Footnote #73 - Rotoscoping
The Fantasy/Animation podcast takes listeners on a journey through the intersection between fantasy cinema and the medium of animation. Available via Apple Podcasts, Spotify and many of your favourite podcast hosting platforms!
Footnote 73 looks at animation’s historical relationship to the body and how physicality was transcribed via the rotoscoping process as part of the construction of the earliest animated characters. From the Fleischer Studios pioneering the technology for use in their Out of the Inkwell series of shorts (1918–1927) and later feature films Gulliver's Travels (David Fleischer, 1939), and Mr. Bug Goes to Town (Dave Fleischer, 1941), through to Bob Sabiston’s digital homage to rotoscoping when developing the Rotoshop tool during the 1990s, this episode has Chris take Alex through the mechanics of projecting performances onto glass to be traced by the animators to craft their animated performances. Topics include what the rotoscope contributed to animation’s hyper-realist aesthetic and the specific desire for naturalism at Disney; rotoscoping’s connection to both the Rotoshop and contemporary motion capture techniques; and how the rotoscope negotiates the uncanny, haunting presence of the human beneath the image.
**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**
**As featured on Feedspot’s 25 Best London Education Podcasts**
**As featured on MillionPodcast’s Best 10 UK Animation Podcasts and Best 60 Movie Podcasts in the UK**
Suggested Readings
Bouldin, Joanna. 2004. “Cadaver of the real: animation, rotoscoping and the politics of the body.” Animation Journal 12: 7–31.
Holliday, Christopher. 2023. “Rhythm and the Rotoshop: Waking Life (2001), A Scanner Darkly (2006), and Rhythmanalysis.” In ReFocus: The Films of Richard Linklater, edited by Timotheus Vermeulen and Kate Wilkins, 210–233. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Honess Roe, Annabelle. 2011. “Uncanny Indexes: Rotoshopped Interviews as Documentary.” animation: an interdisciplinary journal 7, no. 1: 25–37.
Ward, Paul. 2004. “Rotoshop in context: computer rotoscoping and animation aesthetics.” Animation Journal 12: 32–52.