Max Fleischer

""Max Fleischer is unarguably one of the pioneers of animation. His responsibilities in bringing Betty Boop and Popeye to the silver screen would alone warrant him a place in the history books, but perhaps Fleischer's greatest achievements were not what he put on the screen but how he put it there. The story of Max Fleischer is one of technical innovation, full of exploration in the production process of the animated film.

Max Fleischer was born in 1883 in Vienna. His family immigrating to this country soon after. From an early age he had an interest in mechanics, not just for what they were but for what, in combination, they could be. He also had a talent for drawing and felt the strong pull of the movies. All three of these interests came together in 1917 when he put together a short animated film and began to shop it around to various distributors. Fleischer didn't have just anything though as he had put an animation together using a process he and his brother Dave had invented in 1915 called the Rotoscope.

The Rotoscope is an amazing device that helps to produce realistic animation. The process works like this: An actor is shot acting out (in costume) the scene which will be animated. This film is then played back frame-by-frame on the underside of a piece of glass. On the topside of the glass is an animator who (for lack of a better word) traces that frame of film. These drawings are then cleaned up and added to with a final result of a very life like (from the movements of the cartoon character down to the creases on their clothing) animation. ""