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Patent drawing for Fleischer's original rotoscope. The artist is drawing on a transparent easel, onto which the movie projector at the right is throwing an image of a single film frame.

Rotoscoping is an animation technique in which animators trace over footage, frame by frame, for use in live-action and animated films.[1][2] Originally, 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 was eventually replaced by computers.



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. Max patented the method in 1917.[3]

Fleischer used rotoscoping in a number of his later cartoons, 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). 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.

Leon Schlesinger Productions, which produced the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies for Warner Bros., producing cartoons geared more towards exaggerated comedy, used rotoscoping only occasionally.

Walt Disney and his animators employed it in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937.[4] From Snow White onwards, the rotoscope was used mainly for studying human and animal motion, rather than actual tracing.

Rotoscoping was used extensively in China's first animated feature film, Princess Iron Fan (1941), 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" (in Russian – эклер), from the late 1930s to the 1950s; its historical use was enforced as a realization of Socialist Realism[dubious ]. Most of the films produced with it were adaptations of folk tales or poems – for example, The Night Before Christmas or The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish. Only in the early 1960s, after the Khrushchev Thaw, did animators start to explore very different aesthetics.

The film crew on The Beatles' animated film Yellow Submarine employed rotoscoping in numerous instances, most notably the sequence for "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds". Martin Scorsese famously had to have a large chunk of cocaine hanging from Neil Young's left nostril rotoscoped out in the rock documentary The Last Waltz.

Ralph Bakshi used the technique quite extensively in his animated movies Wizards (1977), The Lord of the Rings (1978), American Pop[1] (1981), and Fire and Ice (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.[5][6]

Rotoscoping was also used in Heavy Metal[1] (1981), What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown? (1983) and It's Flashbeagle, Charlie Brown (1984), three of a-ha's music videos, "Take On Me" (1985), "The Sun Always Shines on T.V." (1985), and "Train of Thought" (1986), Don Bluth's The Secret of NIMH (1982), An American Tail (1986) and Titan A.E. (2000) and Nina Paley's "Sita Sings the Blues" (2008).

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 TV animation, was also notable for its heavy usage of rotoscope to good effect in series such as Flash Gordon, Blackstar, 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 6,061,462, Digital Cartoon and Animation Process. The game was designed by Jordan Mechner, who has used rotoscoping extensively in his previous games Karateka and Prince of Persia

In the mid-1990s, Bob Sabiston, an animator and computer scientist veteran of the MIT Media Lab, developed a computer-assisted "interpolated rotoscoping" process which he used to make his award-winning short film "Snack and Drink". Director Richard Linklater subsequently employed Sabiston's artistry and his proprietary Rotoshop software in the full-length feature films Waking Life (2001) and A Scanner Darkly (2006).[7] 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 2005–08 advertising campaign by Charles Schwab uses Sabiston's rotoscoping work for a series of television spots, under the tagline "Talk to Chuck".

In 2013, the anime The Flowers of Evil was criticized by viewers for using rotoscoping to achieve a look that differed greatly from its manga source material. The main problem existed in cutting corners in animating facial features, reusing several backgrounds, and taking liberties in realism. Despite this, critics lauded the anime, including the website Anime News Network, which awarded it a perfect score for initial reactions.[8]


A horse's gallop rotoscoped, from a series of photographs by Eadweard Muybridge.
Rotoscoped frames of Eadweard Muybridge's Horse in Motion engraved into twenty metal discs. The metal plates were photographed after they were engraved and then edited into sequence.

Rotoscope output can have slight deviations from the true line that differs 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" and animated TV series Delta State. The very first animated music video "Routine Day", was rotoscoped. Created for the band "Klaatu" by Al Guest and Jean Mathieson, it employed overlapping dissolves to give a dream-like feeling to the "boiling" pencil line. The technique was also used for the Kansas video "All I Wanted".


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. To achieve this, editors traced a line over each frame with the prop, then enlarged each line and added the glow.

See also[edit]


  1. ^ a b c J.C. Maçek III (2012-08-02). "'American Pop'... Matters: Ron Thompson, the Illustrated Man Unsung". PopMatters. 
  2. ^ "Through a 'Scanner' dazzlingly: Sci-fi brought to graphic life" USA TODAY, August 2, 2006 Wednesday, LIFE; Pg. 4D WebLink
  3. ^ US patent 1242674, Max Fleischer, "Method of producing moving-picture cartoons", issued 1917-10-09 
  4. ^ "Reviving an ancient art" The Times (London), August 5, 2006, FEATURES; The Knowledge; Pg. 10. Weblink, see bottom of page
  5. ^ Ralph Bakshi: The Wizard of Animation making-of documentary.
  6. ^ Bakshi, Ralph. Wizards DVD, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2004, audio commentary. ASIN: B0001NBMIK
  7. ^ La Franco, Robert (March 2006). "Trouble in Toontown". Wired 14 (3). ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved 2008-10-15. 
  8. ^ "The Spring 2013 Anime Preview Guide". Anime News Network. Retrieved 2013-04-22. 

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