Animated Manipulation: Interpolated Rotoscope Animation in Richard Linklater's, "A Scanner Darkly"
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- Опубліковано 6 жов 2024
- Written and Recorded by Liam Kimmons
A short analysis of the filmmaking techniques that went behind Richard Linklater's, "A Scanner Darkly", and how the film industry's technological process changed forever...
Follow @mail_with_a_movie_camera for liminal space photography and the occasional short film.
I'm glad he went through with this type of animation. Waking life blew my mind as a young adult and i was beyond excited when i saw what the advanced version of that type of animation could look like. Scanner darkly remains one of my favorite movies to date and I'm surprised it hasn't gained more of a cult following.
I love rotoscoping so much. I like the parallel you draw to modern films and cgi. Because rotoscoping has So much more of an impact on animation and CGI than people give it credit for. I had no idea that this movie even existed but now I'm going to go look into it and watch it Even if I don't enjoy the contents of the film I'm going to enjoy the process of the fact that it's entirely animated.
Another good one that was done in 2017 was Loving Vincent. Which was the first film entirely painted. They used another form of rotoscoping to get the actor's movements.
Also a lot of people are kind of turned off by of tiktok but there is a growing rotoscope movement. I don't even know if the people doing it are aware that that's what it's called.
But I've seen a lot of trends of people redrawing dancers or K-pop idols as the people dancing or anime characters dancing instead of the K-pop idols. I've also seen Minecraft UA-camrs be redrawn as the people dancing and other groups. It's starting level rotoscoping and it's introducing the idea of doing that kind of animation to quite a large audience at a young age, which makes me very happy.
I've also seen a whole bunch of new music artists get creative because of covid for the kind of music videos that they do so I've seen a few that incorporate forms of rotoscoping.
It's a very fun subject and I'm really glad that people are interested in it.
this doesn't even begin to talk about how a whole bunch of the old Disney animated films were basically entirely rotoscoped. They had actors do like a stage performance of the entire movie and then they drew over the movements of the characters to get all of the fluid animation for those iconic scenes way back when. there's documentation on all of this and people have talked about it in the past it's just it doesn't feel like people really give it that much credit.
like a lot of the animation community that I've seen have decided that rotoscoping is a dirty word, and how dare you use that kind of process to animate anything. Something along the lines of like you're not a true animator if you do rotoscoping.
it's a trash argument and I hate the negativity towards this process. So many wonderful things have been created using this method and it introduces a lot of people to how to create smoother animations by taking advantage of references available.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
I really appreciate this comment! this video was made for people interested in this topic to the same degree that you are. Your insights are sound and I think you hit the nail on the head when it comes to the future of media.
Personally, I think we are headed towards an almost entirely animated mode of storytelling. If every element can be manipulated, then why not give yourself that control in post?
We could all be wrong, but I think modern audiences seem to really vibe with it. Maybe there's a level of disassociation that happens when you watch a humanoid cartoon go through hardships, rather than real people.
If you're interested in rotoscoping, check out what people have been doing with EbSynth. It can cut down the time and labor needed for quality rotoscope animation by an order of magnitude. Instead of having to draw 12 frames for every one second of motion, you can get serviceable animation by drawing just one frame for many seconds of motion. The software creates additional frames based on your reference and your new example keyframe. It's crazy.
Probably my favourite movie, great little video essay you've done.
Thank you for making and sharing this quite thought-provoking video. Were we indeed meant to get this lost?
Very good thesis of the contemporary world
We need a Half-Life 2, Citizen Point Of View, Combine Control, City life movie animated like this.
Saying that this films use of animation is kinda both a blessing and a curse. If this weren't animated over, I'd have brushed it off when I was a kid. It's animation is what intrigued me to go back to it years later to figure out, "what the heck am I watching?" To others it can seem like a gimmick. And I understand that. But honestly, how many films look like a graphic novel? Why can't we get more of them? The amount of time it took them is an achievement they deserved and it payed off for a lot of people who like this film. However, its "gimmick" for using rotoscoping can be seen by people thinking it was just a cool way to make the film and relied on it to gain people's interest. Either way people see it, I'm glad it's a film made this way and made very well. Especially for 2006.
i think the art style adds to the story. it's strange, warped, dreamlike; it's almost real, but so many steps away from being real. much like how someone in a drug-fuelled haze might see the world. we can relate to bob's bizarre reality by fact that it does look bizarre. we, the audience, are the scanner, and this is how we see.
Is it me or do they live on grove street? (GTA San Andreas)
This can be done so easily now
That’s the interesting part for me personally. Full programs exist for this to work at a consumer level, (if you have the time and computing power). It’s the future as far as I’m concerned.
@@MailWithAMovieCamera I"m actually doing a weird style for a series using Rotoscoping and 3d animation instead. I don't have tons of actors so using 3d people with mocap and have AI rotoscope but I gt to choose the style and put it on top.
@@themightyflog sounds very exciting! I’d love to hear more if you want disclose info via email?
@@MailWithAMovieCamera sure. How do I contact you?
I'd love for someone to take the corridor crew new animation technique to see how close it can match the movie in a drastically shorter time.
To think with AI assistance today all those hours could have been cut down to about a dozen rather than thousands
I really wish they didn’t put all that work into it lol
I liked it but wtf is Alex Jones doing in this thing thought he was a legitimate conspiracy theorist why is he in this
I love this comment. Here's the BTS info behind Alex Jones because I was confused myself.
So in the early 2000's; Alex Jones was known as a deranged public access television show host famous in his hometown of Austin, Texas for, of course, his wild conspiracy theories. Richard Linklater, (an Austin native), found him to be a compelling person to watch speak. Because of his fascination with Jones, Linklater cast him in two films, this one and, "Waking Life". The latter came out before, "A Scanner Darkly", and featured Jones performing a three-minute anti-authoritarian rant while his face turns different shades of red.
While I think Jones' inclusion in Linklater's films is a little strange now, it does make sense for its time. More people made fun of him back then. He was rarely taken serious. However; younger Alex Jones was also a little more friendly than he is now. He wasn't right-leaning to the degree where he'd call every Liberal he knew some terrible name, but his anger has always been a constant.
I think Linklater just found him to be this weird yet compelling local legend. He likely saw Jones as harmless and his inclusions in these films now paint the messages trying to be made in a new light. I would argue that this only makes the films stronger as a result. That being said, modern day Alex Jones belongs in Looney Toons.
@@MailWithAMovieCamera I think if I’m right he used to be on tv and my guess is whoever he was getting paid from stopped or at least someone else started paying him to say different things or act different that’s what it at least looks like the guy used to talk about a lot of stuff but I think after a while he got invited to too many of those parties and people love to listen to him like you said so he’s just part of whatever this shit is now I just thought it was weird but then again Richards family has some connections too witch are pretty weird
@Mail With A Movie Camera I think Alex in this film aged very well. Since in real life he is a conspiracy theorist on a soapbox yelling about government shady powers. In the movie you could imagine him being actual Alex Jones doing that stuff and you'd think that's just his normal Saturday night.