Rotoscoping

animation · filmmaking · technique

Tracing real motion. Animators use rotoscoping by watching live-action film footage and carefully tracing every single frame onto paper or into a computer, capturing exactly how real people and things move.

Glass panel invention. The original rotoscope was a special machine invented by Polish-American animator Max Fleischer that projected movie images onto a glass panel so artists could trace them by hand.

From glass to computers. Modern animators no longer need glass panels and projectors because computers now do most of the rotoscoping work, but we still call the technique by the same name.

Movie-like cartoons. Rotoscoping makes animated characters move exactly like real actors because the movement comes directly from real filmed footage, not from an animator's imagination.