Animation Pioneer Max Fleisher

By 1914 the first commercially produced animated cartoons started to appear in movie theaters. But they tended to be stiff and jerky. Fleischer devised an improvement in animation through a combined projector and easel for tracing images from live action film. This device, known as a Rotoscop^] enabled Fleischer to produce the first realistic animation since the initial works of Windsor Mccay . Although his patent was granted in 1917, Max made his  first series of tests between 1914 and 1916.

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.