Rotoscoping

Abstract

This chapter examines the use of the tracing of lines over live-action footage, or rotoscoping, in animation practice. In particular, the chapter makes a distinction between rotoscoping by outline, in which the animator traces over the boundaries of an actor’s body at every frame, and rotoscoping by through-line, wherein the animator draws according to lines of force that underlie an actor’s movements. In rotoscoping by through-line, used at Disney, the drawn line seems part of the footage beneath it. In rotoscoping by outline, used by Ralph Bakshi and the Fleischer studio, the line seems partially independent of the footage; this, the chapter argues, is where the oft-noted unsettling quality of some rotoscoping comes from. The chapter then examines a use of rotoscoping by outline in Mary Beams’s film Going Home Sketchbook (1975), which paradoxically has none of this unsettling quality. By having a line snake freely over light values around live-action figures, the film exhibits an intimate, even loving, attachment to its footage.