Out of the Inkwell / Koko

With Out of the Inkwell, Max Fleischer built a series around a delightful conceit: a cartoon clown, later known as Koko, who emerges from an inkwell to interact with the live-action animator at his drawing board. The mixing of drawn character and filmed reality gave the films a witty, self-aware charm, playing with the very boundary between the cartoonist's hand and his creation.

Fleischer's work is inseparable from the rotoscope, a technique he pioneered and patented in which animators trace over live-action footage frame by frame. Rotoscoping allowed Koko to move with a smooth, lifelike fluidity that set Fleischer's animation apart, and it became a foundational tool of the industry. Koko the Clown grew into an enduring character and helped establish the Fleischer studio as a major creative force in early animation. In these films we can see the same impulse that drove McCay—the desire to make a drawing move convincingly—advanced by clever technology and a distinctly urban, playful sensibility that would define Fleischer cartoons for decades.