Visual Effects and Rotoscoping

Rotoscoping is tracing a live action sequence frame by frame. If you are familiar with Photoshop’s “clipping path“, rotoscoping kindda works the same way only you have to deal with hundreds of frames. Tedious as it sounds, there are a lot of softwares available that makes rotoscoping much easier.

Although this is nothing new, you dont have to painstakingly trace each frame, there is this technique that’s called interpolated rotoscoping wherein the program uses information from the current frame and from the future frame which then creates the in between frames. Now that’s certainly making rotoscoping an easier task.

Here is an article I wrote around 2006 about the history of rotoscoping. If you are really a rotoscoping virgin, then this article can shed some light.

Here are some several popular rotoscoped movies.

1. Disney’s Snow White
2. Disney’s Cinderella
3. A Scanner Darkly
4. A Waking Life

You might be asking why do I fuss about rotoscoping? Well, I work in a rotoscoping facility, LazyMovie.