It's the way their robes flow when they cast I think.

Also Disney. They've been roto-scoping since Snow White.

Personally, I can't help but think of one Spongebob cartoon whenever I see the drakonid "roto-scope". You know the one: two flag twirlers go a little crazy on the twirling, fly off, and crash into a blimp and die.

I always imagine the drakonids doing that, and it cracks me up.

Ok... I will be the one to do it... What is rotoscoping?

Stan - Roto-scoping was used in Pinocchio, and I think Snow White and Cinderella. Those actually added to the story, but those were also animated in the earlier days of classical animation. It's considered an archaic technique now, as any character animator worth his/her salt can go beyond that (ie - Glen Keane).

Roto-scoping is drawing over existing footage. Best known example would be lightsabers in the original Star Wars trilohy. They filmed the fights with people swinging dowels, then went in and hand drew the red/blue/green blades frame by frame.

Best/worst example of rotoscoping I can think of is mostly Ralph Bakshi's stuff from the 70's - Wizards and the original Lord of the Rings animated movie.

Yeah, now they just use motion capture. Really takes less skill on the animators part than the rotoscoping did :D

Even more literally, it means they filmed a real person on a real set then drew a cartoon character on top of them. Essentially, it's cheating.

So if you see a cartoon character suddenly start to move in a rather spooky, uncanny valley sorta way, then they were rotoscoped. Tarna in "Heavy Metal" was (and I'm sure they had a fun time shooting that), as was Bluth's rather creepy "Thumbelina".

and lets not forget Fire and Ice. I HATED that they used roto-scoping for the animation. it always looks so cheap and tacky.

Okay, being an animation student, I might be able to clear up any confusion about rotoscoping.

It was originally a technique where animators trace over live-action footage (usually pre-taped) frame by frame on a frosted glass panel. The projection machine itself was called the rotoscope. Of course as technology has advanced, so has the way of doing it. Now a days, we use computers.

Examples of this in actual animation: "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" in the "Yellow Submarine"

P.S. The Rotoscope was created by Max Fleischer. If non-animating folks don't know him, he's the guy who's studio popularized characters such as "Betty Boop" and "Popeye." This studio also produced the original "Superman" animated Cartoons.

Rotoscoping doesn't *always* mean its a cheap 'short-cut' or 'cheating.' For one of the most impressive displays of rotoscoping check out the movie A Scanner Darkly. Every single frame is 100% hand drawn, and there is a very impressive randomizer suit that took a ridiculous amount of man-hours per second of screen time to animate. Really pretty stuff, at the end of the day. (a preview can be found here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXpGaOqb2Z8)

Another common example of 100% rotoscoped animation would be the current Charles Schwab commercials (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj2oqI8w1gA)

I agree that rotoscoping can feel odd at times, but please, dont say it isn't animation. It may not require the creativity that drawing from scratch requires... but I'd much rather watch something like A Scanner Darkly than any of these modern, hastily-animated CG features that don't even bother to texture basic structures. Laziness can be found in lots of places in movie making.

Rotoscoping is not animation: Richard Linklater is frowning at you. So am I!