Check out the Making of Tron documentary - can be found on many of the available copies of the movie and also seems to be posted on YouTube. Has a ton of information and demonstrations of traditional animated backlit effects. By the director's own description Tron started life as an extension and exploration of the methods you are referring to. All of them were common, particularly in ads, back in the day. The HBO doc you posted shows a great variation of the effect.
As pointed out, probably easier to do in the workstation these days. The old way will probably find you searching for an animation stand that you can backlight. Not sure how common that is, I was never an animator, but sounds tricky.
Edited to add: Also look up the Video Toaster, some of what you are referring to may have come from that system, depending on the age of the clip.
Also adding, I was struggling to remember the name: check out the documentaries on the Scanimate system.
Last edited by 7jlong; 05-09-2024 at 10:19 AM.
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