Rotanimation

Rotanimation is an early computer animation technique. It was created in 1986 by Stainton Labs, a company based in Chicago, and was marketed as a more advanced alternative to Scanimate. It was originally intended for the production of station idents, but was also used to make several animated TV shows from the late-1980s to early-2000s, especially by Argosy Media.

Rotanimation could be considered the “missing link” between Scanimate and modern computer animation programs such as Flash and ToonBoom. Cartoons made using Rotanimation have a distinct “limited-animation” look, due to the technology originally being intended for station idents.

History
Rotanimation was created by Robert Stainton, who would later work at Argosy Media as an animator. Rotanimation was used to make some companies’ station idents and vanity plates in the 1980s, but most companies preferred the simpler, and cheaper, Scanimate system.

When Stainton was hired by Argosy Media in 1991, he reportedly specifically advised the company against using his Rotanimation, as “it was meant for these doohickeys at the end of the show that tell you which company made the damn thing”. However, this was the first time the executives had ever heard of Rotanimation, and once Ellen Peck learned that it produced decent-quality animation in less time than “traditional” animation techniques, she mandated that it be used for her upcoming TV show, known as The Aaron Show.

Stainton was initially displeased by Peck’s decision, but by the time the show was ready to premiere in 1993, his heart warmed to the “charming” animation techniques. By 1995, he had started trying to sell it to companies like DiC, Hanna-Barbera, and Nelvana. None of them wanted to use an animation technique which, by that point, had become associated with rival Argosy.

Technical specifications
Rotanimation required a special Unix box to draw cels, in a pixelated graphic style similar to Atari 2600 or NES games or European teletext systems, which were later “upscaled” into smooth images, and overlaid on each other using the Rotanimation machine. To render human, anthropomorphic, or animal characters, each body part was required to be drawn as a separate cel; to make the process easier, cels were allowed to be grouped, and cels and groups could be re-used between “projects”. Each cel was limited to 6 colours (7 colours if transparency wasn’t enabled for a cel). Backgrounds were limited to at least 10 colours, but transparent layers could be used to add more details or objects to a background, with the downside of the transparency costing a colour slot (therefore, transparent background layers were limited to 9 colours).