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A stop motion animation of a moving coin.
A stop motion animation of a moving coin.

Stop motion (or frame-by-frame) animation is a general term for an animation technique which makes a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The bouncing ball animation (below consists of these 6 frames The object is moved by extremely small amounts between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames are played as a continuous sequence. Clay figures are often used in stop motion animations, known as claymation, for their ease of repositioning. Clay animation is one of many forms of Stop motion animation Each animated piece either character or background is "deformable"&mdashmade of a malleable substance Software applications such as Stop Motion Pro, istopmotion and monkeyjam have made the technique popular among young filmmakers. Application software is a subclass of Computer software that employs the capabilities of a computer directly and thoroughly to a task that the user wishes to perform Stop Motion Pro is a Stop motion Animation software compatible with Microsoft Windows.

Contents

Technique

The original 1933 King Kong was one of the earliest and most famous uses of stop motion.
The original 1933 King Kong was one of the earliest and most famous uses of stop motion. King Kong is a landmark Black-and-white Adventure film about a gigantic Gorilla named " Kong " and how he is captured from

It is central to the techniques used on popular children's shows such as Gumby and most of the films of Claymation producer Will Vinton and his associates. Gumby is a dark green Clay humanoid figure who was the subject of a 233-episode series of American Television which spanned over a 35-year period Will Vinton (born 1948 is an American director and producer of animated films Clay animation can take the style of "freeform" clay animation where the shape of the clay changes radically as the animation progresses, such as in the work of Eliot Noyes Jr and Church of the Subgenius co-founder Rev. The Church of the SubGenius is a religious group that satirizes Religion, Conspiracy theory, UFOs and Popular culture. Ivan Stang's animated films, or it can be "character" clay animation where the clay maintains a recognizable character throughout a shot, as in Art Clokey's and Will Vinton's films. Rev Ivan Stang (born Douglass St Clair Smith August 21, 1953 in Washington D Arthur C (Art Clokey (born Arthur Farrington October 12, 1921, Detroit Michigan) is a pioneer in the popularization of Stop motion Clay Will Vinton (born 1948 is an American director and producer of animated 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. Clay animation is one of many forms of Stop motion animation Each animated piece either character or background is "deformable"&mdashmade of a malleable substance Strata-cut animation, also spelled stratcut or straticut, is a form of Clay animation, itself one of many forms of Stop motion animation Pioneered in both clay and blocks of wax by German animator Oskar Fischinger during the 1920s and 30s, the technique was revived and highly refined in the mid-90s by David Daniels, an associate of Will Vinton, in his mind-numbing 16-minute short film Buzz Box. Oskar Fischinger ( 22 June 1900, Gelnhausen, Germany — 31 January 1967, Los Angeles) was an abstract animator

A final clay animation technique, and blurring the distinction between stop motion and traditional flat animation, is called clay painting (which is also a variation of the direct manipulation animation process mentioned below) where clay is placed on a flat surface and moved like "wet" oil paints as on a traditional artistic canvas to produce any style of images, but with a clay 'look' to them. Clay painting animation is a form of clay Animation, which is one of the many kinds of Stop motion animation One of the many forms of Stop motion, but certainly blurring the distinction between stop motion and regular flat (drawing or "cel" animation Pioneering this technique was one-time Vinton animator Joan Gratz, first in her Oscar-nominated film The Creation (1980) and then in her Oscar-winning Mona Lisa Descending a Staircase filmed in 1992.

A variation of this technique was developed by another Vinton animator, Craig Bartlett, for his series of "Arnold" short films, also made during the 90s, in which he not only used clay painting, but sometimes built up clay images that rose off the plane of the flat support platform, toward the camera lens, to give a more 3-D stop-motion look to his films. Craig Michael Bartlett (born October 18, 1956 in Seattle Washington) is an Animator best-known for creating the television series Gratz has also collaborated with other animators such as Portland, Oregon's Joanna Priestly to produce films that animated 3-D objects on the flat animation table. An example is Priestly's Candy Jam film, also from the mid-90s, which can also be defined as object animation (defined below). Object animation is a form of Stop motion Animation that involves the animated movements of any non-drawn objects such as toys blocks Dolls etc

