Mondo Knows Facts
The rotoscope traced animation from live footage
Max Fleischer projected film onto paper so animators could draw over it Max Fleischer patented the rotoscope in 1915. Live-action footage was projected one frame at a time onto a glass easel, and an animator traced the figure onto paper, giving cartoons unusually natural movement. The device was later used for effects work in films such as Star Wars and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. It sits in Mondo's movies & tv collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
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More facts like this
Disney's multiplane camera added depth to cartoonsSeveral layers of artwork moved past the lens at different distancesMost hand-drawn animation is shot on twosEach drawing is photographed twice, so twelve drawings fill a secondXerox copying changed the look of Disney animation101 Dalmatians was the first feature to use the process throughoutHanna-Barbera made cartoons cheap with limited animationTelevision budgets forced shows to reuse cels and hold framesAardman animates plasticine characters by handWallace and Gromit are modelled in clay and moved a frame at a timeThe praxinoscope used mirrors instead of slotsEmile Reynaud put a ring of mirrors in a spinning drum so pictures never flickered
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Tags: animation, 1915, fleischer
The rotoscope traced animation from live footage: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Max Fleischer projected film onto paper so animators could draw over it. The figure is taken from Encyclopaedia Britannica, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a movies & tv fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Movies & TV shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.