Rotoscoping is NOT real animation!

I get what you are saying but I disagree. The characters were still made, whether they were created live action in the studio or Modified when being rotoscoped, there was still a lot of character designing that went into the movie. Not only that but there are fantastic sets, landscapes and monsters that aren't rotoscoped from real footage and are in fact, traditionally animated.

A lot of this movie was designed by and based off the work of my favorite artist ever, Frank Frazetta and while it reflects real life... that isn't because the animators were lazy but because they were basing it off of Frank Frazetta's amazing universe created in his paintings. If it was based off Bakshi's universe he created in movies like Coonskin, it would be cartoony and not rotoscoped... but Bakshi made the choice to base this off of his good friend Frazetta's universe which is realistic, so it makes sense that they would rotoscope.

If you watch the behind the scenes of the movies, you see that animating the movie was no cake walk. The choice to use rotoscoping was made not because it was easy but because the animation comes out smooth and all the characters have consistent and defined forms plus the action scenes are realistic. Because of that, I actually think the movie holds up really well and still looks pretty sleek... especially compared to other animated movies of the era like Heavy Metal (Which I love too but I don't think looks as good).

Also, there are many animated movies that use rotoscope you might be surprised of. For example, it was used in parts of Snow White and other Disney movies, not as extensively as Fire and Ice, but it was still used and is was nothing that the animators of disney should ashamed of, because that is another movie that's animation hold up really well.

Rotoscoping is a animation technique used a lot by traditional animators... I bet if you asked them, they would not agree with you that it is "NOT real animation" but that it is actually a very practical and useful technique in creating fluid and realistic animations. In the end, it is the final product that matters. Picasso didn't spend NEARLY as much time on his paintings as other artists like Salvador Dali... but that didn't mean that Picasso was not a real artist... he just had a different technique of doing things and, in the end, the final products looked pretty great.

So. It looks awesome and otherworldly. I liked this better than Star Wars.

Well, you have to understand that for the time, practically no one was making this kind of animation. Disney was strictly kids' fare, Japan had an adult audience but no one here in the states saw what Japan was doing until the late 80s. So when this movie came about it quickly developed a cult following. People wanted more of this, but they weren't getting it.

To bury it even further Siskel and Ebert labeled it as racist trash. I totally didn't get that until after someone pointed it out to me, and even then I thought that was making a huge leap in logic, but, it did serve to bury the film's rep that much more (even though the two main villains are the whitest people in the entire film...though one wonders why the neanderthals were made dark skinned; was that really necessary?).

Anyway, there you have it.

there is more to rotoscoping than certain other visual arts.

but either way, there is tons of actually created images on screen in this film - do you think they literally paid for costume/makeup and props for every single thing you see?

they had actors move around, but they weren't in costume or in sfx makeup - the budget wouldn't allow for much more than a room, a camera, and craft services.

of course, this is probably just a troll post & I'm over here taking the bait.

By the same logic, motion captioning wouldn't be animation as well. Same principle.



--
No, Schmuck! You are only entitled to your INFORMED opinion!!
-- Harlan Ellison

I'm not the biggest fan of rotoscoping, but it was decently done here. At least, most parts were animated.

Lord of the Rings and Wizards had horrible animation and rotoscoping. I hate it when they mix in live action shots within the animation (fire, lava, etc). This film didn't commit that sin.

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.

i wish they would do more of it though.

if they did more fantasy films like this i wish they could add more fantastical fantasy elements and if they did more science fiction films like scanner darkly i wish they would add in more fantastical science fiction elements like flying cars and laser guns and aliens if the story allowed it.

There is no originality in rotoscoping, it's just copying and drawing over the real thing.

I bet thats how proper artists think about photographers.