The trick that made animation realistic

Rotoscoping changed animation forever. This is how.

Almanac Hollywouldn't is our miniseries on big changes to movies that came from outside Hollywood. Watch all of the episodes right here on YouTube.

One breakthrough made animation look natural. And it involved a clown dancing on a roof.

In this episode of Vox Almanac, Vox’s Phil Edwards explores the beginning of rotoscoping, a technique animators can use to create realistic motion. Invented by Max Fleischer of Fleischer Studios (and echoed and practiced by many others), it involves taking filmed footage and using it as a traceable model for animation. The results are fluid and natural in a way animation had never been before.

As the above video shows, it started with Max’s brother Dave dancing on a roof in a clown costume. Footage of that was then used to model the classic Koko the Clown cartoons, which formed the basis for many Fleischer Studios films. Today, animators still use techniques like rotoscoping to turn real movement into animation.

Check out the original patent!

If you want to learn more about early animation, check out Fleischer Studios on the web and YouTube.

You can also read Man and Superman: The Fleischer Studio Negotiates the Real in Quarterly Review of Film and Video by J.P. Telotte, which describes the techniques used for the animated Superman series.

The Fleischer Story by Leslie Cabarga is invaluable for any early animation fan and has lots of trivia you won’t find anywhere else.

[Vox]

If you want to learn more about early animation, check out this video about the delightfully weird origins of stop motion.

[naughtiusmaximus]

Imagine *Walt Disney* coming up with Rotoscoping, and the patent would've NEVER EXPIRED.

[jddrewes]

"You can patent a device, but you can't patent a dance!"
-Carlton wants to know your location

[amanul_]

Walt Disney: I revolutionised animation!

Max Fliecsher: Hold my clown...

[isabellebernard]

Speaking as an animator, rotoscoping can be great, but it's important to remember that it quickly ends up looking floaty and weightless. It's best to copy the main poses and look at the breakdown, but amplify the timing and spacing to fit better

[RichardHannay]

They used rotoscoping in A-Ha’s “Take On Me” music video

[RobertJRoman]

Fleischer cartoons were weird, but great. Their downfall came from two sources. One was that the Fleischer brothers fought as much as the Gallagher brothers of Oasis. The other was that Disney raised the stakes with Snow White, leading the Fleichers to make Gulliver's Travels, which was a studio-killing flop.

[matthewishunting]

My dad was a rotoscoper for disney 1980-1993. From Tron to Aladdin, we had plenty of frames of in between shots of animation he'd bring home for us to see

[Alkivo]

4:28 I find it really wholesome that Cab loved the animation so much he fell to the floor laughing

[duchi]

*For some reason*
This made me feel nostalgic of the time when I was not even born

[SeeASquaRE]

Rotoscoping is still heavily used for harder sequences that require intricate movement. Like ice-skating or dancing etc. It's a cool technique but is used rarely since principles have evolved in animation that now that can make the job of animating something almost close to realism possible through raw skills and intuition.

Edit: However even though Rotoscoping is used, it is still hard to do. The movements when traced from an actor will never feel natural and have generally "wonkiness" in their motion, it is usually difficult to account for *every* subtle movements in the human body. So a ton of cleanup work and corrections have to be performed for it to look convincing and in a way still requires a lot of skills as an animator.

[rachelmcdonough]

I miss the old style of animation where literally every object could become anthropomorphic at any moment and then go back to normal and no one cared. What happened to that?

[TheAccursedEntity]

I always wondered why old cartoons had better movement than those of the 80's and 90's.

[TheMgutierrez]

I mean with lyrics like
"She messed around with a bloke named Smokey
She loved him though was cokey
He took her down to Chinatown
And he showed her how to kick the gong around".
This cartoon is pretty trippy

[KarlBunker]

I love thinking about Cab Calloway laughing hysterically at the animation of himself as a walrus.
And anyone who hasn't seen Betty Boop Minnie the Moocher should look it up ASAP.

[HAXAD]

Twitter: "Tracing is a crime against the art community!"

People in the 1900s:

[cleopatraonlyfans]

I can’t believe this is how we got the Rotoscope guy from Smiling Friends

[bellibarra]

What I loved about fleischer studios was their absurdity in making cartoons. People are quick to refer to Disney when talking about old animation but fleischer's weird style is what their most likely talking about subconsciously. If people thought disney was weird back then; they we're merely watching a watered down version of fleischer's cartoons.

[NestorCustodio]

Oh wow, I had no idea the Fleischers had *invented* the rotoscope. That explains so much about their studio's success when the late 70's cartoon explosion came about.

[robynstopped]

Cab Calloway is unbelievably influential. Even his dance moves now stand out in 2022 as uniquely his own. Fletcher absolutely picked the perfect dancer to rotoscope.