Method and variants

Stop motion is used to produce the animated movements of any non-drawn objects, including toys, blocks and dolls. This is known as object animation. Object animation is a form of Stop motion Animation that involves the animated movements of any non-drawn objects such as toys blocks Dolls etc

Stop motion is also the means for producing pixilation, the animation of a living human being or animal, seen in whole or in part. Pixilation (from pixilated) is a Stop motion technique where live actors are used as a frame-by-frame subject in an animated film by repeatedly posing Examples are the films of Mike Jittlov such as his The Wizard of Speed and Time short film (1980) and feature film of the same name (1987-9), the startling French 1989 short Gisele Kerozene by Eisa Cayo and Jan Kunen, and some of the work of Scottish pioneer animator Norman McLaren. Mike Jittlov (born June 8, 1948) is an American Animator and the creator of short films and one feature length movie using forms of

One unusual (and certainly an exacting and laborious) stop motion technique is called pinscreen animation, first developed in Europe in the 1920s and refined in later decades by various animators working for the National Film Board of Canada. Pinscreen animation makes use of a screen filled with movable pins which can be moved in or out by pressing an object onto the screen The National Film Board of Canada (usually National Film Board or NFB) is Canada's public film producer and distributor Pinscreen animation consists of thousands (or even millions) of pins evenly placed on a screen, able to be pushed and/or pulled through the screen, from both sides of the screen. Using a system of rollers, brayers, and other tools, various pins are pushed in and/or out of the screen to varying degrees, all carefully controlled. With lights set up at 90 degree angles to the screen, the shadows of extended pins fall on the heads of more retracted pins, creating a variety of silhouetted images that are animated frame-by-frame as various pins are carefully pushed in and/or out of the screen. An example of this is the 1976 National Film Board of Canada short, Mindscape.

A variation of stop motion (and possibly more conceptually associated with traditional flat cel animation and paper drawing animation, but still technically qualifying as stop motion) is graphic animation which is the animation of photographs (in whole or in parts) and other non-drawn flat visual graphic material. Graphic animation was also used as a History of Playboy Magazine piece used on Saturday Night Live when the magazine's founder Hugh Hefner, appeared on that show Examples are Frank Mouris' 1973 Oscar-winning short film Frank Film and Charles Braverman's Braverman's Condensed Cream of Beatles (1972).

A simplified variation of graphic animation is called direct manipulation animation which involves the frame-by-frame altering (or adding to) a single graphic image, as close as the stop motion process gets to the process of simply animating a series of drawings, which most people associate with the generic "animation" term. One of the many forms of Stop motion, but certainly blurring the distinction between stop motion and regular flat (drawing or "cel" animation Examples of direct-maipulation-animation are parts of J. Stuart Blackton's 1906 Humorous Phases of Funny Faces parts of Winsor McCay's films from the 1910s, sections of Max and Dave Fleischer's Out of the Inkwell series of the 1920s, the chalk animation opening sequence of Will Vinton's Dinosaur (1980), and parts of Mike Jittlov's 1977 short film, Animato, which also uses graphic animation and pixilation.

Mere pieces of paper, sometimes with images drawn upon them, can be animated with stop motion, and is called cutout animation when lit from the camera side of the artwork (or to the sides of the artwork) so as to show the details of the paper such as color, textures, etc. Cutout animation is a unique technique for producing Animations using flat characters props and backgrounds cut from The most prevalent use of cutout animation has been in Eastern Europe, where it has been a popular technique since the 1940s, being used in award-winning films such as Tale of Tales. Eastern Europe is a general term that refers to the Geopolitical region encompassing the easternmost part of the European continent. Tale of Tales (Ска́зка ска́зок Skazka skazok) is a 1979 Soviet Animated film directed by Yuriy Norshteyn In the West, cutout animation is probably better known for having been used to produce the demo pilot for Comedy Central's South Park series (then later simulated via computer animation for the main series). Comedy Central is an American Cable television and Satellite television channel that carries predominantly Comedy programming South Park is an animated American television comedy series created and written by Trey Parker and Matt Stone for Comedy Central

