Bob Sabiston has been working in animation since the 1980s, when he studied at the Media Lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In this conversation with Paul Ward, he talks about his development of the software with which he is most associated, the digital rotoscoping program Rotoshop, as well as the artists and animators who have influenced him. Central to Sabiston's work is an interest in the everyday and how animation can capture and creatively treat it. Any discussion of animation and realism, or animation and documentary, arguably has to engage with his work. Rotoshop's often misunderstood status as a form of image filtering rather than a sophisticated form of digital mark-making means it also goes right to the heart of debates about how we define animation, what constitutes proper' animation (as opposed to some form of short cut') and how we view different kinds of animation labour. Although Sabiston is most associated with Rotoshop films, he is also active in the development of software for other platforms.