StopMotion

Animation

HISTORY

The skeleton dances in the moonlight, leaving footprints in the glistening snow. He wears a tuxedo and sings a strange song as he moves through a village decorated for Christmas. His name is Jack Skellington, and he's Halloween's answer to Santa Claus. Have you entered a strange childhood dream? No, it's a scene from the film The Nightmare Before Christmas brought to life by a technique called stop-motion animation.

The Golden AgeStop-motion animation made its first serious entry into the mainstream film industry through the work of animator Willis O'Brien. The Lost World (1925), in which O'Brien mixed stop-motion dinosaurs with live actors, was a major hit, but it was his work on King Kong (1933) that took stop-motion animation to new heights.

Willis O’Brien-stop motion animation pioneer who animated ‘the lost world’ and ‘king kong’.

Ray Harryhausen-Successor of O’Brien who created ‘Dynamation’ technique of animation.

For King Kong O'Brien perfected many of the techniques he had developed for The Lost World. Smooth motion, realistic expressions, and improved integration with live actors made the stop-motion Kong the film's star, and earned O'Brien his place as the father of modern stop-motion animation. The film Mighty Joe Young (1949), on which O'Brien supervised the stop-motion animation special effects, was awarded an Oscar for best visual effects in 1950.O'Brien's greatest protege was Ray Harryhausen. Harryhausen made a string of major films that advanced the art of stop-motion animation, including The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), Jason and the Argonauts (1963), and Clash of the Titans (1981).Another notable Hollywood stop-motion pioneer was George Pal. His stop animation work appears in numerous films, the most famous of which, The War of the Worlds (1953), won an Academy Award for best visual effects.Another important development in the history of stop-motion animation occurred when animators began to use flexible modeling clays to create their characters. Called clay animation, or claymation, this technique was used by early animators but came to prominence in the 1950s through the work of artists such as Art Clokey. Clokey's characters Gumby and Pokey appeared in short films and in the television series The Gumby Show.

Another major clay animation artist is Will Vinton. Vinton coined the term 'claymation,' and his work has appeared in numerous films, television programs, and commercials. Vinton's Closed Mondays (1974), an eight-minute film about a drunk man's adventures in an art museum, won Vinton an Oscar for best animated short film. His other notable work includes the television series The PJs (1999-2001) featuring the voice of comedian Eddie Murphy, Saturday Night Live's Mr. Bill, and a series of holiday specials including A Claymation Christmas Celebration (1987), which won an Emmy Award.

French trick film maestro Georges Méliès used stop motion animation once to produce moving title-card letters in one of his short films, and a

.

The Humpty Dumpty circus by Stuart Blackton in 1897-believed to be the first stop motion animation

number of his special effects are based on stop motion photography. In 1907, The Haunted Hotel is a new stop motion film by J. Stuart Blackton, and was a resounding success when released. Segundo de Chomón (1871–1929), from Spain, released El Hotel Eléctrico later that same year, and used similar techniques as the Blackton film. In 1908, A Sculptor's Welsh Rarebit Nightmare was released, as was The Sculptor's Nightmare, a film by Billy Bitzer. Italian animator Roméo Bossetti impressed audiences with his object animation tour-de-force, The Automatic Moving Company in 1912. The great European stop motion pioneer was Wladyslaw Starewicz (1892–1965), who animated The Beautiful Lukanida (1910), The Battle of the Stag Beetles (1910), The Ant and the Grasshopper (1911).One of the earliest clay animation films was Modelling Extraordinary, which impressed audiences in 1912. December 1916 brought the first of Willie Hopkins' 54 episodes of "Miracles in Mud" to the big screen. Also in December 1916, the first woman animator, Helena Smith Dayton, began experimenting with clay stop motion. She would release her first film in 1917, an adaptation of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. O'Brien's protege and eventual successor in Hollywood was Ray Harryhausen. After learning under O'Brien on the film Mighty Joe Young (1949), Harryhausen would go on to create the effects for a string of successful and memorable films over the next three decades. These included The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955), Jason and the Argonauts (1963), The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973) and Clash of the Titans (1981).In a 1940 promotional film, Autolite, an automotive parts supplier, featured stop motion animation of its products marching past Autolite factories to the tune of Franz Schubert's Military March. An abbreviated version of this sequence was later used in television ads for Autolite, especially those on the 1950s CBS program Suspense, which Autolite sponsored.

Ladislaw Starewickz-A notable French puppet stop motion animator.

Quay brothers-American twin brothers and influential stop motion animators.

Starewicz began making 3-d stop motion animated films (puppet films, as he called them) in 1910 and continued creating them until his death. His films, although emotionally aimed at children, are what we today would deem "strange" because of the often grotesque characters and situations... keep in mind, what was considered "for children" in the early 1900s is much more intense than what is produced for children today! 

In 1911, Starewicz moved to Moscow and began work with the film company of Aleksandr Khanzhonkov. There he made two dozen films, most of them puppet animations using dead animals. Of these, The Beautiful Leukanida (premiere - 1912), first puppet film with a plot inspired in the story of Agamenon and Menelas, earned international acclaim (one British reviewer was tricked into thinking the stars were live trained insects), while The Grasshopper and the Ant (1911) got Starewicz decorated by the czar. But the best-known film of this period, was Mest' kinematograficheskogo operatora (Revenge of the Kinematograph Cameraman, aka The Cameraman's Revenge) (1912), a cynical work about infidelity and jealousy among the insects. Some of the films made for Khanzhonkov feature live-action/animation interaction. In some cases, the live action consisted of footage of Starewicz's daughter Irina. Particularly worthy of note is Starevich's 41-minute 1913 film The Night Before Christmas, an adaptation of the Nikolai Gogol story of the same name. The 1913 film Terrible Vengeance won the Gold Medal at an international festival in Milan in 1914, being just one of five films which won awards among 1005 contestants.[4]

During World War I, Starewicz worked for several film companies, directing 60 live-action features, some of which were fairly successful. After the October Revolution of 1917, the film community largely sided with the White Army and moved from Moscow to Yalta on the Black Sea.

Co Hoedeman- Dutch stop motion animator- specialises in intricate human interaction

Nick Park-the creator of Wallace and Gromit.

After a brief stay, Starewicz and his family fled before the Red Army could capture the Crimea, stopping in Italy for a while before joining the Russian émigrés in Paris.an Švankmajer is a Czech animator and filmmaker born in Prague. An early influence on his later artistic development was a puppet theatre he was given for Christmas as a child. He studied at the College of Applied Arts in Prague and later in the Department of Puppetry at the Prague Academy of Performing Arts. He contributed to Emil Radok's film Doktor Faust in 1958 and then began working for Prague's Semafor Theatre where he founded the Theatre of Masks.