The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) - silhouette animation
The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) - silhouette animation

When backlighted, cutout animation becomes simplified dark (black) images and is referred to as silhouette animation. The Adventures of Prince Achmed (Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed (مغامرات الامير احمد is a 1926 feature-length animated film by the Silhouette animation is Animation in which the characters are only visible as black silhouettes Silhouette animation is Animation in which the characters are only visible as black silhouettes It was used by German animation pioneer Lotte Reiniger for many short films as well as The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926), the oldest-surviving feature-length animated film. Charlotte (Lotte Reiniger ( June 2, 1899 - June 19, 1981) was a German (and later a British) silhouette animator The Adventures of Prince Achmed (Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed (مغامرات الامير احمد is a 1926 feature-length animated film by the

Probably the most passive form of stop motion is time lapse animation in which a stop motion camera is simply clicked (manually or via an electronic intermittent control device called an intervalometer) to take a frame of film as each period of time lapses, as natural objects of nature and mankind move of their own accord, non-interfered with by the animator. Time-lapse photography is a Cinematography technique whereby each Film frame is captured at a rate much slower than it will be played back The most common uses for time lapse stop-motion are moving clouds, seen daily during weather forecasts in moving satellite imagery, the speeding up of the growth of plants, and stars as they appear to "revolve" around the Earth. Although a few film makers experimented with time-lapse movie photography as far back as the silent film days, the main pioneer of the technique was Dr. John Ott, of Sarasota Florida, USA, who also developed the first automated-time-lapse systems for also moving the cameras as they photographed growing plants. Ott even broke the 'rule" of non-manipulation by changing his lights' color-temperatures with various filters and watering (or not watering) his plants to cause them to "dance" up and down in sync to a pre-recorded musical track. Ott did work for the Disney studio in the 50s before evolving into studies of the color-temperature of lights on the health of plants, then animals, and then humans. His "ott-Lights", which produce light specifically designed to stimulate better health in the user, are currently sold at select lighting stores throughout the world. Other time-lapse refiners are Ron Fricke and Geoffery Reggio in films such as Koyaanisqatsi (1983) Baraka (1992), and Chronos (1994); the Oxford Film Labs in Oxford, England, and Dan Ackerman of Portland, Oregon, USA.

All animation, including all stop motion, requires a camera, using either motion picture film or some kind of digital image capturing system, that can expose single frames. A film frame, or just frame, is one of the many single photographic images in a motion picture. It works by shooting a single frame of an object, then moving the object slightly, then shooting another frame. When the film runs continuously in a film projector, or other video playback system, the illusion of fluid motion is created and the objects appear to move by themselves. This is similar to the animation of cartoons, but using real objects instead of drawings.

History

Stop motion animation is almost as old as film-making itself. Of the forms already mentioned, object animation is the oldest, then direct manipulation animation, followed (roughly) by sequential drawings on multiple pages, which quickly evolved into cel animation, with clay animation, pixilation, puppet animation, and time-lapse being developed concurrently next. Object animation is a form of Stop motion Animation that involves the animated movements of any non-drawn objects such as toys blocks Dolls etc One of the many forms of Stop motion, but certainly blurring the distinction between stop motion and regular flat (drawing or "cel" animation Traditional animation, also referred to as classical animation, cel animation, or hand-drawn animation, is the oldest and historically the most popular Clay animation is one of many forms of Stop motion animation Each animated piece either character or background is "deformable"&mdashmade of a malleable substance Pixilation (from pixilated) is a Stop motion technique where live actors are used as a frame-by-frame subject in an animated film by repeatedly posing Time-lapse photography is a Cinematography technique whereby each Film frame is captured at a rate much slower than it will be played back The first instance of the stop motion technique can be credited to Albert E. Smith and J. Stuart Blackton for The Humpty Dumpty Circus (1898), in which a toy circus of acrobats and animals comes to life. James Stuart Blackton ( January 5, 1875 - August 13, 1941) usually known as J In 1902, the film, Fun in a Bakery Shop used clay for a stop-motion "lightning sculpting" sequence. French trick film mistro Georges Méliès used it to produce moving title-card letters for one of his short films, but never exploited the process for any of his other films. Georges Méliès ( December 8, 1861 &ndash January 21, 1938) full name Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès, was a French The Haunted Hotel (1907) is another stop motion film by James 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. Segundo Víctor Aurelio Chomón y Ruiz ( October 17 1871 in Teruel - May 2 1929) was a pioneering Spanish film director El Hotel eléctrico ( The Electric Hotel in Spanish) is a 1908 silent Spanish Comedy film fantasy directed by Spanish film pioneer In 1908, A Sculptor's Welsh Rarebit Nightmare was released, as was The Sculptor's Nightmare, a film by Billy Bitzer. French animator Emil Cole impressed audiences with his object animation tour-de-force, The Automatic Moving Company in 1910.

