Inventors like Dean Kamen and Raymond Kurzweil have hundreds of patents on some really neat and useful devices. I only have one, which I share, and its not even for a tangible product. But I still think it's pretty nifty.

The patent is for a software technology that turns filmed images into cartoons.

At Smoking Car we called it rotoscoping, although the patent's official title is US6064142: Digital Cartoon and Animation Process.

It was invented by Nicole Tostevin, Robert Cook, Noel Marrero, Justin Gardner, and me in 1994. The patent application was filed in 1997 and the patent awarded on May 9, 2000.

The process is discussed in the production notes on the Last Express website.

The effect was also illustrated with the graphic below in the 1997 special Newsweek issue "Computers & the Family," which contained Tomi Pierce's article "Creating a PC Game" all about the making of The Last Express).

Newsweek side caption:

REALITY BYTES Getting realistic characters on your PC screen is a complex process. First an artist makes a storyboard based on the game's script. Actors are filmed against a blue background; the color is removed and the black-and-white images digitalized. Finally, the image is recolored by computer and the 3-D background dropped in.

(Actually, the most challenging and interesting part of the rotoscoping process is between images two and three, where the software identifies the major frequency changes in the image. It must be sensitive enough to pick up facial details such as noses while not picking up every wrinkle in the actor's clothing.)

Inventor Danny Hillis, who ran Disney's Imagineers in the late 90s, wanted to license the technology to create animated TV shows for ABC, although he left Disney before a deal was made. Richard Linklater used a related technology to create his films Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly.