Rewind retro video of the day... From Oslo, Norway... here is a-ha with their 1985 single The Sun Always Shines on TV, from their debut album Hunting High and Low. The song would be a Top-20 hit in the US, a Top-10 hit in South Africa, France, Austria, and Switzerland, a Top-5 hit in Norway, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden, and a #1 hit in Ireland and the UK. The videos for Take On Me, The Sun Always Shines on TV, and Train of Thought comprise a loose trilogy using rotoscope animation. The technique was invented by Max Fleischer in 1915. A device known as a rotoscope projects live action footage onto frosted glass, frame by frame, where animators retrace the image with ink. Fleischer would use the technique in his Out of the Inkwell series, the Cab Calloway dance routines in three 1930s Betty Boop cartoons, the 1939 movie Gullivers Travels, and the 1940s Superman cartoons. Walt Disney would use it in 1937s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The Soviet Union would use it from the 30s through the 50s as an imposition of Soviet Realism. More recent uses include The Beatles Yellow Submarine (1968), The Lord of the Rings (1978), Heavy Metal (1981), The Secret of NIMH (1982), Titan A.E. (2000), Richard Linklaters films Waking Life (2001) and A Scanner Darkly (2006), and the Charles Schwab 2005-2008 Talk to Chuck commercials. The very first animated music video was KLAATUs A Routine Day, made in 1979. It also made use of rotoscoping. Another classic use of rotoscoping was in the original Star Wars trilogy, where it was used to create the glowing lightsaber effect. One of the primary benefits of rotoscoping is that it makes for very realistic movement. It is also a very economical alternative to full-blown animation. A drawback though is something called boiling. If the live-action frames are poorly traced, the animations outlines will appear to shake unnaturally. Sometimes this deficiency is exploited to emphasize the surreal quality of rotoscoping, as was done in the a-ha videos. youtube/watch?v=a3ir9HC9vYg
Posted on: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 03:52:11 +0000
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