I hope it looks better than the clip on the Droopy cartoon set. It didn't look much better than my old 16mm print, but maybe it was a pre-restoration clip.
Could anyone tell me, though there may be too many to mention, I remember when younger when seeing some of the earlier B/W shorts that Fleischer used constructed miniature sets dressed out in detail, filmed and then used as backdrops for the animated figures in the foreground. This might have been his answer to Disney's "multiplane"camera technique though I think these came first. One great example was in Ali Baba(?) Not sure. I was hoping to know if the first volume included these or did they come later in time.
The technique you are talking about (called "Rotograph") is used prominently in the first color special 2-reeler "Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor", which is definitely included in the set. Any prior uses will also be included since the set is chronological.
I believe the technique debuted on the "Out of the Inkwell" Koko the Clown series in the 20s, but I am not 100% positive.
There's an excellent 1939 Popular Mechanics short on the making of the Popeye short "Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp" that shows the Rotograph in action. You can see it on the Thunderbean DVD. What a fascinating process.
The Somewhere In Dreamland set of color Fleischer's includes use of that 3D technique in a number of shorts. They are even more "eye-popping" than the Popeye examples imo. I could be wrong, but I think Rotographing was a method of rotoscoping used to translate live action to animation. The 3D technique was patented and went by another name which appears at the start of each short.
The "stereo-optical process" was rotographing as it was achieved through the compositing of "live action" photographed background and foreground model elements with animation.
ok... so Rotographing was using Rotoscoping in a Stereo-optic Process? I found the term quoted on the back of the dvd case, haven't checked what the patent is in the shorts.
Well, I'm obviously uncertain about the terms (I should probably rewatch the documentary on the Dreamland disc). But at the risk of being overly pedantic, here's my understanding of the three processes used in varying combinations:
Stereo-optic - multi-planed sets to create depth
Rotoscoping - live action transcribed to 2D animation
Rotographing - essentially "stop-motion" use of 3D models
The notice at the start of the Color Classics is no help at all as it states "patent pending on special processes used in this production."
The specific patent for the effect we are talking about is Patent number 2054414 "Art of Making Motion Picture Cartoons" - Filed on November 2, 1933 by Max Fleischer - Issued on September 15, 1936. Check it out on google patent search. It even includes drawings of the apparatus.
Thanks for that link! I didn't realize you could google patents specifically.
A number of sites do refer to the device as a Rotograph, but just looking at the word itself (which I didn't see mentioned in the patent) leaves me skeptical. An explanation someone posted under a youtube Popeye clip sounds to me very plausable:
"The devise was referred to as The Stereoptical Process. The Rotograph was an Arial Image process where live action was photographed single frame with animation cels to produce an animation/live action composite. Fleischer was doing this in his silent OUT OF THE INKWELL films from 1921 on. The first evidence is in the first film Fleischer produced when he went independent, MODELING (1921)."
...meaning that the Stereo-optical Process (the patented device) can be said to use the technique of Rotographing (compositing 3D models/live-action/stop-motion with 2D animation).
Conversely, Rotographing can be accomplished without using the Stereo-optical Process.
Also, unless you want to consider the 2D background planes as essentially 3D models, the Stereo-optical Process can be used without Rotographing.