Over the weekend, game designer Éric Chahi shared a video of him playing with a toy car that was used to make one of the cutscenes in the '90s scifi adventure game Another Earth live. It's a good look at what's happening behind the scenes of the old game's cartoons.
1991.Another Earth it rises well, thanks to its use for rotoscoping. The term refers to the practice of taking the recorded redage and animating it over to make it look reasonable. (Think of the '80s sect Fire and ice or early Death of the Combat.) Chahi used rotoscoping to record toy models and turn them into beautifully sculpted scenes that form the basis of Another EarthThe narrative.
No tweet he was a gift from a long-released gif Last For Us 2 animator Jonathan Cooper, illustrates Chahi's use of rotoscoping in great detail.
Another Earth it's about a young scientist trying to figure out how life on the planet began, but how his experiment could take him to a strange world full of dangerous monsters and social order. There are almost no words in the play, and what little storytelling there is is almost entirely transmitted through these minimalist-like theater programs. It is amazing how Chahi was able to produce them using real footage that, in its original form, was harmless.
If you want to learn more, Cooper writes that he interviewed Chahi about rotoscoping in his book GAME ANIM: Described video game animation.
