[The Godfather]

Could it be that I was spoiled by some very good cel-shaded videogame? Or does this movie really look unpolished? The motion looks so unnatural

http://www.apple.com/trailers/warner...nnerdarkly/hd/

Posterization is not my favorite Photoshop effect. Bleargh.

[Weyland-Yutani]

If XIII was made into a movie.. it would be very Scanner Darkly

[removed oversize image --tooki]

cheers

W-Y

[demograph68]

Not a "photoshop effect" Rotoscope

Scanner Darkly was filmed digitally, rotoscoped, then animated with Rotoshop, a proprietary graphics editing program created by Bob Sabiston. Rotoshop uses an animation technique called interpolated rotoscoping, which was previously used in Linklater's film Waking Life. Rotoscoping in traditional cel animation originally involved tracing over film frame-by-frame. This is similar in some respects to the rotoscope style of 1970s filmmaker Ralph Bakshi. Rotoshop animation, however, makes use of vector keyframes, and interpolates the in-between frames automatically. To add a further distinctive element to his visual style for the movie, Linklater chose to hire graphic novel artists to illustrate the film instead of animators. The use of non-animators and the difficulty of wrangling Rotoshop were factors that lengthened the film's production process well past its initial September 2005 release date target.

Here's a good article about it on Wired. Link

[vmarks]

The director Linklater used the same software and same technique in his movie "Waking Life."

I saw "Waking Life" in the theatre. It wasn't that the motion was unnatural, but that it was simply hard to watch.

In "Waking Life" the different rotoscope artists were allowed to paint their own style onto the characters- some scenes ended up more detailed than others, some more fluid.

Here, he's tried to enforce a single style across the whole movie. But it's still done in his Rotoshop application on Mac.

And I expect that it will probably still be hard on the eyes to watch.

[Railroader]

Looks like a good story from the previews. I hope the "animation" is not distracting.

[IceEnclosure]

I liked Waking Life, if for no other reason than the revolutionary painted-film rotoscope technique.

I'm looking forward to A Scanner Darkly.

[The Godfather]

Ok. I know it was not a photoshop effect

Could Rotoscoping be the Technicolor of our days? Will we see a wave of Flash-like movies before it is done correctly (i.e., in 3D, in hardware, or hiring Mexicans to do real tweening.)

The story sounds interesting. However, do we need two movies sharing so many points in the story? (Scanner Darkly and V for Vendetta).

[Super Mario]

I would feel sick looking at rotoscopes for more than half hour.

[vmarks]

Originally Posted by The Godfather

Ok. I know it was not a photoshop effect

Could Rotoscoping be the Technicolor of our days? Will we see a wave of Flash-like movies before it is done correctly (i.e., in 3D, in hardware, or hiring Mexicans to do real tweening.)

The story sounds interesting. However, do we need two movies sharing so many points in the story? (Scanner Darkly and V for Vendetta).

These movies are not done in Flash.

They are done in Bob Sabiston's Rotoshop application. Real artists do the 'tweening'.

Part of the reason this movie took so long to produce is because they fired the 'artists' who were putting their own style on characters and scene and hired non-artists to do the tweening who had never used the Rotoshop application, but were able to follow a style guide so the characters and backgrounds would look consistent.

[Dakar]

The images on google look much better than the ones in the wired article.

[andi*pandi]

looks cool to me. robert downey jr sounds good. Keanu, again? sigh.

[Dakar]

Originally Posted by andi*pandi

looks cool to me. robert downey jr sounds good. Keanu, again? sigh.

What...could you...mean?

Whoa.

[greenamp]

I'm not a big fan of the Rotoshop effect, but it just might work in this movie. There is a commercial campaign going on right now that uses the Rotoshop effect and I absolutely hate it. But that's mostly I think because they only do the effect on the actor subject in front of a real background, which just looks horrid. In the movie everything is the same style so I think it works much better.

Oh and ps, the reason people dislike Flash is not because of the graphic style it produces, but because of it's misuse in web applications. Cell shaded vector art has the potential to look amazing.

But one minor detail...

[The Godfather]

^ Charles Shmwab commercials. Yuck.

Volkswagen cel-shaded commercials

I reitirate, the Rotoscope is the technicolor of our times.