Part 1
Why do you feel stop-motion has become increasingly popular? What has been your favorite art form so far? Do you see any relation between this art form and your everyday life? Explain briefly.
Stop Motion Animation
What is stop motion animation?
Stop motion animation is an advanced flipbook-style form of animation. It involves photographing and then physically manipulating objects within your frame. As each frame is played in sequence, the technique creates the effect of an object moving itself. Stop motion animation is a technique whose secret lies between each frame of the action. Effortlessly simple in its final form, the flow and flourish of stop motion photography belies the painstaking attention to detail being paid between each snap of the set-up.
It may be a comparatively low-budget technique against the cream of the Hollywood crop, but the results speak for themselves in terms of originality, form and style – and with decades of successful “stop-go” animations becoming British daytime TV institutions and Oscar winners alike, stop motion animation is a widely celebrated art form too.
Types of stop motion animation.
Object motion.
No budget? No problem – grab whatever’s handy and bring it to life.
Examples: The Humpty Dumpty Circus (1898)
Claymation.
Sculpt characters and props from modeling clay to create strange new worlds.
Examples: Morph, Wallace & Gromit
Pixilation.
Bring live actors into the mix – and prepare to hold that pose for still photography.
Examples: Hôtel électrique (1908)
Cutout-Motion.
Craft your cast and their surroundings from paper and shoot top down in two dimensions.
Examples: The Spirit of Christmas (Matte Stone and Trey Parker)
Puppet Animation.
Push the aesthetics of your project even further and create sophisticated puppets to pose in the frame.
Examples: Coraline, Kubo and the Two Strings
Silhouette Animation.
Add a backlight to your cut-outs and bring secretive shadow-play into the mix.
Examples: The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926), Papageno (1935)
History of stop motion animation.
The proliferation of ‘snap-it-and-forget-it’ via digital cameras and smartphones has brought the potential for stop motion into households across the world, but as the 20th century dawned the art form was reserved for those with the budget and time to painstakingly produce it.
Beginning with what’s thought to be the very first entry in the genre, The Humpty Dumpty Circus was released in 1898. Creators J. Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith used a variety of children’s toys – long before Woody and Buzz arrived on the animated scene – to depict the hidden lives of circus performers.
Wladyslaw Starewicz was another pioneer of the form, producing a series of works throughout the 1910s and 1920s, most notably Lucanas Cervus. The title, from the Latin for ‘stag beetle’, used a variety of wee beasties which Starewicz had taxidermised into an all-star cast. The results shocked audiences into thinking the animator had trained them to wander about on hind legs, carrying household objects around as these characters do.
Willis O’Brien was the mastermind behind the animation for the cinematic icon King Kong in his 1933 big screen adventure – but O’Brien mastered the trade for a film released in 1925 called The Lost World. Based on the Arthur Conan Doyle novel of the same name, the film depicts a cast of explorers in search of a band of dinosaurs which still roam the earth, mixing mind-blowing effects and some clever film editing.
O’Brien mentored a man whose work would go on to define this era of special effects in cinema. Ray Harryhausen was a one-man machine whose work on the likes of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and 20 Million Miles to Earth propelled 1950s cinema into a pulpy golden age. Later work on The Golden Voyage of Sinbad and Clash of the Titans (1981) is absolutely essential viewing.
As the medium evolved it spread further into the mainstream, including TV and music videos. Aardman Animations was responsible for globe-gripping examples of both. They created the claymation character Morph, first seen interacting with British broadcasting legend Tony Hart on our screens each week before getting his own series. Aardman was also the effects team behind Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer – a whirlwind of stop motion effects encapsulated into the video for one pop song and a touchstone of 1980s nostalgia.
Ravella response
- Why do you feel stop-motion has become increasingly popular? Stop-motion has become increasingly popular due to the intrinsic, detailed, time consuming, and uniqueness that lies within this art form.
- What has been your favorite art form so far? Do you see any relation between this art form and your everyday life? Explain briefly. My favorite art form related to stop-motion would be the movie Coraline. I was not very intrigued by this type of art in this generation, but I loved it growing up. One of my favorite shows was Gumby. As a kid I found Gumby to be interesting and significant to art. Coraline caught my attention because of the two worlds it portrays through stop-motion. Stop-motion art has significance to everyday life because we live from in a timely based world, and this art form breaks down the time we live in lays out the the entire picture.
