Shopping on line can be easy, simple and save you lots of money. It can also take a lot of your time, frustrate you, and result in unwanted purchases. Now the same can be said for regular high street shopping, but with the vast opportunity presented by the Internet it will pay you to spend a few minutes reading this and understanding how to better optimize your Rotoscope shopping experience:
1. Compare - without doubt the biggest advantage that the Rotoscope offers shoppers today is the ability to compare thousands of Rotoscope at a time. This is a great thing, but not necessarily all the time! Too much can be daunting at times so take advantage of the great comparison sites and where possible let them do the hard work for you.
2. Research - if it has been said it will be on the internet. Ignorance is no longer a justifiable reason for buying the wrong thing. Take the time to research in detail everything that you could possible want to know about
3. Testimonials - don't know anybody that has bought a Rotoscope? Wrong! If the Rotoscope is good the internet will let you know. Use the Internet as a friend and get testimonials before you buy.
4. Questions - Got a question about Rotoscope then search the Forums, FAQ's, Blogs etc. Don't be afraid to ask .....
5. Reputation - Never heard of the company selling Rotoscope? Don't worry, no reason why you should know every company in the world, but you know someone that does! Use the internet to find out what people are saying about Rotoscope and build up a picture of their reputation for sales, returns, customer service, delivery etc.
6. Returns - still worried that even after all of the above your Rotoscope wont be what you want? Check out the returns policy. There is so much competition now that someone, somewhere is bound to offer the terms that you are comfortable with.
7. Feedback - happy with your Rotoscope then let people know, after all you are depending on others people input in your buying decision, so why not give a little back.
8. Security - check for the yellow padlock on the Rotoscope site before you buy, and the s after http:/ /i.e. https:// = a secure site
9. Contact - got a question about Rotoscope, or want to leave a comment then check out the sites contact page. Reputable companies have them and respond.
10. Payment - ready to pay for your Rotoscope, then use your credit card or PayPal! Be aware of companies that don't accept them, there may be genuine reasons but given the huge amount of choice you have when buying online there is no reason at all not to buy via credit card or PayPal.
Rotoscoping is an animation technique in which
animators trace over live-action film movement, frame (film) by frame, for use in
animated films. Originally, pre-recorded live-action film images were projected onto a frosted glass panel and re-drawn by an animator. This projection equipment is called a rotoscope, although this device has been replaced by computers in recent years. More recently, the rotoscoping technique has been referred to as interpolated rotoscoping.
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 film) (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 (1937 film) in
1937 in film. Rotoscoping was also used in many of Disney's subsequent animated feature films with human characters, such as
Cinderella (1950 film) in
1950 in film. Later, when Disney animation became more stylized (e.g.
One Hundred and One Dalmatians, 1961 in film), the rotoscope was used mainly for studying human and animal motion, rather than actual tracing.
Rotoscoping was used extensively in
China first animated feature film,
Princess Iron Fan (1941 film) (1941 in film), 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; History of Russian animation#Socialist Realism 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 (1951 film) or
The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish. Only in the early
1960s, after the Khrushchev Thaw, did animators History of Russian animation#From Khrushchev Thaw to Perestroika very different aesthetics.
Ralph Bakshi used the technique quite extensively in his animated movies
Wizards (film) (1977),
The Lord of the Rings (1978 film) (1978),
American Pop (1981), and
Fire and Ice (1983 film) (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 Episode IV: A New Hope.)
Ralph Bakshi: The Wizard of Animation making-of documentary.Bakshi, Ralph.
Wizards DVD, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2004,
audio commentary. ASIN: B0001NBMIK
Rotoscoping was also used in
Heavy Metal (film) (1981), the
a-ha music video "Take on Me" (1985), and Don Bluth
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 animation, was also notable for its heavy usage of rotoscope to good effect in series such as
Flash Gordon,
Blackstar (TV series) 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
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 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 (film) (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 Corp. 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
horse animated by rotoscoping from Eadweard Muybridge's 19th century photos.
Artistic license has been used to achieve the cartoony look. rotoscoped with a more realistic look, from Eadweard Muybridge's "Horses and Other Animals in Motion"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 (filmmaking)) 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.
