When Max Fleischer saw animation from his studio, he felt there was something wrong with it.What was wrong is that the animation did not look realistic, so he invented and even patented "Rotoscoping". Rotoscoping is a method where they filmed real people live actions and their actions were trace on paper, one frame film of movie film at a time. The cartoon characters were drawn over the bodies. Once the patent had ended, Walt Disney and other studios followed suit.
Later, computers came into play, for example artist did not have to trace the paper drawings on celluloids anymore with a felt pen; If they're doing cell work, they simply feed the drawings into a computer and the computer automatically prints them out on transparent celluloids.
Now, anymore, all a person has to do is press a button on a computer and change live people into cartoons, they can even make a cartoon movie that way; Even so it will still need refinement, like shadowing for example. In the video below by Ah-Ha they did use rotoscoping, except they even had traced the regular people's faces and bodies as well then incorporate them in their music video. If you have Photoshop, you may have this function.
click here for Ah-Ha music video
This time below is a rotoscoped Superman cartoon from the 1940's. At that time Superman couldn't fly but just leap tall building because of earth's lesser gravity. this was alright in the comics, but in an animated cartoon it looks silly and was time wasting, so Max Fleischer studios called National Periodical (they weren't known as DC yet) and ask them if they could make Superman fly and it was granted. Note: DC means Detective Comics.
Finally, another Max Fleischer cartoon below Popeye and the magical dog Eugene. My favorite part personally is when Eugene sticks his head out from under the bed and barks "JEEP JEEP !" yeah, it's cute.
click here for Eugene The Jeep
Finis
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