Triscope vs. Rotoscope: Netflix’s The Liberator is hoping to change the animation

For most of history, people had no idea how horses ran. Sure, they put one hoof in front of the other, but they did so at such tremendous speeds that the naked eye could not register the specific pattern of the steps involved. With the British artist Eadweard Muybridge photographed a racehorse At full gallop in the 1870s, the images were smeared with motion blur. Only when the photos were retouched, traced and shown in quick succession was the public finally able to solve the mystery of this common form of movement.

A century and a half later, the team behind Netflix’s World War II miniseries The Liberator try another process to achieve a similar result: reduce complex photos into optimized drawings to get the most out of your subject. This comparison might seem controversial, but it’s important to remember that one probably wouldn’t have existed without the other, and not just because of Muybridge laid the foundation for the animation in general, but also because he unwittingly wrote the first chapter in the history of augmented reality.

Although The Liberator resembles innumerable other war dramasWith bombastic action sequences, a score heavily reliant on string instruments, and the timeless premise of a horrific situation that brings out the best in people, it has one unique thing: it’s the first production ever shot with a trioscope .

The trioscope was invented by filmmakers LC Crowley and Greg Jonkajtys and realized by producer Brandon Barr new technology This gives live-action footage the appearance of hatched drawings. diversity, The AV club, and Engadget Everyone referred to the end result as an “animated graphic novel,” and while this is fairly accurate, the nuances of the software itself are underestimated and the rich, complex history of humanity’s attempts to understand and manipulate the world in order is ignored do.

As a photographer, Muybridge can’t really be considered the father of the Rotoscope, Trioscope’s older brother. This title rests on the shoulders of Max Fleischer

, an animation entrepreneur who dealt not with horses but with clowns. For an early groundbreaking short film, Fleischer convinced his brother Dave to dress in a clown costume so he could do it Copy his movements with a pen and paper. Though Fleischer dyed the clown’s suit to avoid the hassle of animating clothing creases, and simplified Dave’s limbs into the proto-rubber tube shapes that were later applied to the people of Popeye the sailorThe process still proved too time consuming to be worth the effort.

As the animation industry shifted from an experimental playground to a well-oiled machine, rotoscoping was seldom a central part of the process, although it still played a key role in many productions: Fleischer revised the technique to differentiate between humans and living things in the 1939s Gulliver’s Travels and 1941 Mr. Bug is going into townwhile Disney used it to render complex sequences like the dances in realistically Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, with footage of the swirling princess recycled to the Robin Hood.

As the artists accepted the fact that animation was viewed as a medium primarily for children, they gradually prioritized visual imagination over authenticity, and rotoscoping was moved even lower in the toolkit. It was finally rediscovered in the 1970s by Ralph Bakshi, a grown-up animator who felt that the Disney-style formula he saw on screen was not reflected gloomy, dirty reality. Bakshi first used rotoscope methods in 1977 wizard, then expanded its presence in its groundbreaking adaptation of JRR Tolkien’s 1978s Lord of the Rings. He did this primarily because it was the fastest way to animate hordes of running, screaming, beating orcs, but it also brought a sense of reality that is seldom seen in fantasy films.

Despite the benefits of rotoscoping, it has its cost. For one thing, it reduces animators from artists to robot tracers, leaving little room for the exaggerated physical and facial expressions that give most traditionally animated films their charm. When rotoscoping is presented alongside hand-drawn animation, it can also weaken a film’s sense of stylistic unity, as was the case in Bakshi’s 1982 film Hey pretty’. These issues can be a real headache for emotionally involved filmmakers, and they ultimately forced one of them to seek the expertise of an engineer.

Trioscope’s clearest predecessor came from Bob Sabiston, a graduate of, in the 2000s MIT’s Media Labwho combined his love of drawing and obsession with computer programming in software called Rotoshop. While previous iterations of rotoscoping tracked live-action footage with varying degrees of accuracy, Rotoshop operated a little differently. Instead of copying life, spaces were automatically created to link keyframes drawn by actual artists.

