Yiyun Hu

Self-Motivated Research and Study

What inspires me to do this research?
The first time I get in touch with rotoscoping is
in a Japanese series of animate adapted for a
manga in 2013. The director uses rotoscoping
through the whole film. This creative idea
made a great sensational in current animate
industry, where was full of lovely 2D
characters. At the first time watching it, I also
couldnt get used to the visual effect that rotoscoping brought. It creates a
sense, which is between 2D and 3D. Every time when I regarded this
animate as the 2D creatures, it just looked too real. However, it was still a
bit different from reality, which had been improved by artist. And it is a
totally different experience for me. So I started to do some research about
this traditional 2D animation techniques and want to find out how it works.

The basic information of rotoscoping

Rotoscoping is a kind of animation technique, which refers to filming
something through camera and then tracing images over frame by
frame to make a video or aniamte. It is a rotated projection of a
sequence of images frames that artists can trace and create images to
superimpose. We can regard it as painting on movies. It was invented
by Max Fleischer in 1915, and utilized in his Out of the Inkwell animated
series (1918-1927). Originally, recorded live-action film images were
projected onto a frosted glass panel and re-drawn by an animator called a
rotoscope. Videlicet, rotoscope is a device consisting of a film projector
and easel for achieving realistic movement for animated cartoons.
Although this device now was replaced by computers, this kind of process
is still referred to as rotoscoping, wherever is on paper or in digital way.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotoscoping)
Rotoscoping is a traditional technique used mostly for visual effects in
live-action movies. By tracing a figure out, moviemakers extract what they
have traced out from the original background to another different one. In
a short, it functions quite like blue or green screen techniques in
nowadays computer editing technology. In digit domain, it is aided by
motion-tracking and onion-skinning software. Sometimes, rotoscoping can
also be used for visual effect. In the first three Star War movies, this
technique was used to create a glow lightsaber by tracing the outfit of
prop every frame and then adding glow.
One of the most successful examples of this technique is Ralph Bashis
Lord of the Rings. It is a 1978 American animated film. Much of this film
used live-action footage which was then rotoscoped to produce an
animated look. For bringing more realism to the film, Bakshi made LOTR in
a way that is more like a "regular" movie, with different kinds of shots and
characters that act just like normal people do. This saved production costs

Yiyun Hu

and gave the animated characters a more

realistic look.
The advantage of rotoscoping is that it
helps take good control of movement,
scale and timing, which make
characters lifelike and accurate. Through
tracing the video act by real human,
rotoscope gives realism, details and helps
king of animation, anatomy, work well.
But the disadvantage is that sometimes
it is too accurate or realistic to show
artists creativity. For instance, when utilizing this technology,
exaggeration, which is one of 12 principles of animation, may be lost. It is
hard to keep balance between accuracy and creativity. And it is widely
considered as a time consuming art form, both in film and animation
production. For example, in Take on me, the music video by a-ha, there
are 3,000 frames of live action using rotoscoping. And all these heavy
work took more than 16 weeks. Although the process was painful, the final
work looked amazing.

In

the next page, picture on the left side shows

the traditional device of rotoscoping. In the right side, the process of
digital rotoscoping is shown. If you want to try, the easiest way is to use
tracing paper to trace images by pen. However, as the development of
technology, this device has been replaced by computer or other digital
equipment. Digital Magic and Elastic Reality are both efficient tools that
can be used to do rotoscoping.

Yiyun Hu

Self-drawn
works/practice
When I started studying drawing manga at very beginning as a child,
the teacher gave me a picture from a manga artist and asked me to
trace these lines on trace paper. And what I drew looked similar with
the original one.
The biggest advantage of rotoscoping is to conceal the truth that you
cannot or poor at drawing. By tracing others work, you can also get
satisfying work. In additional, it is helpful for those new beginners to
learn how to draw quickly and easily. Through tracing others work, we
can accumulate experience. That is why we can always see tracing
papers for children.

It is quite easy to do rotoscoping in the traditional way. A tracing paper

and some character action images need to be used. However, it is
harder to do everything in the digital way. I tried several times in iPad
with some basic drawing apps.

Yiyun Hu

Yiyun Hu

These are where I use rotoscope in my short animation about arc. First of
all, I download the images of archery shooting and yoga from real life.
Then I set them as the background images in the drawing app. And I
trace through the lines, add colors by myself.
Just as what I said, the disadvantage of rotoscoping is that it limits our
imagination and creativity, which are essential for animators. However,
for animation work that explaining a theory, accuracy sometimes may be
more important than creativity. Through this traditional technique, the
accuracy of my characters movement always keep in a high level. That

Self-drawn works/practice in Adobe Animate

Adobe Flash CC also provides tools for making rotoscoping effect.
Compared with using drawing apps in iPad to create still rotoscoping
images, in Adobe Flash CC, rotoscoping can be used in video and moving
image. In addition, when we do rotoscoping for videos and moving
images, we only need trace important frames in the video to save more
time. This is called pose to pose in animation production.
I tried in Adobe Flash some times. And here are the steps and work I made
through it. First of all, find the material or reference in the internet.
YouTube is the good resource of clip. And then we can use Dirpy to convert
video to mp3. Format. Then open the Flash and import the reference video
into the stage by clicking import to stage. Create a new layer for tracing
on the video layer and start drawing frame by frame (pose to pose).
Finally, throw the video layer. And the rotoscoping by Flash is done.

Yiyun Hu

Still image rotoscoping is similar but easier in Adobe Flash CC. For getting
more accurate action and master the movement of human body, some
scene is from materials online and drew by rotoscoping. That proves
the advantage of rotoscoping again. This technique increases the

Yiyun Hu

accuracy of animation, especially when animators draw

humans action or posture.
Link of final work: https://vimeo.com/195786426

It is the rotoscope I did in Adobe Animate. The reference I use is the clip of Ray
in Star War: The Force Awakens. The way I draw the character is quite simple,
which is just a basic skeleton with basic joints. And this saves time when doing
a big work. I can add more details if I have time.