How Amazon's Undone used rotoscope technique to bring animated characters to life

Undone, the Amazon Prime Original series has become the first show to use rotoscoping, a technique in which animation is drawn over footage of live actors for the entire series. The critically acclaimed animated psychological drama created by Kate Purdy and Raphael Bob-Waksberg of BoJack Horseman, follows the story of Alma, who is recruited by her father’s ghost to go back in time and solve the mystery around his murder. While employing the rotoscoping technique for the show might seem a novel idea, it has in fact been around since the dawn of cartoons, elaborates Brian Larson, a professor of animation at the Rochester Institute of Technology, in an explainer by the The Conversation.

**_Also read: Undone review: Amazon, BoJack Horseman team bring an emotionally resonant story about trauma and time travel_** Invented around 1915 by Max Fleisher, rotoscoping was initially conceived as a way to speed up the animation process. Even as that outcome was not to be achieved, Fleisher had discovered a technique to create more life-like movements in his classic cartoons like Betty Boop and Popeye. It was also utilised by Walt Disney for a few characters in his films as well, including Snow White. According to Larson, if perceived closely, one can see that her movements are more life-like than those of other characters because she was drawn over a live actor. So also, in the 1970s, the same technique was popular among filmmakers such as Ralph Bakshi whose animated films like Lord of the Rings and Fritz the Cat attracted more mature audiences. They were trying to distance themselves from the reputation that animation had as being cartoons or films meant for kids because rotoscoping has a slightly more realistic feel to it, the explainer notes. Animators have used the technique in the original Star Wars films to draw glowing blades over sticks held by actors to create the lightsaber effect, while in the 2000s, Richard Linkletter also used the new rotoscoping technology for his films like Walking Dead and A Scanner Darkly. In Undone, Alma loses her grip on reality as she travels in time which is also an aspect of rotoscoping, elaborates the video, as the characters appear to move and gesticulate as we do in real life. “But yet, there is something that’s not real about it and that’s that animation visual look.”