By Ryan Parsons | Image property of Warner Independent
Mike Stovall
One animation that dares to be the most different of all the rest this year is the adaptation of Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly. Telling a very adult story, A Scanner Darkly forgets all about the recent CG craze and uses an animation style known as interpolated rotoscoping.
Though the style does not look as clean and new as some of the computer-generated blockbusters heading our way, the process takes just as long and could have an even deeper effect.
Stovall on Scanner Darkly
One of the main reasons for the change of the release date for A Scanner Darkly comes down to the fact that this film is one bitch to create. After unleashing the first teaser trailer Warner Independent Pictures did an open call for more artists to help give the production a hand (or two). Each frame has to be hand drawn with the help of a computer that fills in the color gradients. Considering that there are 24-plus frames a second, each second of the film requires hours of work.
One such artist to join the crew for A Scanner Darkly was Mike Stovall, and he was kind enough to sit down with the Winona Ryder News Channel and discuss what it took to bring director Richard Linklater's vision to life.
What was your specific role, what were your assignments for the movie?
The majority of my work was on the “Scramble Suit” team. It took three animators to do one thread each, that were then mixed together using masking to create the look of the suits. So every time a suit appears on screen three time as much animation had to be created.
Were you familiar with the book or P.K.Dick’s universe before you got involved?
I read the book after I was hired to work on the movie. I was familiar with the other adaptations, but was surprised to find out how much Hollywood had changed those stories for the movies. Ours is pretty pure P.K. Dick.
When we see the the finished product, are there going to be frames that at least in part were hand painted, or was the process 100% automated?
Every frame of the movie was drawn by one of the 50 animators working on the movie. The Color Engine software we used is an improved version of the one used on Waking Life. The software works in layers like Photoshop, with the video that was shot on the bottom layer. First we draw the outlines, and Color Engine will help with shape tweening to a certain extent, moving a line from A to B and changing it’s shape. This does help some but you can only go so many frames before you have to draw the line again. Color engine will also auto color an area enclosed by lines which saves time for the base color. The artist would pick a color and define the area and click ahead a frame at a time to fill it.
A Scanner Darkly originally had a release date for September 16th of 2005. Due to the slow process involved in interpolated rotoscoping, the film was first pushed back to March of 2006 and then to July 7th.
After seeing the final trailer for the film, it looks like the film will be finished with more than enough time for its July release date.
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