The animation trick born on a New York rooftop

Disney gets all the credit, but a guy tracing his brother in a clown suit actually birthed modern animation. Max Fleischer invented the rotoscope by projecting live-action film of his brother prancing around a New York rooftop onto a glass easel. He painstakingly traced it frame by frame, injecting an eerie, fluid realism into cartoons that made Mickey Mouse look like a jittery stick figure.