Švankmajer has gained a reputation over several decades for his distinctive use of stop-motion technique, and his ability to make surreal, nightmarish, and yet somehow funny pictures. He continues to make films in Prague.Švankmajer's trademarks include very exaggerated sounds, often creating a very strange effect in all eating scenes. He often uses fast-motion sequences when people walk or interact. His movies often involve inanimate objects being brought to life through stop motion. Many of his films also include clay objects in stop motion, otherwise known as claymation. Food is a favourite subject and medium. Švankmajer also uses pixilation in many of his films, including Food (1992) and Conspirators of Pleasure (1996).Stop-motion features in most of his work, though recently his feature films have included much more live action sequences than animation.Many of his movies, like the short film Down to the Cellar, are made from a child's perspective, while at the same time often having a truly disturbing and even aggressive nature. In 1972 the communist authorities banned him from making films, and many of his later films were suppressed. He was almost unknown in the West until the early 1980s. Writing in The New York Times, Andrew Johnston praised Svankmajer's artistry, stating "while his films are rife with cultural and scientific allusions, his unusual imagery possesses an accessibility that feels anchored in the shared language of the subconscious, making his films equally rewarding to the culturally hyperliterate and to those who simply enjoy visual stimulation."[3]

Thoroughfare in Knovíz, Kladno District, Czech Republic. The former cinema building on the right: Jan Švankmajer's studioToday Švankmajer is one of the most celebrated animators in the world. Among his best known works are the feature films Alice (1988), Faust (1994), Conspirators of Pleasure (1996), Little Otik (2000) and Lunacy (2005), a surreal comic horror based on two works of Edgar Allan Poe and the life of Marquis de Sade. The two stories by Poe, "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether" and "The Premature

Burial", provide Lunacy its thematic focus, whereas the life of Marquis de Sade provides the film's blasphemy. Also famous (and much imitated) is the short Dimensions of Dialogue (1982), selected by Terry Gilliam as one of the ten best animated films of all time. His films have been called "as emotionally haunting as Kafka's stories."[5] His latest film is Surviving Life from 2010.His next project is called Insects (Hmyz).] It has a projected budget of 40 million CZK and a preliminary release set for 2017.[6] The film will be based on the play Pictures from the Insects' Life by Karel Čapek, which Švankmajer describes as following: "This Čapek´s play is a very misanthropic, and I always liked it — bugs behave as a human beings, and people behave as insects. Similar thematic content to Franz Kafka and his famous Metamorphosis. The Quay Brothers reside and work in England, having moved there in 1969 to study at the Royal College of Art, London [1] after studying illustration (Timothy) and film (Stephen) at the Philadelphia College of Art, now the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. In England they made their first short films, which no longer exist after the only print was irreparably damaged.[citation needed] They spent some time in the Netherlands in the 1970s and then returned to England where they teamed up with another Royal College student, Keith Griffiths, who produced all of their films. In 1980 the trio formed Koninck Studios, which is currently based in Southwark, south London.Most of their animation films feature puppets made of doll parts and other organic and inorganic materials, often partially disassembled, in a dark, moody atmosphere. Perhaps their best known work is Street of Crocodiles, based on the short novel of the same name by the Polish author and artist Bruno Schulz. This short film was selected by director and animator Terry Gilliam as one of the ten best animated films of all time,[3] and critic Jonathan Romney included it on his list of the ten best films in any medium (for Sight and Sound's 2002 critics' poll).[4] They have made two full-length live action films: Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life, produced by Keith Griffiths and Janine Marmot, and The Piano Tuner Of Earthquakes, produced by Keith Griffiths. They also directed an animated sequence in the film Frida.With very few exceptions, their films have no meaningful spoken dialogue—most have no spoken content at all, while some, such as The Comb (From the Museums of Sleep) (1990) include multilingual background gibberish that is not intended to be coherently understood. Accordingly, their films are highly reliant on their music scores, many of which have been written especially for them by the Polish composer Leszek Jankowski. In 2000, they contributed a short film to the BBC's Sound On Film series in which they visualised a 20-minute piece by the avant-garde composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. Whenever possible, the Quays prefer to work with pre-recorded music, though Gary Tarn's score for The Phantom Museum had to be added afterwards when it proved impossible to license music by the Czech composer Zden ě k Li š ka .[citation needed]

They have created music videos for His Name Is Alive ("Are We Still Married", "Can't Go Wrong Without You"), Michael Penn ("Long Way Down (Look What the Cat Drug In)") and 16 Horsepower ("Black Soul Choir"). Some people[who?] mistakenly believe that the Quays are responsible for several music videos for Tool,[citation needed] but those videos were created by Fred Stuhr and member Adam Jones, whose work is influenced by the Quays. Although they worked on Peter Gabriel's seminal video "Sledgehammer" (1986) as animators, this was directed by Stephen R. Johnson and the Quays were unhappy with their contribution, believing it to be more imitative of Švankmajer's work than truly distinctive in its own right.[citation needed]

Before turning to film, the Quays worked as professional illustrators. The first edition of Anthony Burgess' novel The Clockwork Testament, or Enderby's End, included their drawings before the start of each chapter. Nearly three decades before directly collaborating with Stockhausen, they designed the cover of the book Stockhausen: Conversations with the Composer (ed. Jonathan Cott, Simon & Schuster, 1973). After designing book covers for Gothic and science fiction book cover commissions they did while in Philadelphia, the Quays have created suggestive designs for a variety of publications that seem to reflect not only their own interests in particular authors, covers for Italo Calvino, Louis-Ferdinand Céline or Mark le Fanu's study of the films of Andrei Tarkovsky, but also in themes and motifs that these authors develop. Literary texts are inspirational sources for almost all of their film projects, whether they serve as a point of departure for their own ideas or as a textual basis for filmic scenarios, and not as scripts or screenplays. The prowess in illustration and calligraphy seeps increasingly into many formal elements in their later films, evident as graphic embellishment in the set decoration, or their particular use of patterns in the puppets' costume design. Titles, intertitles and credits appear in a variety of handwritten styles.

Fantasmagorie – A French animated film by Emile Cohl

King Kong- the 1935 film presenting O’Brien’s mastery on stop motion animation.

In an interview with Robert K. Elder for his book The Best Film You've Never Seen, the Quay brothers discuss their creative process, stating that “If [a] project does eventually get approval, then we almost invariably chuck [the] original proposal out, not out of any cavalierness, but simply because we know that, as we start building the decors and the puppets, the script begins to grow and evolve very organically.”[5]

The critical success of Street of Crocodiles gave the Quay Brothers artistic freedom to explore a shift in subject matter, in part originating in literary and poetic sources that led to exploration of new aesthetic forms, but also because they were able to make extensive experiments in technique, both with cameras and on large stage sets. The Quays are best known for their puppet and feature-length films. Less known, but no less incisive in their creative development, is their intense engagement in stage design for opera, ballet and theatre: since 1988, the Quays have created sets and projections for performing arts productions on international stages. Their work at miniature scale has translated into large-scale decors for the theatre and opera productions of director Richard Jones: Prokofiev's The Love for Three Oranges; Feydeau's "A Flea in Her Ear"; Tchaikovsky's Mazeppa; and Molière's "Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme". Their set design for a revival of Ionesco's "The Chairs" was nominated for a Tony Award in 1998. The Quays' excursion into feature films and live-action dance films were not an indication of a move away from animation and the literature that inspires them—on the contrary, this film explores the potential which slumbers in the combination of these cinematic techniques. Their puppet animation set designs have been curated as an internationally touring exhibition called "Dormitorium" which toured the east coast of the United States in 2009, including the originating venue of the Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery at the University of the Arts, Philadelphia, followed by Parsons The New School of Design, New York, [6] Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA and Cornell University.Nicholas Wulstan "Nick" Park, CBE [3] [4]  (born 6 December 1958)[1] is an English director, writer, and animator best known as the creator of Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep.[5] Park has been nominated for an Academy Award a total of six times, and won four with Creature Comforts (1989), The Wrong Trousers (1993), A Close Shave (1995), and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005).[6] He has also received five BAFTA Awards, including the BAFTA for Best Short Animation for A Matter of Loaf and Death, which was also the most watched television programme in the UK in 2008.[7][8] His 2000 film Chicken Run is the highest-grossing stop motion animated film.[9]

Two more Wallace and Gromit shorts, The Wrong Trousers (1993) and A Close Shave (1995), followed, both winning Oscars. He then made his first feature-length film, Chicken Run (2000), co-directed with Aardman founder Peter Lord. He also supervised a new series of "Creature Comforts" films for British television in 2003.