One of the earliest clay animation films was Modelling Extraordinary, which dazzled audiences in 1912. December 1916, brought the first of Willie Hopkin's 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, Romeo and Juliet.

The great European stop motion pioneer was Ladyslaw Starewicz (1892-1965), who animated The Beautiful Lukanida (1910), The Battle of the Stag Beetles (1910), The Ant and the Grasshopper (1911), Voyage to the Moon (1913), On the Warsaw Highway (1916), Frogland (1922), The Magic Clock (1926), The Mascot, (aka, The Devil's Ball) (1934), In the Land of the Vampires (1935), and the feature film The Tale of the Fox (1937), to name but a few of his over fifty animated films. Vladislav Starevich ( August 8, 1882 - February 26, 1965) born Władysław Starewicz, was a Polish Stop-motion For the French folktales also referred to as "tales of the Fox" see Reynard.

Starewicz was the first filmmaker to use stop-action animation and puppets to tell consistently coherent stories. He began by producing insect documentaries which, in turn, led to experiments with the stop-action animation of insects and beetles. Initially he wired the legs to the insects' bodies, but he improved this substantially in the ensuing years by creating leather and felt-covered puppets with technically advanced ball & socket armatures. One of his innovations was the use of motion blur which he achieved, most likely, by the use of hidden wires, which, because they were moving, didn't register on film during long exposures of each frame. Motion blur is the apparent streaking of rapidly moving objects in a still image or a sequence of images such as a movie or Animation.

His techniques took hold among the avant-garde in Eastern Europe in the 1920s and '30s, growing out of a strong cultural tradition of puppetry. Avant-garde (avɑ̃gaʁd in French) means "advance guard" or "vanguard Puppetry is a form of Theatre or Performance which involves the Manipulation of Puppets. One such artist was Russian/Ukrainian filmmaker Alexander Ptushko, whose first major work, The New Gulliver (Russian: Новый Гулливер, Novyy Gullivyer) (1935), was the first feature film to use 3-D stop motion animation (Lotte Reiniger's feature film The Adventures of Prince Achmed had used 2-D stop motion in 1926) and the first to combine stop-motion with live action footage. Aleksandr Lukich Ptushko ( Александр Лукич Птушко; in Lugansk, currently Ukraine -- March 6, 1973 in Moscow The New Gulliver ( Новый Гулливер, Novyy Gullivyer is a Soviet Stop motion - animated cartoon and the first Russian ( transliteration:,) is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages Events Judy Garland signs a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM In the Film industry, a feature film is a Film made for initial distribution in theaters and being the "main attraction" of the screening Charlotte (Lotte Reiniger ( June 2, 1899 - June 19, 1981) was a German (and later a British) silhouette animator The Adventures of Prince Achmed (Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed (مغامرات الامير احمد is a 1926 feature-length animated film by the Events August - Warner Brothers debuts the first Vitaphone film Don Juan. Ptushko built 1,500 separate puppets for this remarkable film. Each of the puppets had a detachable head, which made them capable of a wide range of expressions and personality.

