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A Scanner Darkly

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f0dder:
Looks interesting - I wonder how much is simply a CEL Shader filter on real video source, and how much they've created by hand... and I wonder if Keanu finally shows some acting skills? :P (he was perfect in Johnny Mnemonic... 'acting' this guy with no personality, huhu).

tinyvillager:
The techique is called Rotoscope,i heard it took 500 hrs a minute (seriously)

Yeah from a critic point of view Keanu is only good for certain rolls,Matrix part one,Speed.Dracula was a good movie,but he sucked in it,hard to shake that surfer dude thing ala Bill and Ted's excellent adventure.

Edvard:
I remember seeing Keanu's first films "Rivers Edge" and "The Prince of Pennsylvania" and thinking he was a good actor as long as the role was something along the lines of who he naturally is, much like Christian Slater who, in my opinion, has the same problem. They're both really good in certain roles, but Dean Jones or Gary Oldman they ain't.

Yes it is Rotoscoping and I heard that they used special technology to create the first frame renders that were then edited (at 500 hours/minute, eek!). Why do it, you may ask? Probably save a few grand on props and lighting, and if the special effects turn out cartoony, all the better!
I wonder... how would a home-brew version look? Like if you ripped a few seconds of your favorite video out to bitmaps, traced them with say, AutoTrace, Flash, Xara Xtreme or some such, and re-compiled them to video. It probably wouldn't look as good, but sure would be a cool experiment.

f0dder:
Hm, it doesn't look like rotoscoping to me (the kind used in, for instance, the classic animated "The Hobbit" movie). The Scanner Darkly clip looks like something that could have been done almost automatically with a decent CEL Shading filter.

But okay, wikipedia says rotoscoping is now also used to refer to all-digital conversion. And CEL Shading is probably only to be used for describing a special rendering mode for 3D models (that gives sorta the same effect, though).

Can't see how it would be 500 hours per minute, though, if using mostly automated filters?

Edvard:
BTW it's all vector... and a WIRED article says it's all hand traced.
Looky there, somebody did my experiment already- this digg article links to a tutorial using quick time pro.
And here's the word on the technique: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Scanner_Darkly_(film)#Animation (including the reference to 500 man-hours per minute...)
Looks like they only traced "key frames" and had their little proggy fill in the, um, filler. I remember stuff like this happening in 80's era cartoons where certain frames were drawn to represent scenery and character placement at specific time intervals and later the in-between cels filled in at outsourced foreign animation factories. This is why 80's era cartoons look stiff compared to earlier stuff (Why does bugs bunny only move his arms when he talks? How come G.I.joe never ducks?)
Anyways... fascinating.

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