Examples of rotoscoping
in animated films:
in live action films:
- A Fistful of Dollars (title sequence)
- Star Wars (lightsaber effects)
- Forrest Gump (television sequences)
- Godzilla showa and heisei series(rays)
in video games:
in music videos:
in television shows:
- Delta State (TV series)
- Flash Gordon (Filmation 1978)
- American Idol: Idol Gives Back live duet between Celine Dion and Elvis Presley (together on stage with use of rotoscoping)
in commercials
See also
References
External links
- Description of Smoking Car Productions' Digital Rotoscoping Patent
- Article On Richard Linklater's Use of Rotoscoping
Rotoscoping is an animation technique in which animators trace over live-action film movement, frame (film) by frame, for use in
animated films. Originally, pre-recorded live-action film images were projected onto a
frosted glass panel and re-drawn by an animator. This projection equipment is called a rotoscope, although this device has been replaced by
computers in recent years. More recently, the rotoscoping technique has been referred to as interpolated rotoscoping.
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 film) (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 (1937 film) in 1937 in film. Rotoscoping was also used in many of Disney's subsequent animated feature films with human characters, such as
Cinderella (1950 film) in 1950 in film. Later, when Disney animation became more stylized (e.g.
One Hundred and One Dalmatians,
1961 in film), the rotoscope was used mainly for studying human and animal motion, rather than actual tracing.
Rotoscoping was used extensively in China first animated
feature film,
Princess Iron Fan (1941 film) (1941 in film), 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;
History of Russian animation#Socialist Realism 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 (1951 film) or
The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish. Only in the early
1960s, after the
Khrushchev Thaw, did animators
History of Russian animation#From Khrushchev Thaw to Perestroika very different aesthetics.
Ralph Bakshi used the technique quite extensively in his animated movies
Wizards (film) (1977),
The Lord of the Rings (1978 film) (1978),
American Pop (1981), and
Fire and Ice (1983 film) (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 Episode IV: A New Hope.)
Ralph Bakshi: The Wizard of Animation making-of documentary.Bakshi, Ralph.
Wizards DVD, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2004, audio commentary. ASIN: B0001NBMIK
Rotoscoping was also used in
Heavy Metal (film) (1981), the a-ha music video "
Take on Me" (1985), and
Don Bluth 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 animation, was also notable for its heavy usage of rotoscope to good effect in series such as
Flash Gordon,
Blackstar (TV series) 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
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 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 (film) (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 Corp. 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
horse animated by rotoscoping from
Eadweard Muybridge's 19th century photos. Artistic license has been used to achieve the cartoony look. rotoscoped with a more realistic look, from Eadweard Muybridge's "Horses and Other Animals in Motion"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 (filmmaking)) 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.
Examples of rotoscoping
in animated films:
in live action films:
- A Fistful of Dollars (title sequence)
- Star Wars (lightsaber effects)
- Forrest Gump (television sequences)
- Godzilla showa and heisei series(rays)
in video games:
in music videos:
in television shows:
in commercials
See also
- rotoscope free software
- Rotoshop is also referred to as interpolation rotoscoping
References
External links
- Description of Smoking Car Productions' Digital Rotoscoping Patent
- Article On Richard Linklater's Use of Rotoscoping
Rotoscoping - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This projection equipment is called a rotoscope, although this device has been replaced by computers in recent years. In the visual effects industry, the term rotoscoping refers to ...
rotoscope definition of rotoscope in the Free Online Encyclopedia.
They basically traced over it all on Macs -- it's the modern equivalent of rotoscope animating -- adding, of course, the scramble suit permutations and making the edges of ...
Rotoscope
Featured Screenshots:
Rotoscope Animation
I want to hire Toon Doctor ® for a Rotoscope Animation project. I want to see a Rotoscope Animation done by Toon Doctor ®. I want to find out more about rotoscope animation in ...
About - rotoscope - a free software rotoscoping application
What is rotoscope? Rotoscope is a free software rotoscoping application that can be used to give photos a cartoon-like appearance. This is similar to the technique used in movies ...
Rotoscope
3DU the 3D Site for Students of 3D animation and visual effects. ... Rotoscope - 1. In computer graphics, to rotoscope is to create an animated matte indicating the shape of an ...
YouTube - Rotoscope Mullen
I was experimenting some rotoscoping when I was at the Art Institute of Seattle. The animation was reference from Rodney Mullens part in "Rubbish Heap"...
Plog » rotoscope
For three days young people in Derby became animators and film makers, and remembered their experiences of coming to this country as a refugee or asylum seeker.
MySpace.com - Rotoscope - Arlington, US - Rock / Alternative ...
MySpace music profile for Rotoscope with tour dates, songs, videos, pictures, blogs, band information, downloads and more
Podsafe Music Network - Rotoscope
Bio: "If Our Lady Peace, Jesus Jones, Jeff Buckley and U2 had a baby, it'd probably sound like Rotoscope." - Groundwaves Radio Artist's Blog
