"Motion capture" has always been a cornerstone of film animation since the very beginning. The first form of motion capture was "rotoscoping" (hand-drawn copying of live action film) which was invented by the Fleischer Brothers for their silent "Out of the Inkwell" series featuring Koko the Clown in the 1920's. They also used it occasionally during the early sound era in Popeye and Betty Boop cartoons. Check out Betty Boop dancing the hula in "Betty Boop's Bamboo Isle" (1932). And the Fleischers used rotoscoping to great effect in their incredible Superman cartoons of the thirties, which inspired the whole recent Bruce Timm superhero cartoon style at Warners Animation (i.e. "Superman," "Batman" and "Justice League")

One of the great myths about Disney animation is that they never used rotoscoping. In fact, they did repeatedly, always shooting live action, so-called "reference footage" of actors as a guide to for their animators. Much (if not all) of that footage still exists today in their archives.

The first fully motion-captured animated TV series was "Jay Jay the Jet Plane" on PBS, which exclusively used motion capture throughout the entire production process, with no key-framing whatsoever. Full 11 minute cartoons were produced in about 1 month - a fraction of the normal 9 month TV animation production cycle - which also reduced cost considerably. The series has been a big success for PBS and has run both nationally and in syndication continuously for the last eight years or so, with new episodes currently in production.

There's nothing sacred about key-framing. Animating is about movement, period.

-jjsemp

Message edited on: 07/09/2005 13:16