Comments on: Performance Capture Technology circa 1966: AnimaScope

By: Jeffrey Gray

Jeffrey Gray — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 23:56:54 +0000

For those who were wondering where Animascope was used in Yellow Submarine – maybe it was used in the “Eleanor Rigby” sequence featuring cameos by some of the crew?

By: Dingdongdog

Dingdongdog — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 08:11:59 +0000

Yeah, Ralph Bakshi used the earliest Artiscope process, invented by Norman and Len Maurer, that used transparent cels — before the all 35mm film Colormation process came along — which needed no rotoscope artists, inkers or colorists, and required no retouchers or line corrections. The reason Bakshi changed the name to “Roto-photo” is because he and his partners decided not to pay the royalties and therefore infringed the original Artiscope and Animascope patents. Disney never had this process, but there were other earlier rotoscope methods that could give similar results but still had a certain amount of line jitter, and took much longer and was more expensive to produce. Max Fleischer patented the rotoscope process in 1917 after he made his Out of the Inkwell series in 1915 with his brother playing Koko The Clown. Line jitter was not a serious problem in the crude b&W cartoons produced before Disney used rotoscope to make Snow White in 1937.

By: Art weston

Art weston — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 07:53:00 +0000

Only rotoscope (such as used for Snow White, Gulliver’s Travels and other realistic animated feature films) requires artists to draw over the filmed performance on paper and later transferred to transparent celluloid. The processes used for the initial Animascope and (later) the colormation tests and demos apparently goes directly from the live filming to the animation cels or onto the finished animated film by a travelling matte process..

By: Dingdongdog

Dingdongdog — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 05:56:49 +0000

According to Len Maurer the process was licensed to the Yellow Submarine producers through King Features. Where or how it was used in the production (Made in London) is unknown. It was also licensed to Bakshi’s company for the production of the Tolkein Feature Films and American Pop. Animascope (formerly Artiscope) is NOT rotoscope — which requires penciling each live action frame by hand. Animascope shoots the prosthetic make up and costumed live actors directly on film and automatically converts it into ink line drawings on cels, or directly (Colormation) onto 35mm film along with the background matte paintings — through a 3-pass sequential series of 35mm traveling mattes. (No pencil animators or inkers needed). It is truly the first fully automated 3-D motion capture animation system (all on film) that is completely emulated by current digital CGI animation and live action special effects systems. The Colormation tests were the first research applications of the improved (all film) Animascope process. It was written and designed by Milton Caniff, and produced by Maurer as a demo for a proposed fully animated, low cost, TV series of Caniff’s Steve Canyon comic strip. (The next TV projects were to be Lil’ Abner and Buck Rogers). Unfortunately, the WAP company was forced to close before all the bugs were fully ironed out and the initial pilot film completed.

By: Dingdongdog

Dingdongdog — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 22:41:29 +0000

The process was licensed to the Yellow Submarine producers through King Features. Where it was used in the production is unknown. Animascope is NOT rotoscope—which requires penciling each live action frame by hand. Animascope shoots the live actors directly on film and converts it into line drawings on cels, or directly on film (Colormation), automatically. (No animators or inkers needed)

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 19:07:48 +0000

Clever, but totally loses the appeal of animation and defeats the purpose. This stuff actually looks like a Maya toon shader being used on quite a few tv series these days – but animated by animators.

By: Tony Mines

Tony Mines — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 14:26:12 +0000

also,
‘Westworld Artists’
Is that not a familiar name? Does it not rather suggest that the cartoons are going to rise up and try and kill us?

By: Tony Mines

Tony Mines — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 14:20:49 +0000

Yeah, you guys can pretend if you want. But a lot of that footage pretty much worked. Certainly looked no different or worse than much of the conventional rotoscope used in mainstream films from the 50s to the 70s.

Maybe some of the striaght-on stuff was creepy, but thats largely to do with 4th wall mechanics (hellooooo Wes Anderson) and would be confrontational using any process. Some of the mid-shot stuff, where they aren’t trying too hard to change body shapes (that lion costume, pfft) actually works, at least to the extent to prove the viability of the technique.
It may not have caught on then, but it’s catching on now under a different name because – sorry kids – it kind of does the job!

Anyway. That’s pretty much how they made Tron, and everyone knows Tron looks awesome – so it’s just how you apply it.