His second theatrical feature-length film and first Wallace and Gromit feature, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, was released on 5 October 2005, and won Best Animated Feature Oscar at the 78th Academy Awards, 6 March 2006.On 10 October 2005, a fire gutted Aardman Animations' archive warehouse.[16] The fire resulted in the loss of most of Park's creations, including the models and sets used in the movie Chicken Run. Some of the original Wallace & Gromit models and sets, as well as the master prints of the finished films, were elsewhere and survived.Park's most recent work includes a US version of Creature Comforts, a weekly television series that was on CBS every Monday evening at 8 pm ET. In the series, Americans were interviewed about a range of subjects. The interviews were lip synced to Aardman animal characters.In September 2007, it was announced that Nick Park had been commissioned to design a bronze statue of Wallace and Gromit, which will be placed in his home town of Preston.[17] In October 2007 it was announced that the BBC had commissioned another Wallace & Gromit short film to be entitled Trouble at Mill[18] (retitled later to A Matter of Loaf and Death).Nick Park studied at Preston College,[19] which has since named its library for the art and design department after him: the Nick Park Library Learning Centre. He is the recipient of a gold Blue Peter badge.[13]

Stop motion animation technique was frequently relied on to employ trick shots in films.The trick film genre was developed by Georges Méliès in some of his first cinematic experiments,[2] and his works remain the most classic examples of the genre.[3] Other early experimenters included the French showmen Émile and Vincent Isola, the British magicians David Devant and John Nevil Maskelyne, and the American cinematographers Billy Bitzer and James Stuart Blackton.[4]

In the first years of film, especially between 1898 and 1908, the trick film was one of the world's most popular film genres.[1] Before 1906, it was likely the second most prevalent genre in film, surpassed only by nonfiction actuality films.[5] Techniques explored in these trick films included slow motion and fast motion created by varying the camera cranking speed; the editing device called the substitution splice; and various in-camera effects, such as multiple exposure.[4]

"Trick novelties," as the British often called trick films, received a wide vogue in the United Kingdom, with Robert W. Paul and Cecil Hepworth among their practitioners. John Howard Martin, of the Cricks and Martin filmmaking duo, produced popular trick films as late as 1913, when he began doing solo work. However, British interest in trick films was generally on the wane by 1912, with even an elaborate production like Méliès's The Conquest of the Pole received relatively coolly.[6]

Elements of the trick film style survived in the sight gags of silent comedy films, such as Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr. [7]  The spectacular

nature of trick films also lived on in other genres, including musical films, science fiction films, horror films, and swashbuckler films. Why, even discovery of the technique of stop motion animation was accidental with the jamming of camera and creating a desirable funny effect on screen.Some notable stop motion works-

Jason and the Argonauts by Harryhausen

Wallace and Gromit by Park

The Cameraman’s revenge(starewickz)

CONTEXT.

Quaq Quao-Italian television stop motion animation.

The sand Castle

When they started to animation vocationally in 1972, they were surrounded be Disney and Hanna Barbera fims that used thousands of drawing layered acetate sheets. Instead, Aardman independently thought up the chalk technique, although it had been done before else where, unbeknownst to them. They then moved on to animating 2D cut outs. After moving on to plasticine in a segment called ‘Greeblies’, they created Morph in 1977.Stop Motion has also been used in the past as a kind of special effect. Like in the original Clash of the Titans.Also, although not stop motion, puppets and animatronics were used a lot during the 80s, notably for The Dark Crystal, with horrible, carrion bird like creatures designed by Brian Froud. And also Star Wars, the Rancor in Return of The Jedi was a rod operated puppet, and the AT-AT walkers in The Empire Strikes Back was films using Go motion animation. While stop motion was fairly prevalent during the 70s and 80s, there has been somewhat of a revival in the 2000s, due to films like Chicken Run (2000) by Aardman Studios, The Corpse Bride (2005) by Time Burton, Coraline by production company Laika (2009), and Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009). In the 1970s and 1980s, Industrial Light & Magic often used stop motion model animation for films such as the original Star Wars trilogy: the chess sequence in Star Wars, the Tauntauns and AT-AT walkers in The Empire Strikes Back, and the AT-ST walkers in Return of the Jedi were all stop motion animation, some of it using the Go films. The many shots including the ghosts in Raiders of the Lost Ark and the first two feature films in the RoboCop series use Phil Tippett's go motion version of stop motion.Species). Noyes also used stop motion to animate sand lying on glass for his musical animated film Sandman (1975).Stop motion was used by Rankin/Bass on some of their Christmas specials, most notably Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964)In 1975, filmmaker and clay animation experimenter Will Vinton joined with sculptor Bob Gardiner to create an experimental film called Closed Mondays which became the world's first stop motion film to win an Oscar. Will Vinton followed with several other successful short film experiments including The Great Cognito, Creation, and Rip Van Winkle which were each nominated for Academy Awards. In 1977, Vinton made a documentary about this process and his style of animation which he dubbed "claymation"; he titled the documentary Claymation. Soon after this documentary, the term was trademarked by Vinton to differentiate his team's work from others who had been, or were beginning to do, "clay animation". While the word has stuck and is often used to describe clay animation and stop motion, it remains a trademark owned currently by Laika Entertainment, Inc. Twenty clay-animation episodes featuring the clown Mr. Bill were a feature of Saturday Night Live, starting from a first appearance in February 1976.

Sand-coated puppet animation was used in the Oscar-winning 1977 film The Sand Castle, produced by Dutch-Canadian animator Co Hoedeman. Hoedeman was one of dozens of animators sheltered by the National Film Board of Canada, a Canadian government film arts agency that had supported animators for decades. A pioneer of refined multiple stop motion films under the NFB banner was Norman McLaren, who brought in many other animators to create their own creatively controlled films. Notable among these are the pinscreen animation films of Jacques Drouin, made with the original pinscreen donated by Alexandre Alexeieff and Claire Parker.Italian stop motion films include Quaq Quao (1978), by Francesco Misseri, which was stop motion with origami, The Red and the Blue and the clay animation kittens Mio and Mao. Other European productions included a stop motion-animated series of Tove Jansson's The Moomins (from 1979, often referred to as "The Fuzzy Felt Moomins"), produced by Film Polski and Jupiter Films.One of the main British Animation teams, John Hardwick and Bob Bura, were the main animators in many early British TV shows, and are famous for their work on the Trumptonshire trilogy.Disney experimented with several stop motion techniques by hiring independent animator-director Mike Jittlov to do the first stop motion animation of Mickey Mouse toys ever produced for a short sequence called Mouse Mania, part of a TV special commemorating Mickey Mouse's 50th Anniversary called Mickey's 50 in 1978. Jittlov again produced some impressive multi-technique stop motion animation a year later for a 1979 Disney special promoting their release of the feature film The Black Hole. Titled Major Effects, Jittlov's work stood out as the best part of the special. Jittlov released his footage the following year to 16mm film collectors as a short film titled The Wizard of Speed and Time, along with four of his other short multi-technique animated films, most of which eventually evolved into his own feature-length film of the same title. Effectively demonstrating almost all animation techniques, as well as how he produced them, the film was released to theaters in 1987 and to video in 1989.