Other notable artists include the influential Czech animator Jiří Trnka. Jiří Trnka (ˈjɪr̝iː ˈtr̩ŋka ( 24 February 1912, Plzeň - 30 December 1969, Prague) was a Czech The aesthetic tradition of the puppet film was continued by Bretislav Pojar, Kihachiro Kawamoto, Ivo Caprino, Jan Švankmajer, Jiri Barta, Stephen and Timothy Quay (Brothers Quay), the Bolex Brothers, and Galina Beda. Břetislav Pojar (born October 7, 1923) is a Puppeteer, Animator and director of short and Feature films Born in Ivo Caprino ( Oslo, February 17 1920 &ndash February 8 2001 in Oslo was a Norwegian Film director and Jan Švankmajer (born 4 September 1934 in Prague) is a Czech surrealist artist Stephen and Timothy Quay (born 17 June 1947 in Norristown Pennsylvania, United States) are American identical twin brothers better known

A notable stop motion object animator was Germany's Oskar Fischinger who animated anything he could get his hands on in a series of impressive short abstract art films during the 20s and 30s. The best example is his 1934 film, Composition in Blue. Fischinger was hired by Disney to animate the "rolling hills" footage used in the opening "Toccata & Fugue" sequence of Fantasia (1940).

The great pioneer of American stop motion was Willis O'Brien (1886-1963). Willis H "O'Bie" O'Brien ( March 2, 1886 - November 8, 1962) was a pioneering In 1914, O'Brien began animating a series of short subjects set in prehistoric times. He animated his early creations by covering wooden armatures with clay, a technique he further perfected by using ball & socket armatures covered with foam, foam latex, animal hair and fur. Birth of a Flivver (1915), Morpheus Mike (1915), The Dinosaur and the Missing Link: A Prehistoric Tragedy (1916), R. The Dinosaur and the Missing Link is a 6 minute-long comedy silent film animated by Willis O'Brien that premiered in 1915, and is one of O'Brien's only F. D. 10,000 B. C. : A Mannikin Comedy (1917/18), The Ghost of Slumber Mountain (1919), The Lost World (1925), King Kong (1933), The Son of Kong (1933), and, with the assistance of a young Ray Harryhausen, Mighty Joe Young (1949), yet these were but a few of the many films he animated. The Ghost of Slumber Mountain was a 1918 film written and directed by special effects pioneer Willis O'Brien, produced by Herbert M The Lost World is a 1925 Silent film adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle 's book of the same name. King Kong is a landmark Black-and-white Adventure film about a gigantic Gorilla named " Kong " and how he is captured from Son of Kong is a 1933 adventure movie and a Sequel to the successful film King Kong. Ray Harryhausen (born Raymond Frederick Harryhausen on June 29, 1920 in Los Angeles California) is an Academy Award -winning Mighty Joe Young is an RKO Radio Pictures Film made in 1949 by the same creative team responsible for King Kong. O'Brien's Nippy's Nightmare (1916) was first film to combine live actors with stop-motion characters. His partnership with the great Mexican-American model makers/craftsmen/special effects artists/background painters/set builders, Marcel Delgado, Victor Delgado and Mario Larrinaga, led to some of the most memorable and remarkable stop-motion moments in film history. Marcel Delgado ( January 16, 1901 in Coahuila, Mexico - November 26, 1976 in Los Angeles, California

O'Brien's imaginative use of stop-motion, and his ambitious and inventive filmmaking, has inspired generations of film greats such as Ray Harryhausen, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson, Jim Danforth, Art Clokey, Pete Kleinow, Tim Burton, David Allen, Phil Tippett and Will Vinton, as well as thousands of lesser known animators, both professional and amateur. George Walton Lucas Jr (born May 14, 1944) is an Academy Award -winning American Film director, producer, Screenwriter Steven Allan Spielberg, KBE (Hon (born December 18 1946 is an American Film director, Screenwriter and producer. Peter Robert Jackson, CNZM (born 31 October 1961 is a three-time Academy Award -winning New Zealand director producer and writer best known for directing Jim Danforth is a master Stop-motion Animator, well-known for his model-animation work and Matte painting skill Arthur C (Art Clokey (born Arthur Farrington October 12, 1921, Detroit Michigan) is a pioneer in the popularization of Stop motion Clay Peter E "Sneaky Pete" Kleinow ( August 20 1934 - January 6 2007) was an American Timothy "Tim" William Burton (born August 25 1958 is an American Film director, Screenwriter and Set designer, notable for the quirky This article is about the film and television animator for other persons of the same name see David Allen. Phil Tippett (born 1951) is a movie director and an award-winning Visual effects Supervisor and Producer who specializes in creature Will Vinton (born 1948 is an American director and producer of animated films Many leading Science-Fiction and Fantasy writers also credit him as a great source of inspiration.

