rotoscope critique/aesthetics

[mikepflaumart]

What is the your general impression of rotoscoping? I have used Mirage to work with this technique because I am a fine artist painter but love the end result of the painterly look. I have seen the recent films on the big screen using that technique but wanted a classically trained animators' opinion of it. I have been working on a short spot that I created for a client a couple of years ago that I thought would make a great hand drawn/painterly look...a sort of moving painting.

[idragosani]

Rotoscoping... the neverending controversy.

I think, like all animation techniques, it has its place and can be used effectively. The modern equivalent to rotoscoping is 'motion capture', which also has its place in in visual effects. Ralph Bakshi, who was heavily criticized for his use of rotoscoping in The Lord of the Rings, has commented that he made the choice to rotoscope for financial and time constraint reasons -- it was such a big movie that it would have taken a decade to animate by hand (as his earlier films were, although Wizards had some crude rotoscoping). Bakshi also points out that Peter Jackson used motion capture extensively in his version of the Tolkien books.

However, rotoscoping just for the sake of doing it (or motion capture), I think limits creativity and artistic expression. Like with the recent Beowulf movie -- why did it need to be motion-capured CG? There have been epic medieval movies made entirely without CG, so any claims of saving time and money would fall flat.

I have seen some neat rotoscoping done for music videos, where the director is going for a kind of surreal animated painterly effect, and that can be interesting. But many of the shorts I have seen done like that tend to give me a headache, because everything is moving so fast and the colors are changing so fast and its hard to focus on any of the animated characters/

Now, it is one thing to trace over live action versus using live action as a reference. We use photographs and models as references all of the time. We study how animals walk and how leaves fall to effectively animate them. And I think that is a more effective way to animate, because you, as an artist, are squashing and stretching reality with your own skills and experiences and making the art more vibrant and alive.

[Paul Fierlinger]

Rotoscoping is pretend art, pure and simple. What makes animated films unique (when made well) is not just how the characters are painted but also how they are set into motion and how the animators express themselves as individuals. Rotoscope is mass production.

I loved Mirage for its ease with this technique

There you say it yourself; rotoscoping makes animation easy for anyone to do and is as pleasing as fake flowers.

[idragosani]

Rotoscoping is pretend art, pure and simple. Rotoscope is mass production.

I feel the same way about most Flash animation... so much bad animation out on the Internet and about 99% of it is done in Flash.

I have gained a new appreciation of stop-motion animation also -- I have always liked it, but it has fallen by the wayside in the onslaught of CG animation. But the modern stop-motion animators are hardcore -- they do everything by hand and much of the work is gorgeous (of course there is bad animation out there also). I've been watching a lot of the old Czech films from the 40s and on and the artistic expression is in these films is simply delightful!

(I know people who use Mirage/TVpaint for stop-motion production also)

[Paul Fierlinger]

There are always exceptions (except none for rotoscoping) in Flash animation
http://www.bozzetto.com/flashfilms2.htm
Bruno Bozzetto animated in Flash style long before computer animation existed so he fell right into the best spirit of Flash.
Not everything is equally charming and clever but you'll find so many samples of his work in that link that looking at a few will give you a pretty good idea why he is the master of the clean elegance of Flash.

[idragosani]

There are always exceptions (except none for rotoscoping) in Flash animation
http://www.bozzetto.com/flashfilms2.htm
Bruno Bozzetto animated in Flash style long before computer animation existed so he fell right into the best spirit of Flash.
Not everything is equally charming and clever but you'll find so many samples of his work in that link that looking at a few will give you a pretty good idea why he is the master of the clean elegance of Flash.

Yes, I have seen some clever Flash, and that is definitely some of it!

[Paul Fierlinger]

I think Bozzetto's art works because he uses the software to match what is already in his mind. Most people use Flash hoping that something will come out of it. What sort of vision does a rotoscoper have before he traces? I'll trace this one in blue smears?

[mikepflaumart]

Thanks for the input. I kind of set myself up for those responses regarding rotoscoping. I use my footage mainly for reference for my drawing but I understand the 'mass - production ' and 'fake as flowers' thought. Most of my work ends up having my personal expression in it. However, I truly agree that rotoscoping will never come close to truly good animation.

I haven't used mirage/tvp for stop motion. I have used another program recently to teach my students some stop-motion. Is tvp limitied into what cameras it can take. I noticed the Conon - PC only plugiin. What about hdv cameras? i am assuming it will work.

[slowtiger]

I've just seen a very good movie done with rotoscope: "Chainsaw" by Dennis Tupicoff. (It just won the Grand Prize at the 54th Oberhausen International Short Film Festival last week.) He works in an "animated documentary" style, so rotoscoping fits perfectly into his storytelling which partly deals with found footage aesthetics.

In another forum they're again discussing wether MoCap is animation or not. I've decided that I don't care as long as it's a good film.

[Klaus Hoefs]

There is another aspect:
How much fun does it bring to you to trace frame by frame a 5 minute-clip of e.g. walking people in a street ?
How individual and especially is it to press a button and then having an only-outline version of this clip ?

[ematecki]

What about hdv cameras? i am assuming it will work.

Are you on Mac or pc ?

On Mac, every video input device supported by QuickTime should work.
On pc, everything WDM compatible should work.

[idragosani]

Thanks for the input. I kind of set myself up for those responses regarding rotoscoping. I use my footage mainly for reference for my drawing but I understand the 'mass - production ' and 'fake as flowers' thought. Most of my work ends up having my personal expression in it. However, I truly agree that rotoscoping will never come close to truly good animation.

I haven't used mirage/tvp for stop motion. I have used another program recently to teach my students some stop-motion. Is tvp limitied into what cameras it can take. I noticed the Conon - PC only plugiin. What about hdv cameras? i am assuming it will work.

You can use any digital camera that has WDM drivers -- which pretty much means any USB or FireWire camera like webcams and miniDV cameras. Some digital still cameras fall into this category also. TVP is a one-stop shop for hand-made animation!

[Anim8tor Cathy]

I am very new at this, so I won't begin to pretend to know much about it - but I do know this:

The word animation comes from the Latin "animatio" which means: "A bestowing of life."

Traditional 2D animation is where you sit and draw and draw and draw and draw until your eyes bleed and your brain liquefies and oozes out of your ears - just then, you flip back over what you've drawn and you are reborn in the miracle of it! HUZAAAH!!You are healed! Then you begin again to draw and draw and draw and draw ... etc.

Flash animation is where you draw one object, one time and then drag it around a screen and set key frames. To me this is not animation in it's truest sense.
Yes, it is a moving picture - but is it animated? No.

[idragosani]

Well... the idea behind vector animation like Flash or Anime Studio Pro or ToonBoom is based on traditional key-framed 2D animation -- the difference is that the computer draws the in-betweens instead of the animator (3D CG animation is done this way also). Good vector animation applications will also provide tools like Inverse Kinematics, skeletal deformation and physics. Unfortunately, a lot of people don't understand how animation works and don't know when or how to use these tools so their animation has no life and comes across as very amateurish. But I have seen some very sophisticated animation done with vector animation applications. Grey Kid is one production company (based in Hungary) that comes to mind, they have done feature film work that looks as lush as stuff from Disney.

[Anim8tor Cathy]

Yes - "lifeless" was the word I was trying to think of. Much of the Flash animation I have seen appears lifeless. I agree there are good and bad in every mode of animation - but in my experience there is a very low percentage of "life-filled" Flash work out there. I've played with ToonBoom as well - but it's lacking something for me, almost feels too heavy-handed, if that makes sense.