Blurring the lines in 'A Scanner Darkly'

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Although animation continues to become increasingly prominent in Hollywood with hits like "Cars," "Chicken Little," "Madagascar," "Corpse Bride" and "The Incredibles," techniques such as CGI, anime and stop-motion largely remain the territory of experts. Animating an entire film can be a maddening task.

To create digital rotoscoping effects, the animator, or "rotoscope monkey," spends hours connecting the dots in each frame, drawing the animation onto the film, then coloring it in, usually with the aim of creating realistic action sequences or adding emphasis to visual effects.

Bob Sabiston, Rotoshop designer

Sabiston, Linklater and "Scanner" producer Tommy Pallotta first ventured into feature-length digital rotoscoping animation using Rotoshop with the 2001 movie "Waking Life," a critical success but not a commercial hit.

For "Scanner," their second venture, Linklater and Pallotta envisioned a more realistic, uniform look than the one presented in "Waking Life," a trippy, unreal ponderance of reality displayed in a series of vignettes that change aesthetically from scene to scene. Some appear heavily painted over, while others are more life-like.

That wasn't the only difference.

When shooting for "Scanner" began in the spring of 2004, Sabiston began applying extensive updates to the software, such as blurring, warping and color gradience, to produce the comic-book effect.

"I added a lot of this particular effect that created all the changing layers and stuff specific to the scramble suit (worn by the undercover drug agent)," he said. "I knew it was going to be a complicated movie, and there was a list of effects we would need so there was very specific software written to make all that easier."

Since the film was going to be rotoscoped, there were no early morning make-up sessions and no elaborate scenery to be constructed. Filming was complete in six months, but the animation took more than a year. The picture's original release date, scheduled for September 2005, had to be pushed back six months because of the animation, then pushed back again. The point of the artistic endeavor, Sabiston said, was to create an animated film that would appeal to adults and kids alike.

But things went south quickly after the edited movie was sent to be rotoscoped. According to a story in Wired magazine, Sabiston and the original crew of animators were let go four months after rotoscoping began because of missed deadlines and what Linklater perceived as a lack of uniformity in the images being produced.

In February 2005, according to the story, Sabiston and his crew went out for coffee and returned to find the locks to the studio doors changed and their work stations seized. Sabiston was replaced with two local artists, the budget was pushed up from $6.7 million to $8.7 million. Linklater, who could not be reached for comment, was given another six months to finish the movie. When asked about the incident, Sabiston said, "I'm not really allowed to comment."

He did however, offer extensive views on animation.

"If possible, I would like to see animation used as a fine-art form," he said. "Most of the time when you see animation, it's not in that context. It's for kids, so I'm standing up for the idea that animation could be used for adults in an artistic context."

Images produced by a primitive version of Rotoshop first showed up as short black-and-white animated interview shorts on MTV in 1997. After that, Sabiston and some friends created the MTV show "Roadhead" and some 15-minute films.

As for any future projects, Sabiston said he is working on a short film called "Fuzzytown," with a team of two brothers from his native town of Austin.

"It's a real absurd comedy in the tradition of 'Alice in Wonderland' and 'Twin Peaks,'" he said. "We have a script and a five-minute animation sample; we're trying to find a movie studio to help us get it made."

For now, Sabiston and whatever team of freelancers he hires are the only people licensed to use Rotoshop--and it looks like it's going to remain that way, at least for a while.

"It's good for us to be the only ones that can do it," he said. "We get to decide how it gets used. It's only used with things I'm OK with, so it's not everywhere. I think people would get real tired with it if they saw it too much."