In the UK, Aardman Animations continued to grow. Channel 4 funded a new series of clay animated films Conversation Pieces based on real recorded soundtracks. A further series in 1986 called Lip Sync premiered the work of Richard Goleszowski - Ident, Barry Purves - Next and Nick

Mighty Young Joe(1949)

Park - Creature Comforts as well as further films by Sproxton and Lord. Creature Comforts won the Oscar for Best Animated Short in 1990.In 1980, Marc Paul Chinoy directed the 1st feature-length clay animated film; a film based on the famous Pogo comic strip. Titled I go Pogo, it was aired a few times on American cable channels, but has yet to be commercially released. Primarily clay, some characters required armatures, and walk cycles used pre-sculpted hard bases legs.[citation needed]

Stop motion was also used for some shots of the final sequence of Terminator movie, also for the scenes of the small alien ships in Spielberg's Batteries Not Included in 1987, animated by David W. Allen. Allen's stop motion work can also be seen in such feature films as The Crater Lake Monster (1977), Q - The Winged Serpent (1982), The Gate (1986) and Freaked (1993). Allen's King Kong Volkswagen commercial from the 1970s is now legendary among model animation enthusiasts.In 1985, Will Vinton and his team released an ambitious feature film in stop motion called "The Adventures Of Mark Twain" based on the life and works of the famous American author. While the film may have been a little sophisticated for young audiences at the time, it got rave reviews from critics and adults in general.[citation needed] Vinton's team also created the Nomes and the Nome King for Disney's "Return to Oz" feature, for which they received an Academy Award Nomination for Special Visual Effects. In the 80's and early 90's, Will Vinton became very well known for his commercial work as well with stop motion campaigns including The California Raisins.

Of note are the films of Czech filmmaker Jan Švankmajer, which mix stop motion and live actors. These include Alice, an adaptation of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and Faust, a rendition of the legend of the German scholar. The Czech school is also illustrated by the series Pat & Mat (1979–present). Created by Lubomír Beneš and Vladimír Jiránek, and it was wildly popular in a number of countries.Since the general animation renaissance headlined by the likes of Who Framed Roger Rabbit and The Little Mermaid at the end of the 1980s and

Coraline-Blend of computer Animation And Stop motion Animation

the beginning of the 1990s, there have been an increasing number of traditional stop motion feature films, despite advancements with computer animation. The Nightmare Before Christmas, directed by Henry Selick and produced by Tim Burton, was one of the more widely released stop motion features and become the highest grossing stop motion animated movie of its time, grossing over $50 million domestic. Henry Selick also went on to direct James and the Giant Peach and Coraline, and Tim Burton went on to direct Corpse Bride and Frankenweenie.In 1999, Will Vinton launched the first prime-time stop-motion television series called The PJs, co-created by actor-comedian Eddie Murphy. The Emmy-winning sitcom aired on Fox for two seasons, then moved to the WB for an additional season. Vinton launched another series, Gary & Mike, for UPN in 2001.Another individual who found fame in clay animation is Nick Park, who created the characters Wallace and Gromit. In addition to a series of award-winning shorts and featurettes, he won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature for the feature-length outing Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Chicken Run, to date, is the highest grossing stop motion animated movie ever grossing nearly $225 million worldwide.The BBC commissioned thirteen episodes of stop frame animated Summerton Mill in 2004 as inserts into their flagship pre-school program, Tikkabilla. Created and produced by Pete Bryden and Ed Cookson, the series was then given its own slot on BBC1 and BBC2 and has been broadcast extensively around the world.Other notable stop motion feature films released since 1990 include The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb (1993), Fantastic Mr. Fox and $9.99, both released in 2009, and Anomalisa (2015).Stop motion has very rarely been shot in stereoscopic 3D throughout film history. The first 3D stop motion short was In Tune With Tomorrow (also known as Motor Rhythm) in 1939 by John Norling. The second stereoscopic stop motion release was The Adventures of Sam Space in 1955 by Paul Sprunck. The third and latest stop motion short in stereo 3D was The Incredible Invasion of the 20,000 Giant Robots from Outer Space in 2000 by Elmer Kaan[4] and Alexander Lentjes.[5][6] This is also the first ever 3D stereoscopic stop motion and CGI short in the history of film. The first all stop motion 3D feature is Coraline (2009), based on Neil Gaiman's best-selling novel and directed by Henry Selick. Another recent example is the Nintendo 3DS video software which comes with the option for Stop Motion videos. This has been released December 8, 2011 as a 3DS system update. Also, the movie ParaNorman is in 3D stop motion.Another more complicated variation on stop motion is go motion, co-developed by Phil Tippett and first used on the films The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Dragonslayer (1981), and the RoboCop films. Go motion involved programming a computer to move parts of a model slightly during each exposure of each frame of film, combined with traditional

hand manipulation of the model in between frames, to produce a more realistic motion blurring effect. Tippett also used the process extensively in his 1984 short film Prehistoric Beast, a 10 minutes long sequence depicting a herbivorous dinosaur (Monoclonius), being chased by a carnivorous one (Tyrannosaurus). With new footage Prehistoric Beast became Dinosaur! in 1985, a full-length dinosaurs documentary hosted by Christopher Reeve. Those Phil Tippett's go motion tests acted as motion models for his first photo-realistic use of computers to depict dinosaurs in Jurassic Park in 1993. A low-tech, manual version of this blurring technique was originally pioneered by Wladyslaw Starewicz in the silent era, and was used in his feature film The Tale of the Fox (1931).

Stop motion animation has seen a resurgence of late. In addition to filmmakers continuing to make use of the technique despite the rise of CGI, stop motion apps for smartphones and outlets like Vine and Instagram video have brought many amateurs to the table as well.

Now it’s possible for everyone to discover the time-consuming joy of shooting little stop motion creations.

The folks behind the PBS web series Off Book have noticed this increased interest in the art, and so they’ve decided to put together an entire stop motion episode complete with a history of the art form and some incredible examples of the technique at its best.

NYU Professor and Animator Dean Kalman Lennert takes you through the history of stop motion and a quick explanation of what stop motion is, after which animator Hayley Morris talks about her amazing animation “Undone” and points out the things that couldn’t have been captured using any other technique.Then Off Book sits down with Mathew Amonson and Jeremy Bronson of Studio Nos to discuss the challenges behind creating intricate stop motion animations; and finally, Vine animator Meagan Cignoli weighs in on the whimsical present and future of stop motion animation from an amateur standpoint.If you’re at all interested in stop motion, try to find 8 free minutes today and check out the video at the top. From an educational standpoint, you’ll probably learn a little something about stop motion; and from an inspirational standpoint, you might just find yourself breaking out Vine as soon as the video ends to create your own 6-second stop motion clip.

20-year-old sketch from Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson's The Fast Show remains the best summary of how most people think about stop-motion animation. In it, an excited animator, pointing to a sorrowful-

looking model of a spotted dog that evokes the work of the British stop-motion house Aardman, is explaining to an interviewer how the puppet can be brought to life for the screen.

"You move his hand, just a tiny amount," he explains. "Then you move one finger, again a tiny amount; the second finger, just a tiny amount; the third finger, just a tiny amount. Then we'd have to move the eyes around, just a tiny amount, then the other one, a tiny amount, then we take two frames -- click, click! -- then I suppose his feet should waggle, his toes, so we'd move the first toe down, just a tiny amount, then the second, just a tiny amount..."

As the monologue continues, the interviewer turns a thousand-yard stare towards the camera. "Does anyone fancy a pint?" he whispers.

It's funny because it's true. Stop-motion - or stop-frame, as it's increasingly known in the age of the DSLR camera - remains perhaps the most exacting and painstaking way one could choose to make a film. In any production made with this method, every movement of a character's face, every twitch of their body, every puff of wind, ripple of water or movement of foliage, has to be animated and photographed 24 or 25 times per second, with the puppets moved - yes - a tiny amount each time.  

Although the technology has been streamlined, the premise remains the same as it was in 1910, when the Russian-born animator Ladislas Starevich, while making a nature documentary, realised that it was easier to replace the legs of dead stag beetles with wires and film them frame-by-frame than it was to work with live insects that curled up under his lights.

