). It's where I got my information for my earlier post in this thread.
The (Chuck) Jones cartoons' resemblance to the Disney cartoons reached a peak in "Tom Thumb In Trouble," released in June 1940, about two years after Jones started directing. The tiny little character isa s cute as any Disney creature could hope to be, the story is as earnest as any Disney fairy tale, and one of the principal characters -- Tom's father, a human of normal size -- is so realistically animated that he appears to have been rotoscoped, like "Snow White"'s Prince. Almost a year earlier, Jones had directed "Old Glory" (1939), a patriotic cartoon starring Porky Pig; in it, too, a human character -- Uncle Sam -- is animated so realistically that one's first reaction is that surely an actor was filmed in th role and that film traced by the animators. But such was not the case. According to Jones, Bob McKimson animated both characters without the aid of live-action film: "If you laid it out for him and told him what you wanted, he could do a hell of a job." McKimson was animating for Frank Tashlin when Jones took charge of the Tashlin unit, and he ramained with Jones until 1940.

A footnote for Jones' quote adds that other parts of "Old Glory" were rotoscoped, which would probably include the signing of the Declaration of Independence scene that dougc mentions.

-PlopKat

[J Lee]

Tim --

Almost forgot about guessing on this one due to the holiday weekend.

Charles McKimson -- or as Bugs calls him "Charles MACKimSON" at the start of "Tortoise Beats Hare" was also animating for Avery in early 1941. And of course, let us not forget the Library of Congress notation mentioned by both Joe Adamson and Jerry Beck, that the animator on "Of Fox and Hounds" was the talented "Draft 6102" who apparently left the studio after doing this one cartoon.

;)

[Sogturtle]

Plopkat and John~

Let me be succinct on "Old Glory"... The 1939 press release on the film revealed that an unusually large number of animators worked on it... IFFFF Leon Schlesinger wanted to go to the extra added expense of live-action filming then those extra animators could have been used by Jones to hasten the rotoscoping etc. But the press-release didn't mention any live-action filming or tracing... It is surprising that Leon didn't take the chance to brag about any extra features or expenditures...

As for who Tex's fifth animator was on "Hollywood Steps Out" (May 1941)... Charles McKimson received his FINAL Avery credit two months earlier on "Tortoise Beats Hare" (which may well be the basis of Bugs READING us the names), but may have still been present for a brief while. The mysterious "Draft no. 6102" was most likely Sid Sutherland who was due for the credit(he was 40 in 1941 and his draft number SHOULD have been quite HIGH). Thus my personal nominee for fifth animator would tend to be... Manny Gould!! Manny's last Columbia cartoons date from the latter part of '40 (with one leftover in the release pipeline till mid '41) and he would appear the most logical... New arrivals at the house of Leon were S-L-O-W to receive screen credit in the 1940's... And from this point on the Avery (soon to be Clampett unit) cycles through its rotating animation list abnormally fast (as does Jones' unit).