Intimate scrutiny: using rotoscoping to unravel the auteur-animator beneath the theory

The act of Rotoscoping by its very nature takes live-action film and passes it through the hand and eye of the animator, with results that can heighten and intensify every flicker of emotion. (Ruddell 2012) This intense, frame by frame scrutiny can potentially capture through hand drawn art the most fleeting of micro-expressions, and when the filmed subject is themselves the animator, the auteur, the act of animating over filmed footage becomes a potential means for exploring intimate and sometimes distressing personal issues; capturing, dissecting and scrutinising emotions ranging from delight to subjective pain.
I will discuss the following questions: What effect does this have on the animator, who is forced to re-live and re-invent very personal subjects? How can rotoscoping be used as a tool for unwrapping the subtleties of body-language and fleeting expressions? By quantifying and qualifying emotion through practical research, theory and self-reflective study, via the production of an animated artefact, the animator as auteur-researcher hopes to establish new avenues of study in emotion and animation.
Buchanan, A. 2007, "Facial Expressions for Empathic Communication of Emotion in Animated Characters", Online Journal for Animation History and Theory, vol. Animated Dialogues, pp. 22nd February 2011.
Mehrabian, A. 1981, Silent Messages: Implicit Communication of Emotions and Attitudes, Wadsworth Publishing Company, USA.
Ruddell, C. 2012, "'Don't Box Me In': Blurred Lines in Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly", Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal, [Online], vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 7-23.
Russell, J.A. 1997, "Reading emotions from and into faces: Resurrecting a dimensional-contextual perspective" in The Psychology of Facial Expression (Studies in Emotion and Social Interaction), eds. J.M. Fernández-Dols & J.A. Russell, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 295.

© Sophie Mobbs.
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