This kind of work, with its emphasis on minute manipulation and total control of the material, has always appealed to particular types of mind. "Animators are observers and psychologists," observed Charlie Kaufman, the screenwriter of Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, whose stop-motion film Anomalisa, based on a radio play he wrote in 2005, comes out this month.  "They are actors inhabiting characters from the outside. They are physicists and engineers, first studying how things move in the real world, then figuring out how to represent that in an artificial one."

Animators are often solitary, or work in pairs. The great Czech animator Jan Svankmajer worked with his wife, the Surrealist artist Eva Svankmajerova, while the Quay Brothers, whose dark and startling puppet films (Christopher Nolan is a fan) are identical twins. "Animators tend to construct a closed world for themselves," Svankmajer once said, "like pigeon-fanciers or rabbit-breeders," although in the next breath he added that he was not an animator, but someone interested in "bringing life to everyday objects".

The Quays, meanwhile, have described their work as "like removing the filament of a dandelion with a set of tweezers… you have to be focused, you can hardly breathe". And Ray Harryhausen, whose Dynamation system blended stop-motion with live action to create some of cinema's most extraordinary creatures - the skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts, Medusa in Clash of the Titans, the dinosaur that makes landfall in Manhattan in The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms - put it more prosaically. "When I started out," he once said, "I couldn't find another kindred soul… So I had to learn to do it myself."

An "old-school" film such as Henry Selick and Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas in 1993, he said, would use some 800 expressions for its main character. But, with the rise of 3D printing and rapid prototyping, this number was rising fast. "Coraline had somewhere in the region of 200,000 different expressions. Then Eggs [the protagonist of The Boxtrolls] has 1.4 million."

Matthew Cooper, an animator who works on commercials and music videos, says that this kind of rapid prototyping has been one of the medium's most transformative developments. "For a director, it opens up loads of opportunities," he says. "You can sculpt the mouth positions in a computer first and print out different positions -- so you don't need to move one puppet into different positions, you can just replace it with positions that are pre-moulded."

Animating on a computer and printing in 3D also offers the opportunity to preview the process, cutting down on hours of laborious casting and prototyping by hand. "An advantage is that you're pretty sure how it's going to turn out," says Cooper. "A disadvantage is that it may look too perfect."

This question of perfection and its discontents comes up a great deal in conversation with people involved in stop-motion work. "I remember seeing Pixar's The Incredibles," explains Toby Howell, a director of photography who worked as lighting cameraman on Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr Fox and several Aardman series and films, "and thinking, well, nobody's going to want to make a stop-frame feature again after this. It's pretty much a perfect film.

"But it occupies a different world. There's a personal connection that an animator can put in, when he or she is thumbing the face of a puppet: something that's harder to get on CGI, and more direct. I sit on units with animators, and they're gurning into a mirror, with the puppet in their hands, and they're pulling the puppet into that face."

Cooper, the animator, agrees. "I've often been asked to make things look rougher," he says, "and to put in a bit more of the twitches, shakes and fingerprints that make it look handmade. So people can tell."

Live-action directors are often attracted by this quality of otherness. Charlie Kaufman, speaking about Anomalisa, calls it a "vulnerability and soulfulness" that comes from not having "everything evened out and smoothed out".

TECHNIQUES

Stop-motion animation uses images created with objects such as paper cutouts or clay models.Stop-motion animation is based on a simple process. The artist places all of the objects to be animated in their initial positions. An image of the objects is then captured on film or on another media such as a memory card. Then the objects are moved to slightly different positions and another image is recorded. Typically, this process is repeated hundreds or even thousands of times.

Object Animation-Real objects are animated in stop motion

Cut-out animation-Paper cut-outs animated.

For example, imagine you want to create a video using stop-motion animation featuring a bunch of pens that move in a circular pattern. You begin by positioning the pens in a circle and take a photograph with your digital camera. You move the pens slightly in a clockwise direction and take another photograph. Then repeat this process over and over until you have taken hundreds of photographs.You then transfer the photographs to your computer where you use special software to create a video which rapidly displays the photographs in the order they were taken. When you watch the video, the pens move in a circle just as you imagined. You've just created your first stop-motion animation.Stop-motion animation techniques include object animation, clay animation, puppet animation, and cutout animation. The primary difference among these techniques is the type of object used to create the animation. Stop-motion animation can also be combined with live action movie or video footage using a process called compositing.Object animation is one of the most widely used stop-motion techniques. In this type of animation, simple objects are used to create the animation. For example, a photographer might use a child's rubber duck instead of a detailed chicken model with movable body parts.Stop-motion animation using more complex models with detailed textures and movable parts is called puppet animation. Puppet animation derives its name from the fact that the complex models used look and move like puppets. Tim Burton's film The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) was made using stop-motion puppet animation.Each object or character is sculpted from clay or other such similarly pliable material as Plasticine, usually around a wire skeleton called an armature, and then arranged on the set, where it is photographed once before being slightly moved by hand to prepare it for the next shot, and so on until the animator has achieved the desired amount of film. Upon playback, the mind of the viewer perceives the series of slightly changing, rapidly succeeding images as motion.A consistent shooting environment is needed to maintain the illusion of continuity: objects must be consistently placed and lit, and work must proceed in a calm environment.Producing a stop-motion animation using clay is extremely laborious. Normal film runs at 24 frames per second (frame/s). With the standard practice of "doubles" or "twos" (double-framing, exposing two frames for each shot) 12 changes are usually made for one second of film movement. Shooting a 30-minute movie would therefore require making approximately 21,600 stops to change the figures for the frames; a full-length (90-minute) movie, 64,800—and possibly many more if some parts were shot with "singles" or "ones" (one frame exposed for each shot).The object must not be altered by accident, slight smudges, dirt, hair, or dust. Feature-length productions have generally switched from clay to

rubber silicone and resin cast components: Will Vinton has dubbed one foam-rubber process "Foamation". Nevertheless, clay remains a viable animation material where a particular aesthetic is desired.Clay animation can take several forms:"Freeform" clay animation is an informal term referring to the process in which the shape of the clay changes radically as the animation progresses, such as in the work of Eliot Noyes, Jr. and Ivan Stang's animated films. Clay can also take the form of "character" clay animation, where the clay maintains a recognizable character throughout a shot, [2] as in Art Clokey's and Will Vinton's films.One variation of clay animation is strata-cut animation, in which a long bread-like loaf of clay, internally packed tight and loaded with varying imagery, is sliced into thin sheets, with the camera taking a frame of the end of the loaf for each cut, eventually revealing the movement of the internal images within. Pioneered in both clay and blocks of wax by German animator Oskar Fischinger during the 1920s and 1930s, the technique was revived and highly refined in the mid-1990s by David Daniels, an associate of Will Vinton, in his 16-minute short film "Buzz Box".

Puppet animation

Wire-framing clay models

Another clay-animation technique, one that blurs the distinction between stop motion and traditional flat animation, is called clay painting (also a variation of the direct manipulation animation process), wherein clay is

placed on a flat surface and moved like wet oil paints (as on a traditional artist's canvas) to produce any style of images, but with a clay look to

them.A sub variation clay animation can be informally called "clay melting".[3] Any kind of heat source can be applied on or near (or below) clay to cause it to melt while an animation camera on a time-lapse setting slowly films the process. For example, consider Vinton's early short clay-animated film "Closed Mondays" (co produced by animator Bob Gardiner) at the end of the computer sequence. A similar technique was used in the climax scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark to "melt" the faces of the antagonists.The term "hot set" is used amongst animators during production. It refers to a set where an animator is filming. The clay characters are set in a perfect position where they can continue shooting where they left off. If an animator calls his set a "hot set," then no one is allowed to touch the set or else the shoot would be ruined. Certain scenes must be shot rather quickly. If a scene is left unfinished and the weather is perhaps humid, then the set and characters have an obvious difference. The clay puppets may be deformed from the humidity or the air pressure could have caused the set to shift slightly. These small differences can create an obvious flaw to the scene. To avoid these disasters, scenes normally have to be shot in one day or less.

