Sabiston's Fatbits

Bob Sabiston was the animator-come-tech-pioneer that made Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly possible. Sadly, neither of those films lived up to their incredible, impressionistic rendering style.

The two films between them featured some of the most imaginative tracing I've ever seen - and if that sounds a little glib, then maybe I am being a shade too cynical. There's no denying, however, that neither of Linklater's rotoscoping experiments would have been one half as interesting without Sabiston's input. I wonder what they would have been like without Linklater's input instead?

One of Sabiston's latest inventions is a piece of illustration software for the Nintendo DS called Fatbits (changed to Fatdees for Europe?). Below is just one page from the instruction manual, to give you some idea what it can do. The example pic at the top of the post might give you an even more persuasive indication.

Click upon the manual page to make it bigger (ie., readable).


[EDIT: A video of the software in action has appeared on YouTube]