The Tantalizing Fly (1919)
The Out of the Inkwell series (1918-1929) brought us the second film of the evening. This animated short stars a little clown, a fly, and an animator. Koko the Clown won’t get his name until 1923 so for now he’s only the little clown. The animator is Max Fleischer. Max didn’t just give us the little temporarily nameless clown he also invented this thingamajig called the Rotoscope, but we will get into that in a moment. Since I didn’t find at least two sources to confirm whether this film is the first appearance of the clown or the rotoscope, I can’t make that claim. But I do strongly suspect it to be the case. I can tell you part of what makes Koko so special is Dave. Dave Fleischer was a clown whose movements were recorded on film and then projected back on to a glass panel where his image was then traced over frame by frame, which is why the little clown’s movements seem so real.
These days we have actors dress up in special suits so that a computer can capture their image and movements. That data can then be used in creating characters through animation and or special effects with graphics software. The technology has changed, but the idea is essentially the same. The device Max invented to capture and trace Dave’s movements through animation is called a rotoscope. The new-fangled version with the computer and special suit is called motion capture. Where the rotoscope brought us characters like Koko, early versions of Superman, and even Roger Rabbit; motion capture gave us characters like Gollum from The Lord of the Rings and those folks from the movie Avatar.
You remember that Avatar movie, right? The one with the really tall blue aliens where James Cameron took the plot of Dances with Wolves and created the new classic story of ‘Dancing with really tall Smurfs’. Okay, I admit to some bias on that last one. A topic for another day.
So, Koko the Clown is the first character created using the rotoscope. So in my mind, that famous evolution of man image could be altered to show the evolution of the rotoscope to motion capture. Beginning with Koko the Clown on one end and ending up with Caesar from Rise of the Planet of the Apes on the other end. It’s a fun thought anyway.
