Stop motion animation can also be known as stop action or frame-by-frame. It is a technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own.
This is done by moving an object in small sections and taking a photograph of every individual frame. When the series of frames are played back, it creates the illusion of movement as a continuous sequence. There are many different types of stop motion animation that are usually named after the type of media used to create the animation.
- claymation, pixilation, puppet animation and object animation.
Stop motion has dramatically changed since the 20th century, so much that It is even rarely used anymore.
Famous Stop Motion Animation
Stop motion animation has a long history in film. Albert E. Smith and J. Stuart Blackton both created the first sequence of stop motion animation in 1898. This was called The Humpty Dumpty Circus, where a toy circus of acrobats and animals comes to life.
Popular Films or TV series that use stop motion animation are; The Nightmare before Christmas, Pingu, the Magic Roundabout, Wallace and Gromit and the Wind in the Willows. All 5 are very popular sucessfull tv programmes/films.
An older example of stop motion animation is Jan Svankmajer's Jabberwocky.
Jabberwocky was a short experimental film based on the poem jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll.
In the film, the poem by lewis carroll is read out loud whilst images of dolls, toys in a nursery, paper planes and a black cat all become alive and an illusion of movement is created.
I like this video as i think it is a very creative, weird but interesting clear example of stop motion animation. It doesnt just use one kind of object, i.e a doll, but uses real life examples like the cat and mixes it all in to look interesting.
Persistence of Vision
The persistence of vision is a controversial theory which states the human eye retains a certain image for approximately one twenty-fifth of a second.
After the eye has seen a clip of a short film etc, the retina will receive an afterimage which lasts literally for a split second. So everything we see is a blend of what is happening now and what a happened a fraction of a second ago.
Pixilation
This type of animation, live actors are used as the subject of the frame by frame animated film. This is done byrepeatedly posing while one frame is taken and then slightly changing the pose before the next frame. This technique is often used to blend live actors with animated objects in one film. Early examples of pixilation are El hotel electrico in 1908 by Segundo de Chomon, where a man and a women check in at a hotel and strange things happen to their luggage, furniture etc. Also Emile Cohl's film in 1911 called Jobard cannot see the women working.
Later Examples of this type of animation is;
Tom Thumb, Angry Kid and a Chairy Tale.
I think pixilation is a successfull type of stop motion as I find the combination of the human life with the clay/doll life makes the film come across much more entetaining and interesting.
Claymation
Clay animated films were first produced in the United States in 1908 when Edison Manufacturing released a trick film entitled The sculptor's Welsh Rarebit Dream.
Claymation is another type of stop motion animation. Clay or placistine clay are both probably the best malleable substances to use as they have the advantage of repositioning and are deformable. Like every other type of stp motion animation, a image is formed from the clay and a picture is taken after every different movement.Freeform, strata-cut animation and clay painting are 3 types of clay animation. Freeform is the process in which the shape of the clay changes radically as the animation progresses. Strata-cut aniamtion is like a loaf of clay packed tight with various images cut into thin sheets with the camera taking a frame of each cut. Clay painting is where the clay is placed on a flat surface and moved like wet oil pants to show any style of images.
Wallace and Gromit and Creature comforts are both two very popular tv epsidoes that definatley attracted the audiences attention with their use of claymation.
Puppet Animation
Puppet animation, also known as doll animation, has been a part of european culture for centuries. It originated with the old tradition of marionette theatre.
Puppet animation consists of using puppet figures in stop motion to create an interaction with each puppet using an constructed environment in contrast to the real word interaction in model animation.
The puppets usually have a armature inside of them to keep them steady and still. The armature is usually made from metal.
One of the first films made with puppet animation was The tale of the fox in 1937, where in a kingdom of animals, the fox plays tricks and fools the rest of the animals.
Popular examples of the use of puppet animation in films are Tim Burton's childrens films The corpse bride and Coraline. Both have a kind of scary/halloween theme.
Object Animation
Object animation is a type of stop motion animation. In this type of animation, non-drawn objects such as toys or dolls are used to give a recognizable human look.
Object animation is quite similar to puppet animation and model animation as they all use some kind of form of non-drawn objects. They are also often combined with eachother in to one film to add more movement or deph to the characters.
Cartoon network have used object animation on there tv show.
