A Scanner Darkly was filmed digitally, then animated with Rotoshop, a proprietary graphics editing program created by Bob Sabiston. Rotoshop uses an animation technique called interpolated rotoscoping, which was previously used in Linklater's film Waking Life. Linklater discussed the ideas and inspiration behind his use of rotoscoping in a UK documentary about him in 2004, linking it to his personal experiences of lucid dreaming. Rotoscoping in traditional cell animation originally involved tracing over film frame-by-frame. This is similar in some respects to the rotoscope style of 1970s filmmaker Ralph Bakshi. Rotoshop animation, however, makes use of vector keyframes, and interpolates the in-between frames automatically. Sabiston and his team managed this unprecedented animation pipeline initially, but at the time of his departure, art direction in the studio was still not established and the film's production process was extended well past its initial September 2005 release date target.