Each object or character is sculpted from clay or other such similarly pliable material as Plasticine, usually around a wire skeleton called an armature, and then arranged on the set, where it is photographed once before being slightly moved by hand to prepare it for the next shot, and so on until the animator has achieved the desired amount of film. Upon playback, the mind of the viewer perceives the series of slightly changing, rapidly succeeding images as motion.A consistent shooting environment is needed to maintain the illusion of continuity: objects must be consistently placed and lit, and work must proceed in a calm environment.Lighting a stop-frame set is similar to lighting for live-action, it's just on a smaller scale. However, consider also how well plasticine and hot glue will survive if you are using powerful lamps.We also recommend using lamps rather than daylight for and if possible with blackout. Then you don't have to worry about light changes outside. However, sometimes for convenience you have to rely on daylight. So find a place where no direct sunlight will fall for the whole day, and be aware of the sun moving round

Three point lighting

and casting shadows.Three-point lighting is a standard method used in visual media such as theatre, video, film, still photography and computer-generated imagery.[1] By using three separate positions, the photographer can illuminate the shot's subject (such as a person) however desired, while also controlling (or eliminating entirely) the shading and shadows produced by direct lighting.

The key light, as the name suggests, shines directly upon the subject and serves as its principal illuminator; more than anything else, the strength, color and angle of the key determines the shot's overall lighting design.In indoor shots, the key is commonly a specialized lamp, or a camera's flash. In outdoor daytime shots, the Sun often serves as the key light. In this case, of course, the photographer cannot set the light in the exact position he or she wants, so instead arranges it to best capture the sunlight, perhaps after waiting for the sun to position itself just right.

A portrait with three-point lighting: a 300 watt key light, a 150 watt back light, and fill light from a bounce board

The fill light also shines on the subject, but from a side angle relative to the key and is often placed at a lower position than the key (about at the level of the subject's face). It balances the key by illuminating shaded surfaces, and lessening or eliminating chiaroscuro effects, such as the shadow cast by a person's nose upon the rest of the face. It is usually softer and less bright than the key light (up to half), and more to a flood. Not using a fill at all can result in stark contrasts (due to shadows) across the subject's surface, depending upon the key light's harshness.

Four point lighting

Sometimes, as in low-key lighting, this is a deliberate effect, but shots intended to look more natural and less stylistic require a fill.In some situations a photographer can use a reflector (such as a piece of white cardstock mounted off-camera, or even a white-painted wall) as a fill light instead of an actual lamp. Reflecting and redirecting the key light's rays back upon the subject from a different angle can cause a softer, subtler effect than using another lamp.The back light (a.k.a. the rim, hair, or shoulder light) shines on the subject from behind, often (but not necessarily) to one side or the other. It gives the subject a rim of light, serving to separate the subject from the background and highlighting contours.Back light or rim light is different from a kick in that a kick (or kicker) contributes to a portion of the shading on the visible surface of the subject, while a rim light only creates a thin outline around the subject without necessarily hitting the front (visible) surface of the subject at all.The background light is placed behind the subject(s), on a high grid, or low to the ground. Unlike the other three lights, which illuminate foreground elements like actors and props, it illuminates background elements, such as walls or outdoor scenery. This technique can be used to eliminate shadows cast by foreground elements onto the background, or to draw more attention to the background. It also helps to off-set the single eye nature of the camera, this means that it helps the camera give depth to the subject.If we talk about “Cutout Animation Technique”, is a unique technique in its own way. It involves producing animations using flat characters, props and backgrounds which are cut from materials such as   papers, cards or even photographs. The world’s earliest known animated feature films were cutout animations made in Argentina by Quirino Cristiani as early as 1917.Not all stop motion requires figures or models; many stop motion films can involve using humans, household appliances and other things for comedic effect. Thus, Stop motion using objects is sometimes referred to as Object animation.Stop-motion animation is usually created with puppets, and the most famous stop-frame animated characters are probably Wallace & Gromit, and King Kong. Following are some of the techniques in building models…Although any size of character is feasible: small puppets can be difficult to manipulate, and close-ups on faces might not work. On the other hand, large puppets can be unwieldy.

Pay particular attention to how the character will stand and move, it is important to establish this before actual modelling takes place. Puppets should be as light as possible and certainly not top heavy. A skeleton of soft aluminium wire (more expensive but far superior to ordinary wire) can

be twisted together with the feet exaggerated to provide stability. A pinboard or thick polystyrene set base will let you push dress pins through the feet to maintain stability.

Another technique is to use a metal base with magnets positioned under the base to attract metal nuts or plates concealed in the soles of the characters' feet. At a more specialist level, engineered armatures are used to achieve both stability and articulation.

Whatever approach you take to stabilising the characters, try it out before commencing detailed modelling. And, as with all animation, it is important to have a clear idea worked out in a storyboard. For example a minor character at a desk, might not need legs that move, or possibly might not need legs at all!

Facial expressions are possible, but it takes patience and plasticine faces can easily become distorted. Eyes, made from white beads, can be moved using a needle inserted through the hole. The science of Time-lapse photography bears resemblance with the technique of stop motion animation.

Time-lapse photography is a technique whereby the frequency at which film frames are captured (the frame rate) is much lower than that used to view the sequence. When played at normal speed, time appears to be moving faster and thus lapsing. For example, an image of a scene may be captured once every second, then played back at 30 frames per second; the result is an apparent 30 times speed increase. Time-lapse photography can be considered the opposite of high speed photography or slow motion.Processes that would normally appear subtle to the human eye, e.g. the motion of the sun and stars in the sky, become very pronounced. Time-lapse is the extreme version of the cinematography technique of undercranking, and can be confused with stop motion animation. The frame rate of time-lapse movie photography can be varied to virtually any degree, from a rate approaching a normal frame rate (between 24 and 30 frames per second) to only one frame a day, a week, or longer, depending on subject.The term "time-lapse" can also apply to how long the shutter of the camera is open during the exposure of each frame of film (or video), and has also been applied to the use of long-shutter openings used in still photography in some older photography circles. In movies, both kinds of time-lapse can be used together, depending on the sophistication of the camera system being used. A night shot of stars moving as the Earth rotates requires both forms. A long exposure of each frame is necessary to enable the dim light of the stars to register on the film. Lapses in time

between frames provide the rapid movement when the film is viewed at normal speed

As the frame rate of time-lapse approaches normal frame rates, these "mild" forms of time-lapse are sometimes referred to simply as fast

motion or (in video) fast fore-lapse resembles a VCR

Two examples of both techniques are the running sequence in Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1989) in which Eric Idle outraces a speeding bullet, and Los Angeles animator Mike Jittlov's 1980 short and feature-length film, both titled The Wizard of Speed and Time, released to theaters in 1987 and to video in 1989. When used in motion pictures and on television, fast motion can serve one of several purposes. One popular usage is for comic effect. A slapstick style comic scene might be played in fast motion with accompanying music. (This form of special effect was often used in silent film comedies in the early days of the cinema; see also liquid electricity).

