The toolbox of a post-production studio is filled with a mix of state-of-the-art technology, tried and tested techniques and experimental ideas too ambitious and audacious to fail.
One of the biggest examples of the latter was rotoscoping, which, despite being described as a “noble experiment that failed” in an episode of animated sitcom The Simpsons, not only endured but revolutionised how films are made and envisioned.
To explain why, we need to explore what it was made for, what it failed at, and how this failure metamorphosed into a style that has never truly disappeared, even as technologies such as motion capture should have made it obsolete.
The Fleischer Failure
Initially devised as an animation shortcut, rotoscoping involves tracing individual frames of live action footage to create more fluid, realistic animation sequences than would be possible through freehand animation or the use of animation shortcuts.
It was known as the Fleischer method thanks to the pioneering silent movie-era animator Max Fleischer, who invented the technique in 1915 and used it for a range of short movies such as the Out of the Inkwell series starting in 1918.
Max had hoped that the technique would allow him and his studio to produce more elaborate animation sequences faster and easier, but it turned out to be far too precise and time-consuming for this.
It was instead saved for dance sequences, most notably the Cab Calloway routines from Betty Boop shorts like Minnie the Moocher and Snow White.
Rather ironically, just three years after Mr Fleischer’s patent expired, another animator by the name of Walt Disney would even more extensively use rotoscoping in the pioneering and extremely expensive Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.
It was used extensively in the groundbreaking 1940s Superman cartoons before becoming established as a way to make special effects and complex animated sequences quickly.
Pioneering animator Ralph Bakshi used the technique extensively in the 1977 film Wizards, and more infamously in his adaptation of The Lord of the Rings.
From Shortcut To Stylistic
What makes rotoscoping special and why the technique has endured so strongly is because of its unusual combination of weighted realism and surrealism, as well as having the versatility to alter the styles, sizes and proportions of objects in a way that can be complex when using motion capture.
The latter element was used significantly by Fleischer Studios, but perhaps reached its peak in the 1980s thanks to the influence of the music video on animations such as 1984’s It’s Flashbeagle, Charlie Brown.
Perhaps the most famous use of rotoscoping, however, was in the second music video for a-ha’s Take On Me, one of the most groundbreaking music videos of all time and a video credited for making the Norwegian band global stars.
Whilst it was beaten to release by Dire Straits’ similarly groundbreaking Brothers In Arms video (as well as the rotoscoping techniques used alongside CGI and live footage in Money For Nothing), Take On Me established rotoscoping as a stylistic technique.
This is the reason why its characterisation as a “failure” or a “noble experiment” does not necessarily match its reality; rotoscoping is still commonly used as a selective technique, in advertising, short films and even in the feature-length A Scanner Darkly.