The Best Rotoscope Movies

What are the best rotoscope movies? Rotoscoping is an animation technique that animators use to trace over motion picture footage, frame by frame, to produce realistic action. Originally, animators projected photographed live-action movie images onto a glass panel and traced over the image. This projection equipment is referred to as a rotoscope, developed by Polish-American animator Max Fleischer, and the result is a rotograph. This device was eventually replaced by computers, but the process is still called rotoscoping. So what are the best rotoscope animation movies? What rotoscope movies do you love?

When it comes to rotoscoping movies, American film director Richard Linklater has mastered the form. The Keanu Reeves rotoscope movie A Scanner Darkly is considered one of the best examples of utilizing the rotoscope style in a narrative format in modern day. Linklater also made two more rotoscope movies Waking Life and Apollo 10.5 - which is one of the best animated movies of 2022. In recent years, many great rotoscope movies have come out, like I Lost My Body, The Spine of Night, and Loving Vincent.

Many of the early Disney classics were created using rotoscoped animation, such as Cinderella, Snow White, Pinocchio, and Sleeping Beauty, among others. However, controversially in the late '10s and early '20s, the Mouse company introduced the practice of digitally remastering (read: ruining) the original films by erasing many of the details of the early animation techniques.

Vote up the best rotoscope movies of all time! Then, check back as more movies that use rotoscoping are released every year!