Call It a Draw  Earthlink Ads Look and Feel Like a Rip-Off to
Local Animator Bob Sabiston  By Marc Savlov, Fri., Aug. 31, 2001
Last year, Internet portal Earthlink aired a series of
commercials whose style bore a resemblance to that of Bob
Sabiston, whose Flat Black animation studios produced the still
above as a parody of the Earthlink ads.  When Austin-based
animator Bob Sabiston says he'll never consent to do another
commercial as long as he lives, you get the feeling he means it.
Sabiston and his company Flat Black Films are the creative force
behind the highly anticipated animated film Waking Life,
directed by Richard Linklater, due out this fall from Fox
Searchlight. The film employs a form of proprietary software
developed by Sabiston to "animate" pre-existing video images via
rotoscoping, the process of drawing or painting over each frame
of the film, or in this case, digital video. There's nothing new
about that in and of itself, but Sabiston's software takes much
of the drudgery out of the process