, previamente filmada en cine o grabada en vídeo. The technique of rotoscoping is the manual redraw a contour frame by frame, based on a sequence of images of real action, previously filmed in film or videotaped. This will generate a silhouette that moves realistically and you can use as a mask to compose with other images or reference system to animate a character.

ORIGINS

The rotoscoping is rooted in traditional animation back in the early twentieth century and specifically the hand of Max Fleisher , a pioneer of animation. Fleisher, came up for the first time the bright idea of filming real actors on camera and then use their movements and contours as reference to create cartoons and try to improve and the early cartoons, which at that time lacked realistic and natural movement.

In 1915, together are his brother Dave, who was acting for the camera as a model, created the rotoscoping first character of the story: Koko the Clown.
Once filmed the actor, was used rotoscoping machine, invented by Fleisher, who projected the image onto a transparent screen and drew it, frame by frame, the character. Betty Boo, Popeye, Gulliver's Travels ... are some of the first living creatures to benefit from this technique.

Gradually, the technique was perfection and spreading. Thus, already in the 30s, was taken by the competitor Fleisher Studios, Walt Disney. Disney first used in the movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and continue using it intermittently throughout his career.

But despite its benefits, the rotoscoping technique also had detractors. Some even claimed that it was a process suitable only for leaders without sufficient talent and producing images too "literal"

APPLICATION TO SPECIAL EFFECTS

varias capas de imágenes. Away from the controversy, the rotoscoping technique established himself as mature and jumped into the world of special effects in film, which adopted as a resource to create masks and layers of images composing. Thus, the rotoscoping was used (and used) to save and cut out parts of the frame which then overlap with other outlets. It opened a field of possibilities for special effects: replace funds cut characters and change of place, remove excess objects in a scene ...

CURRENT USES

(1983) de Ralph Bakshi , con una fuerte base de rotoscopia. Meanwhile, in the world of animation, would feature emerging as the Lord of the Rings (1978) or Tigra, Ice and Fire (1983) by Ralph Bakshi , with a strong base of rotoscoping. Bakshi has come to recognize that "hates" the rotoscoping, but that was the only way to tackle scenes of some complexity in the time when he made his feature films. Now all these processes are done with CGI (computer Genaros images), but the basis remains the same: the real motion capture, in this case, not manual rotoscoping, but with emitters and sensors that recognize the movement of the actor and send it directly to the machine.

Today, some people still get to give a twist to the already almost one hundred rotoscoping. (2001) y Scanner Darkly (2006). This is the case of Richard Linklater , director of Walking Life (2001) Scanner Darkly (2006). With these two films, in particular with Scanner Darkly, Linklater gets a surprising comic aesthetic and real mixed picture, never seen before in animation. Its foundation is pure rotoscoping, aided by current techniques (wacom tablet, mac G5 ...), lots of patience, and almost despair, as the director himself has come to recognize, due to the slow progress.

Because, even with the help of software Rotoshop, interpolating the strokes, the process still involves a large scale factor and the right hand of the animator who must review their work frame by frame.