Time Lapse Photography

Animatronics

MATERIALITY

Character modelling is an important element of stop motion animation. Therefore, special attention is paid to the materiality of modelling substance which enables easy manipulation of the character. PLASTICENE:Plasticene is what's generally referrred to as "modeling clay". It's also known as Plastilena (Italian spelling I think) and I've sometimes seen it called "plastercine" (Brittish maybe?).It's an oil-based clay that never hardens. This is the kind used for "claymation". Actually that's not entirely true, because in most so-called claymation films most of the bodies of the puppets are actually made from different materials and only certain parts are made from plasticene, namely those parts the animator needs to manipulate like the faces and hands.

Plasticine-Used for making models

The Van Aken brand is considered one of the best. They make a line called Claytoons that comes in a great range of colors and should be available at many art supply and craft stores. There is also Roma Plastilena, an Italian clay used by sculptors that comes in varying degrees of hardness but only in a few colors. Chavant is another manufacturer of plasticene, and also make varying grades of hardness, but again it's more for sculptors and doesn't cme in the range of colors a clay animator would need. These clays are good for making prototypes that will be used for molds.DO NOT PUT PLASTICENE IN THE OVEN!!! It will only melt into a greasy puddle and create a fire hazard. People sometimes get mixed up and think all modeling clays will harden if baked the way polymer clay does, but that's not true. Read the label... if it doesn't say to bake it, then don't.POLYMER CLAYS:These are similar in some respects to plastilene, but once done sculpting with them, you bake them in the oven and they harden into a plasticlike consistency. Popular brands are Super Sculpey and Sculpey 3 (stay away from the original white Sculpey, it's sticky and hard to work with), Sculkpey Premo which is their premium line, Fimo and Cernit in Europe (I believe both are very hard and difficult to sculpt with until they've been "conditioned" either by running through a pasta machine a few times or beating with a club for a while).

A stop motion animation film being shot

People often ask about using a polymer clay to do clay animation with, as a substitute for plasticene. This is not recommended, because these clays all require some degree of conditioning prior to working. If you let it sit overnight and try to bend it the next day, it will crack. The Sculpey line is softer and requires less conditioning than the European brands, but a pasta machine ($40.00 or less on ebay) is still recommended, or else get ready to knead it in your hands for a good while.EPOXY -These include Magic Sculpt, Aves Apoxie Sculpt and Apoxie Clay and also there are some sold at hardware stores for use in plumbing and various household tasks... one good line being Devcon. Epoxies come in two parts that must be thoroughly kneaded together to begin the chemical reaction that will result in their hardening. You CAN mix them in your bare hands, but it's not recommended. You have to mix for a while, until the color becomes completelyEVEN  and it begins to feel soft and warm. A good idea is to wear some rubber gloves, at least while you're blending it together, or at least have a cup of water handy so you can clean it off your hands. If it starts to harden on your hands it will take a few days to pick it all out of your skin, and it doesn't feel good! After you have it thouroughly mixed, it's a good idea to let it sit for a few minutes (maybe while washing your hands) and it will solidify a little... at first it's too soft to work with.

A lit stop motion animation set

Generally speaking the hardware store varieties will come with an "open time" or "working time" of anywhere from 5 minutes to maybe 20 minutes, meaning you have that long to manipulate it and then you need to keave it alone and let it set up. If you keep working it you'll only mess it up. The artist's grades, like Magic Sculpt and the Apoxie line give you a longer working time, maybe up to a few hours. The thing to keep in mind is how long do you need to work on your sculpt.... if it can be done in an afternoon or in a few minutes, an epoxy putty will work, but if you need longer then go with a polymer clay.SULPHER-FREE CLAYS:

Just as an aside, I'll mention a few specialty clays here too. For making silicone molds you want to use a clay that doesn't have sulpher in it (most plasticenes do). Chavant makes a brand called Chavant NSP (Non-Sulpherated Clay), and there's also a brand called Kleen Clay that has no sulphur.

WATER BASED CLAY:

Also sometimes called WED clay (Walter E Disney, who created it for the Disney studios). This is a fast-drying air dry clay that is used for making

Stop motion animation software

A stop motion animation set

maquettes (rough sculptures to determine pose and details for a more complete work). Like traditional ceramic clays it must be kept moist by spraying it with water and covering it with a damp towel and maybe a plastic dropcloth overnight so it doesn't dry out. It is very soft and works like butter... but I find it's like working with mud and seems to suck the moisture out of my hands leaving them feel extrmely dry. I'd say wear rubber gloves or work it with tools. Water clay is really not at all suitable for clay animation, but could be useful for making props or set pieces, or maybe making heads to be used for silicone moulds.

For rigidity, characters are wire framed so as to provide them a definite form. That is quite similar to how we humans have bones. The armature is a fundamental part of the sculpture. In very basic terms it is the skeleton or support structure that will hold your clay as you sculpt the figure. It isIMPORTANT  not to take short cuts or work hastily without proper planning, as this will result in much unnecessary frustration later on.

For beginners an armature can seem complicated and overwhelming not knowing where to begin. This is a simple system that works quite well and can make an armature in a relativelySHORT  amount of time (usually 30 minutes for a 12" armature!) 

There are some clays out there that are self-supporting and therefore do not require they use of a support armature. These materials are clay/wax

Camera and the keypad Use of chrome key to manipulate backgrounds in stop motion.

hybrids that areLIGHT  in weight and fairly rigid when cool like Castilene, which will be covered in another segment. This is a very in-depth and complex subject, and I don’t intend to cover everything... I don’t think that’s even possible! This is just a basic primer, to get you started. Armed with this information, you should have a decent idea of how to continue your research. 

GENERAL REQUIREMENTSNo matter what kind of camera you use, it needs to meet these basic requirements in order to be able to shoot decent stopmotion with it. Keep in mind that the ideal solution would be to have rock solid control over each frame so as not to introduce inconsistencies. FULL SCREEN RESOLUTIONWell, this one really only applies to the webcams... the rest are going to be full screen by default. many webcams can’t do full broadcast resolution (640x480). If it doesn’t then you won’t be able to watch the resulting animation full screen on your tv or computer later- it will just be a little window in the center. This would be acceptable if you only intend to put small videos on the web, but for anything else you’ll want broadcast resolution. MANUAL FOCUS

You DON’T want your camera auto-focusing... it will change focus every time something moves in it’s field of view. Not very pleasant, I can assure you! A zoom is a nice additional bonus, but not necessary. You only want optical zoom, not digital... the way digital zooms work is by enlarging the pixels themselves, so the image loses resolution and gets blocky as it zooms in. MANUAL IMAGE CONTROLFeatures you should be able to manually override include gain, exposure (sometimes called iris) and white balance. Some cameras offer additional

Webcam: beginner’s stop motion animation camera!

