digital rotoscoping

I was going through an interview with Bob Sabiston, the animator who created 'The Perfect Human' cartoon bit for the film 'The Perfect Human' by Lars Von Trier. In the interview with the onedotzero team Bob Sabiston says that a lot of his animation was time consuming, he had spent 2 years animating a two-minute film 'God's Little Monkey'... that was when he reconsidered the over worked animations, he says that 'the rotoscoping process came about as a reaction to those limitations. I wanted to do something intentionally lo-fi - quick and dirty. I like animated films that don't look over-laboured, they just do what's necessary to communicate their idea.'

I was trying to figure out one way of abstracting the characters that will appear in the project, a way of staying discreet while telling tales, this is how I started thinking about rotoscoping. It could be partial, to some of the characters only, a decision that is still pending.

One fine example of this technique could be found in Bob Sabiston's short 'Snack and Drink' (1999)

I downloaded an open source version of one of the rotoscope softwares that I should be exploring in the next couple of days.