Stop motion animation has been around for a long amount of time, almost as long as traditional film-making. Originally stop motion involved animating just objects which included the animated movement of any "non-drawn" objects such as toys, blocks or any rigid inanimate object. This was quickly followed by cel animation, which was hand drawn. And from then on animators experimented with clay animation and puppet animation which is what you may be familiar with in Wallace and Gromit and so forth, pixilation this was like live action stop motion animation, using people. In stop motion animation you have a series of frames with each one being slightly different than the next, and then when you display them at just the right speed, the human eye looks at this as being in fluid motion due to the phenomenon known as persistence of vision.
Object Animation
Object animation is one of the earliest forms of stop motion animation; it involves taking objects and photographing then moving them slightly the photographing it again and so on. This technique makes the human eye see the object as if it is moving by its self. Object animation is a different type of animation to puppet animation, claymation and pixilation. Using static still objects as their subjects, a good example of object animation uses subjects like lego figures and toys etc.
The video above is an stop motion animation of a lego version of super mario bros.
Some early examples of stop motion animation films using object animation and techniques can be seen in the "The Humpty Dumpty Circus" (1898) by Albert E. Smith and J. Stuart Blackton. Unfortunately this film has long been considered lost and only information about exists today. Since that one was lost the next surviving film was "Fun in a Bakery Shop" (1902), director by Edwin S. Porter and released in 1902 by Thomas A. Edison, the inventor of the light bulb.
Pixilation is widely used in todays music industry, using the music video as the subject. An example for this is Coldplays “Strawberry Swing” music video. In this video a man go on an adventure as a superhero. He lies and moves along a black floor with different drawings, drawn using with chalk. The music video “Strawberry Swings” directed by the visual artist’s Shynola. People described as more of a short film then a music video because of its artistic skill.
Claymation
There are two main types of clay animation.
The video above is an stop motion animation of a lego version of super mario bros.
Some early examples of stop motion animation films using object animation and techniques can be seen in the "The Humpty Dumpty Circus" (1898) by Albert E. Smith and J. Stuart Blackton. Unfortunately this film has long been considered lost and only information about exists today. Since that one was lost the next surviving film was "Fun in a Bakery Shop" (1902), director by Edwin S. Porter and released in 1902 by Thomas A. Edison, the inventor of the light bulb.
The Video above shows a mixture of stop-action photography and object animation, the filming is stopped whilst something is changed, the camera would stop, the actors would freeze and then the filming would continue. This allows the faces in the dough to appear out of no where. The baker seems to be making the faces, but instead filming is stopped and the faces made, as if the baker made the face immediately.
Puppet Animation
Not long after object animation appeared, filmmakers began experimenting with using different forms of objects that were easier to manipulate. Puppet animation, sometimes called doll animation, began with the age-old tradition of marionette theatre. This tradition has been part of European popular culture for centuries, which explains why it was inEurope that puppet animation began. Russian Ladislas Starewitch, with films such as The Cameraman's Revenge(1912), was the first exponent of this animation technique. He was soon followed by Russian and Czech animators. The most famous being Jiri Trnka (The Hand, 1965). In Japan, Kihachiro Kawamoto, who had trained in Prague with Trnka, was inspired by Japanese puppet theatre (bunraku) to make films such as The Dojoji Temple/House of Flame (1976).
The video above "The Cameraman's Revenge" shows puppet insects moving house.
The video above "The Cameraman's Revenge" shows puppet insects moving house.
A more modern type of stop motion puppet animation used by Tim Burton in his feature films The Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride. The universal use of CGI (computer generated imagery) has almost stopped the art of stop motion puppet animation and made it obsolete. The unique ‘look’ and ‘feel’ of stop motion on film. An example video below.
Pixilation
Pixilation is a stop motion technique where live actors are used as frame-by-frame subjects in a stop motion film by posing while a series of frames and by changing poses slightly before the next frame. In effect, the actor also becomes a living puppet. This technique is often used to combine living actors with animated figures in a film; an example of this would be The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb by the Bolex Brother. Early examples of this technique are El Hotel electrico from 1908 and Emile Chol's 1911 film Jobard ne peut pas voir les femme’s traveller (Jobard cannot see the women working).
Pixilation is widely used in todays music industry, using the music video as the subject. An example for this is Coldplays “Strawberry Swing” music video. In this video a man go on an adventure as a superhero. He lies and moves along a black floor with different drawings, drawn using with chalk. The music video “Strawberry Swings” directed by the visual artist’s Shynola. People described as more of a short film then a music video because of its artistic skill.
Claymation
Claymation is one of many forms of stop motion animation, which is filmed using a animated piece, character or background, which is moldable-made of malleable substance, usually plasticine clay. Each animated piece, characters and background is molded and photographed frame-by-frame after every slight movement. Each frame would be played back at a frame rate greater then 10-12 frames per second. This is a fairly convincing illusion of constant motion.
There are two main types of clay animation.
The first is called ‘Freeform’ named because it refers to the process in which the shape of the clay changes rapidly as the animation progresses. A example of this technique is the work of Eliot Noyes Jr. and Ivan Stang’s animated films. A modern example of this technique is used in the production of the Wallace and Gromit TV programmes and feature length movies.
Another variation is Strata-cut animation, this technique is created when long breadlike loafs of clay, internally packed and loaded with imagery, is sliced into thin sheets, with the camera taking a frame of the end of the loaf of each cut, revealing the movement of the images within. Oskar Fischinger, during the 1920s and 30s was a pioneer of this technique, Will Vinton, is a more contemporary 16 minute short, Buzz Box, shown below.
