Above: An image of Keanu Reeves using Interpolated Rotoscoping 

Rotoscoping is a technique that has been used in animation since Max Fleisher first used it in his series Out of the Inkwell in 1915. The early technique worked by projecting live film action sequences onto frosted glass panels while the images were being re-drawn by an animator. The projection system that was used in this technique is called a rotoscope. Since these early times, computers have replaced the rotoscope to accomplish higher quality and more efficient animation schemes. The term “rotoscoping” today now refers to the all-digital process of outlining digital film images to produce digital mattes or silhouettes. The effects of rotoscoping can be seen in movies such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and the Lord of the Rings series.

In the 1990’s a graduate of MIT’s Media Lab, Bob Sabiston, created a piece of software called “Rotoshop” which had enough power to do simple black-on-white line animations. Since Sabiston came out with Rotoshop in the 1990’s, computers have became more and more powerful and as a result, so has Sabiston’s software. With Sabiston’s software came a new, advanced form of rotoscoping, which allowed Sabiston to perform rotoscoping at a very powerful level, yet this process of rotoscoping still took artists hundreds of hours to do a minute of film. This process needed to be sped up somehow and Sabiston responded by taking his software to the next level with a technique called interpolated rotoscoping. This technique allows the artist to skip certain frames of fim and have the software interpolate the sequences between the successive rotoscoped frames. The technique also cleaned up the jiggly effect that had been in older rotoscoped films and cut out stalling of the graphics program that used to occur when the older programs were overloaded.

Sabiston and director Richard Linklater have used this interpolated rotoscoping scheme to make a movie named A Scanner Darkly in the summer of 2006. The interpolated rotoscoping used in the movie creates never before seen effects on the movie screen. The movie makes video of live actors appear as dreamlike as animated classic cartoons such as Fantasia. A Scanner Darkly is about an undercover detective in the near future and is based on the 1977 book by author Phillip K. Dick with the same name. The technique of interpolated rotoscoping has since been applied to digital animation, computer graphics, 3-D rendering techniques, and digital video editing.

The connection between this topic and the course is the use of interpolation in which we learned in chapter 4.1 of the textbook. Interpolation has many cool uses in the graphics world and this is just one awesome example.

Check this article out by clicking the link below

http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/521943/

and the movie A Scanner Darkly by clicking

http://wip.warnerbros.com/ascannerdarkly/