How can one even begin to describe Ralph Bakshi? From being an animation rebel to a fearless trailblazer, this underrated Master of Animation here not only gave a new definition to modern animation but also revolutionized the medium in films with his outstanding body of work. Bakshi, who actually began his career as a cel polisher working at the Terrytoons television studio ended up being a recipient of a number of prestigious awards that includes the 1980 Golden Gryphon for The Lord of the Rings at the Giffoni International Film Festival, the 1988 Annie Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Art of Animation and the 2003 Maverick Tribute Award at the Cinequest Film & Creativity Festival. While it is true that his contentious, bold, envelope-pushing oeuvre did attract a lot of people not appreciating his opus, Bakshi simply did not let any of that affect him from generating some of the most spectacular stuff on screen. One of his most famous and extensively used animation trick happens to be Rotoscopy, a technique in which the scenes are first shot in live-action and then traced into animation cels. So, you will be quite surprised to know the main reason behind him resorting to this animation technique. Apparently, 20th Century Fox denied Bakshi’s request for a $50,000 budget increase, something that was primarily essential to finish his 1977 animated flick, Wizards. This actually drove him to make use of Rotoscopy and voila, that’s how he took care of the unfinished war scenes. Of course, he nailed it!
Well, in today’s video, we are going to talk about nine brilliant, satirical, rotoscopic animated movies of Ralph Bakshi, the iconoclast of animation.