Rotoscope Media Collage

Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Adventure is currently streaming on Netflix and is the latest film from one of American independent cinema’s most consistent auteurs, Richard Linklater. As one can glean from the movie’s trailer, the story is told in a striking Rotoscope animation style. A storytelling device that blurs the line between animated and live-action, and one that Linklater himself is no stranger to.



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The technique of rotoscoping has been around for over one hundred years, so of course, there are numerous notable achievements in film that have been accomplished using it. However, it still feels like a relatively underappreciated technique by most audiences, with many great movies taking the method to its limits.

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‘Waking Life’ (2004)

Linklater’s first foray into rotoscope animation, Waking Life, uses its formal cinematic elements to explore the significance of dreams and the increasingly blurry line between conscious reality and subconscious imagination. After bursting onto the independent film scene with a streak of essential ’90s flicks like Dazed and Confused and Before Sunrise, Linklater made a left turn into heady transcendental musings about the nature of existence in this bonafide head trip of a rotoscope movie.

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Waking Life notably features a key scene that stars Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy as Jessie and Céline, their romantic pair of lead characters from Before Sunrise. This puts some of Linklater’s films in a shared universe before the idea was in vogue. Add it to the long list of innovative, creative ideas that the acclaimed indie director was putting directly into his work during this period of his career.

‘The Lord of The Rings’ (1978)

Famed maverick of independent adult-oriented animation, Ralph Bakshi was the first filmmaker to try to bring Tolkien’s grand world of Middle Earth to life on the big screen. According to Bakshi himself, once he had landed on the idea of a rotoscope adaptation of the fantasy trilogy, he couldn’t imagine adapting it in any other way. This decision, for better or worse, gave the two-part Bakshi Lord of the Rings a look and feel that remains striking and completely unique.

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This fantastical animated epic was many filmgoers’ first encounter with rotoscope animation. Even to the untrained eye, the fluid movement of shapes, characters, and backgrounds on screen were noticeably different from traditional hand-drawn animation audiences were used to. Images like the nine black riders galloping on horseback, or the devastating somber notes of Boromir’s death scene, benefited greatly from the physical realism that animating over live-action footage allows for.

‘Undone’ (2019)

The most recent rotoscope project on this list, Undone, follows Alma, a woman in her late twenties in the throes of an existential crisis. One day she is hit by a car. She survives the accident, but in the aftermath, she begins to have increasingly vivid visions of her dead father, played by Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad alum Bob Odenkirk, leading her down a confusing path of cosmic and personal discovery.

RELATED: Rosa Salazar and the ‘Undone’ Creators Talk About The First Rotoscope Animated Series

Like Waking Life, this show employs the technique of rotoscoping to explore deep human themes of the unconscious and emotional inner worlds that stir inside all of us. The dreamlike splendor of the visuals is always directly informed by the characters’ psyches. The show serves as a modern mission statement for the potential that rotoscope animation has as a medium for visualizing the internal landscapes of the human mind and the unspoken aspects of life that encompass so much of the human experience.

‘Loving Vincent’ (2017)

The definition of a singular work of art, this biographical drama’s use of rotoscope animation, is unlike anything that has come before or after it. The film explores the tormented life of a great artist, Vincent Van Gogh, and a meditation on his work and what a toll it took on his life to create these timeless pieces of art.

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The most astonishing aspect of Loving Vincentis the film’s visuals. The movie was touted as the first fully-painted animation feature film because of its gorgeous recreation of Van Gogh’s inimitable oil painting style overlaid on live-action locations and actors. The elegant use of an existing artist’s style inside a story exploring the meaning of said artist’s life makes this gorgeous and somber rotoscope film a truly peerless accomplishment in that respect.

‘Tehran Taboo’ (2017)

Not every rotoscope movie takes place in a fantastical world or the boundless subconscious minds of its characters. If Tehran Taboo proves anything, it’s that rotoscope animation can be a particularly effective tool for holding a mirror up to the brutal, unforgiving nature of the real world. Ali Soozandeh‘s unflinching look at life in modern-day Tehran follows the journey of four main characters, all existing on the margins of a conservative Iranian society, doing whatever they can to stay alive and sane.

As the film’s title would suggest, the idea of societal taboos, be they sexual, religious, recreational, or political, are all explored through the hectic lives of the four main characters. Each character is faced with an intensely unfair and often unpleasant set of circumstances exacerbated by the strict religious structure of Iranian society. A fiery, uncompromising piece of social commentary that paints the tragedy of its story on an achingly realistic rotoscope canvas.

KEEP READING:With Apollo 10 1/2,’ Richard Linklater’s Continues Using Animation to Play With Time and Space

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