Although Sabiston tested the software in a number of short films, Richard Linklater’s 2001 film made it known to the entire indie film world Awakening life, a series of independent researches into the biggest issues haunting the human condition. Sabiston used his program to appeal to the film’s vignettes in a variety of visual flavors, from highly stylized to eerily lifelike – a style that Linklater uses with more consistency and fluidity A scanner dark five years later.

Rotoshop also offered other advantages. Not only could it manipulate the actors’ bodies as separate, related shapes, but it could also shift backgrounds to mimic the appearance of a dream. Most importantly, it didn’t stop the animators from taking creative liberties. There are extremely lifelike scenes in Awakening life, but also characters whose facial features are satisfactorily enhanced in a way that the harsh naturalism of the conventional rotoscope – and now the trioscope – does not allow.

The Liberator shows the greatest strengths and weaknesses of the technology that is driving this new kind of cinema experience. The first thing that viewers are likely to notice is the consistency with which the graphic novel-like look is applied to the footage. While Bakshi’s rotoscoped images constantly sway and flicker thanks to the imperfect human hands they made, the Trioscope applies its mask with a laser-like precision that feels more stylized than random.

While encouraged color filters and heightened shadows can easily create a sense of dramatic atmosphere that other filmmakers may find difficult to achieve, The Liberator does not use a trioscope to creatively complement or play with reality Awakening life does. In contrast to Fleischer and Sabiston, whose approach allowed artists to draw faces in order to tailor the performances to the desired effect, Crowley, Jonkajtys and Barr from trioscope adhere closely enough to photorealism that they are at the mercy of their actors’ limits . This is generally not a problem – star James Bradley and his colleagues play their roles convincingly. Despite the enthusiastic promises of the show’s promotional material, technology does little to increase it any further. At least, The Liberator

does not bring in imagination and art as much as some of them artistic, colorful roles on the studio’s website.

Even if Trioscope makes a story no more than the sum of its parts, it strengthens the relationship between living, breathing actors and digitally invented props, sets and effects into one unprecedented extent. While the developers were remarkably cryptic about how their invention worked on a technical level – perhaps because it’s still patent pending – they did to have shed some light on how its use can aid ongoing productions. In a short interview with TV business internationalBarr claimed that Trioscope could radically reduce production costs: “We never want to make decisions about a project based entirely on economics, but when you think about what I would call large live action projects – so historical, imaginative , Science fiction, premium drama – a trioscope project is somewhere in the 40-50% cost range. “

That is a lofty claim, but not unfounded. Originally planned as a longer History Channel production, The Liberator would likely have ended up in development hell if Trioscope Studios hadn’t stepped in to cut costs by cleverly integrating CGI. In that regard, the technology may be more similar to the virtual reality-like sets in The Mandalorian than previous iterations of rotoscoping. The technology doesn’t play so much with the quality of the recordings themselves, as it enables filmmakers to venture from the real into the imagined.

Throughout film history, real-life technology has drawn visionaries, but not everyone has been equally excited. “The audience will be an expert in human movement,” wrote animator Shamus Culhane in his book Animation: from script to screen. “That makes it pointless to try to use a rotoscope or other device to mimic human activity … mimicking real life is not art, and art is what we are involved in.” Instead, he advocated an edited action – a method in which artists proactively distort the reality that inspires them, rather than passively copy it, as Rotoskop and Trioskop would.

Aside from Culhane’s ideals, animation, as any animator on earth will say, is difficult, time-consuming, and underpaid work. Although the medium thrives on creative innovation, it survives on financial efficiency. Since the film began, artists have turned to technology to free their hands for the richer and more rewarding aspects of the job. Trioscope is just the latest technological tool in the box, and while the images it produces may not be “art” in the traditional sense, the freedom it offers artists is potentially far more valuable than any label.