manual controls, like color saturation or hue. These are just bonuses, and not necessary since these things can be much better controlled in post production using a program like Photoshop, Quicktime Pro or After Effects. WEBCAMSThis is the cheapest and simplest way to go, and to cinch the deal, webcams will work problem-free with a framegrabber program. Unlike film cameras, you don’t have to wait until the entire roll of film is exposed and developed to see what you’ve got... in fact you can stop at any point along the way and watch what you’ve already shot, then pick up right back where you left off animating. I always recommend that beginners start out with a webcam and a framegrabber... it’s a great way to get some experience at animating while doing research toward the bigger better camera you’ll spend your hard-earned cash on in the future. To be completely realistic about this, a lot of people get all fired up about stopmotion and buy expensive cameras and equipment, and after a while realize they just don’t have the patience or the drive to stick with it. In the event this happens, you’ll only be out a hundred dollars or less. And, once you’ve got a camera and can start doing some animation, the pressure is off. What I mean is, if you’re reading all the great forums here on the message board, and you’re dreaming up fantastic ideas you can’t wait to put on screen, the tendency is to jump the gun and just buy the first halfway decent camera you run across... it’s like doing the grocery shopping while you’re hungry (never a good idea). So, think of a webcam as a good nutritious snack that can keep you going till dinner. And actually, a good webcam like the Unibrain Fire-i (Firewire) or the Logitech Quick-Cam Pro 4000 (USB) will give excellent results that are full broadcast resolution and look great. Most of the tests on my site were shot with my little Unibrain: http://www.darkstrider.net/table1.htmlPROSWebcams are cheap, they work flawlessly with a framegrabber system and with the right webcams you can get good broadcast quality animation. And you get instant feedback... you can watch what you’ve shot immediately, even in mid-shot.CONSThe lenses aren’t great, they can’t be interchanged for better quality lenses, and it can be hard to attach a webcam to a stable tripod. Some do have tripod mounts, including the new model of the Unibrain, and I believe the Quick Cam Pro 4000 as well. FILM CAMERASYes, film is still viable, even in this digital age. And the great thing is, a “vintage” camera made as much as 50 years (or more) ago is still perfectly good today, assuming it’s in decent condition. With digitals, three or four years can make them obsolete.There are 3 formats of motion picture camera that can be used for stop motion... super-8, 16mm, and 35mm. There are actually a few more, but these are the common choices that are within the budgets of an amateur filmmaker (well, maybe 35mm is outside that range for most). The really

old, regular 8mm cameras might still function, but nobody is making film for them anymore, and they’re simply not as good as super-8, which replaced them.What you need to look for in any kind of cine camera is a single frame feature of some sort. Sometimes there’s a button near the trigger, or more often there will be a socket that you need to screw a remote cable into. If a camera doesn’t have a single-frame feature, you can’t accurately shoot individual frames with it. Harryhausen started out with a 16mm camera that didn’t have this feature, and he would tap the button as fast as he could, hoping to only get one frame each time, but would usually get 2 or even 3. Makes for some very jerky animation. Of course, if you get your footage transferred to video and imported into your computer you can edit out all the unwanted frames, but that’s time consuming and will give you a massive headache.Of the film cameras, the super-8s are the least expensive, as is film and processing for them. Step up to 16mm (for a more professional look) and expect to pay twice as much on average for film and processing. Many 16mm cameras have a spring drive device that can be hand wound, but this can result in uneven exposure, so for these cameras it’s recommended to get what’s called an animation motor. Not every 16mm camera will take a single-frame motor... it has to have a special kind of shaft to fit. Make sure you’re getting one that will accept an animation motor. 35mm cameras are beyond the price range of most beginners, and I don’t know much about them anyway, so I’ll leave off here for film cameras.PROSFilm looks great. In fact, people are always asking how they can get “the film look” shooting on digital video. Most film cameras have quality optics and many allow for swapping lenses. Cine cameras offer timed exposure, and film can be backwound to create in-camera dissolves, double exposures, and matte effects. Most of these effects can be quite nicely duplicated in the digital realm however through software applications (for digital cameras).CONSFilm will cost you, as will developing. The bigger the film format, the more it’s going to cost. Also you have to wait for it to come back from the lab to see what you’ve shot. CAMCORDERSYou can use ANY camcorder for stopmotion, assuming you use it properly. Now, to qualify that statement, NO camcorder (with the exception of the Sanyo IDshot) will shoot single frames. You have to use them in conjunction with your computer, running a framegrabber program to ‘capture’ images from the live video feed. And yes, you can even use your old analog camcorder that’s been gathering dust since you bought it in the 80s. For that you’d need to get an analog/digital signal converter. Canopus makes a good line of these at affordable prices, some are cards you insert into your computer and some are standalone devices like the ADVC-100 (Analog/Digital Video Converter).

If you get a DV camcorder then you won’t need a converter. But in either case, you need to make sure your computer has either Firewire or USB ports (whichever the camera or digital converter has).When using a camcorder for stopmotion, you DO NOT use any tape or record anything with the camcorder itself... you only use it to provide a live video feed to the computer for a framegrabber to capture images from. Many camcorders will automatically shut down (losing all your stored setting) after 5 minutes if there’s a tape in the deck... what you want to do is take the tape out, and if it still wants to shut down, simply open the tape deck and keep it open while you animate. Don’t run it on batteries... an animation session can go for many hours, and you’ll go through a lot of batteries. Get an AC adapter and plug it into the wall. While there are many softwares available like Monkey Jam and the Anasazi stop motion animator, Stop Motion pro is undisputedly the most professional software. Surface GageStarrett makes great Surface Gages for keeping track of your puppet. But you can find used gages on Ebay all the time. To learn why a Surface Gage is important, read this chapter.

Stop Motion Software / Frame GrabbersThere is an abundance of stop motion software for PCs and Macs, and nowadays, it's essential. The software will assist you during the animation process tremendously. The digital age has given animators the ability to playback their animation, saving many from the headaches of the olden days of film. See the chapter on Stop-Motion Software (Framegrabbers) for more information on grabbers for yourCOMPUTER . There are many options listed at Links: Animation Resources.Dragonframe is extremely popular with animation studios, students and independent filmmakers.  

DrillFor drilling tie-down holes in order to anchor your puppet to the set. Cordless is best. A small vacuum or DustBuster comes in handy for removing any debris. A Dremel Tool is helpful for drilling tiny holes. 

Fun Tak / White TakDAP Products makes a blue, reusable, sticky substance that you will use constantly. It'll keep props in place, plastic eyelids attached to your puppet's face, and willEVEN  keep your notes stuck up on the wall. There are other similar products out there as well, usually white in color.

Stikki Wax/ PyrawaxYou don't want anything moving on your set that isn't supposed to. This is another great product that keeps things in place. It is a harder substance than Fun-Tak and works great to keep props in place. Just pinch off a piece, roll it in your hands to warm it up and stick it to something. When it cools down it hardens. You can mix it with clay to make a sticky wax/ clay compound that some animators call 'Superclay'.

TweezersImportantTOOL  for placing small parts. Tweezerman makes some good ones.

Hot Glue GunIf you're working on a cement floor and you don't care what happens to it, glue everything down.  This means your tripod, set, lights etc. You can scrape it off when you're done. CAUTION! Don't ever touch the glue when its hot. I've seen many badly burned fingers and arms from accidents with hot glue. Be warned! ClayBits of different colored clay come in handy for filling up tie-down holes on your set and for making eyelids. See the chapter on The Properties of Different Clay for more information. Berkey SystemBerkey is a Modular system useful for building rigs for puppet support. 

Thin Fishing Line/ Transparent Thread

Used for flying your puppet or object if not using rod support. 

Allen Wrenches/SCREWDRIVERS

Handy for tightening your Machined Armature

 Bug Pins (Ento Pins)

These are made to mount insects but they are useful to the animator for supporting lightweight objects. T-PinsUse these for making small gages. Pinning clay puppets to pinnable set floors. Many other uses.

StopwatchHelpful when you are working out your timings for your shot

 Mirror

Use your own face to get facial expression and lip sync reference

 DentalTOOLS / Sculpture Tools

These come in handy all the time for sculpting and moving small parts. Go to Sculpture House and check out their modeling tools. 

Assorted Tools

Measuring tape, needle nose pliers, X-Acto knives

Thin Dry Erase Markers/ China Markers/ Grease Pencils

These are good for gaging on your monitor

Foam Core Board

Use this to make flying rigs with an X-Acto and hot glue. Many other uses.

References and Bibliography

Wikipedia.comStopmotionanimation.comFocusfeatures.com