Rotograph - Popeye the Sailor

The rotograph, patent #2054414, was invented by animator Max Fleischer in 1936. Essentially an enormous, revolving, circular miniature set built in forced perspective, it enabled a fantastic sense of depth and parallax in cartoons produced by the Fleischer Studio in the 1930's.

The rotograph was used to enhance some of the Fleisher Studio's most popular properties, including Betty Boop and Popeye shorts. This montage comes from two Popeye cartoons, "Popeye the Sailor Meets Sinbad the Sailor" and "Popeye Meets Ali Baba and his 40 Thieves".

Read how these pre-digital effects were accomplished at http://www.bluespill.com/?p=17

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• animation
• sfx
• popeye
• rotograph
• rotoscope
• 3d
• fleisher

[segasonic623]

how were the flat cartoons put into the 3d world?

[matbergman]

I posted an explanation about how the Rotograph works on my blog, BlueSpill. YouTube won't let me post URLs, so I'm afraid you have to search for the page yourself! (try "popeye rotograph" in Google, the page is in the top 10 results.) Each animation cell was mounted on a vertical animation stand between the camera and the set, creating the illusion of cartoons that are integrated in the dimensional background.

[jsl151850b]

Google for...

Real Scenery for Popeye (Nov, 1936)

It should take you to a magazine article that describes it.

April 16, 2007 Modern Mechanix Yesterday's tomorrow, today.

[jerryaltman]

Very nice. I already saw some demonstrations of this creative technic.

[JohnSilverfan01]

It was the great technology of the Fleischers like this that made them rivals with Walt Disney

[basiacomeout]

I vividly remember watching this when I was a kid! We loved popeye!

[COMALiteJ]

@DJ1SCY, heh. I showed some people who do CGI for a living these old Popeyes (including the B&W ones) that used the Stereoptical Process without telling them about it, and they were practically wondering who the time traveler was who sent CGI-capable computers and software back to the 1930s!

[DJ1SCY]

Rotograph has more 3-D than C.G.I.

[tkwtube01]

And some of them are black and white or 2-strip (red-green only) prints. This is especially true for the 3 Popeye color specials. Even the bonus features on Popeye Volume 1 use a 2-strip print for "Sindbad the Sailor".

[tkwtube01]

The description is 99.9% complete. You just need to add the letter "d".

Because his name is "SINDBAD", not "SINBAD".

[ctdsnark]

The art of animation suffered a great loss when the Fleischer Studios came to such a premature end.

[RayPointer]

Another detail about the Stereoptical Process is that the patent record states that it was "assigned" to Max Fleischer. It was actually developed by Johnny Burkes.

[RayPointer]

The process that created the third dimensional background effects was known as the Stereoptical Process.

The Rotograph was a form of Aerial Image photography used to composite animation with live action in a self-matting process where live action film was projected behind animation cels and rephotographed frame by frame. It was a double exposure process where the cels would be shot top lit, then the film wound back and the cels reshot with the projected background frame by frame.

[cha5]

Yeah Warner Brothers did an outstanding job of remastering the Fleischer Popeye cartoons in their Popeye DVD collection, I just wish someone could restore all of the Fleischer Betty Boops, Screen Songs, Out Of The Inkwell's etc.