One of the more idiosyncratic early users of stop-motion techniques was the American comedian and cartoonist Charles Bowers who employed stop-motion techniques (which he called the "Bowers Process") in his series of silent short comedies in the 1920s and early 1930s. Charles R Bowers ( 1889 - November 26, 1946) was an American Cartoonist and slapstick comedian during the Silent In his 1926 film Now You Tell One, he skillfully uses stop-motion to create such effects as a straw hat growing on a man's head, cats growing out of a plant, and a mouse firing a gun. [1]

Puppeteer Lou Bunin created one of the first stop motion puppets using wire armatures and his own rubber formula. Lou Bunin was a prominent Puppeteer, an artist and pioneer of Stop-motion animation in the latter half of the twentieth century The short, satiric film about World War II entitled Bury the Axis debuted in the 1939 New York World's Fair. The 1939-40 New York World's Fair, Flushing Meadows-Corona Park (also the location of the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair) was one of the largest Bunin went on to produce a feature-length film version of Alice in Wonderland with a live-action Alice and stop-motion puppets portraying all the rest of the characters. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865 is a novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson better known under the Pseudonym Lewis Bunin was blacklisted in the 1950s but still managed to create numerous TV commercials using stop motion techniques, as well as a number of children's short films.

Willis O'Brien's student Ray Harryhausen made many movies using a more elaborate version of puppet animation called model animation, first pioneered by O'Brien, mainly for his feature length films, the difference being that model animation strives to be "photo-realistic" enough to be able to be combined with live action elements to create a final fantasy sequence that allows the audience to suspend their disbelief that they are watching animation elements. Ray Harryhausen (born Raymond Frederick Harryhausen on June 29, 1920 in Los Angeles California) is an Academy Award -winning Model animation is a form of Stop motion animation designed to merge with live action footage to create the Illusion of a real-world fantasy sequence Example of his model animation techniques; most famously, are the seven-skeleton sequence from Jason and the Argonauts (1963). Jason and the Argonauts ( 1963) is a Columbia Pictures fantasy Feature film starring Todd Armstrong as the titular But aside from the more "disguised" stop motion efforts of O'Brien and Harryhausen, America and Britain were slower to embrace the stop-motion film, and so its use mainly grew out of other locations and sources.

One acclaimed European puppet animation producer to break out in America was Hungarian animator George Pal, who, partially working in The Netherlands, produced a series of films in Europe during the 30s before coming to Hollywood to create more shorts in the 40s, now called Puppetoons under the Paramount banner, seven of which were nominated for Academy Awards for best animated film. George Pal ( February 1, 1908 &ndash May 2, 1980) born György Pál Marczincsák, The Netherlands ( Dutch:, ˈnedərlɑnt is the European part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, which consists of the Netherlands the Netherlands George Pal 's Puppetoons were a series of animated puppet films made in Europe in the 1930s and in the U Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American motion picture production and Distribution company, based in Hollywood California. In the late 40s, Pal evolved into feature film production, incorporating puppet animation into a live action setting in such films as The Great Rupert (1949), tom thumb (film) (1958), and The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1963). The Great Rupert, is a 1950 comedy / Family film, produced by George Pal, directed by Irving Pichel and starring tom thumb is a 1958 US-made Fantasy - Musical film directed by George Pal and released by MGM. The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962 is a Cinerama film directed by Henry Levin, who had a long career directing movies such as Journey Pal used model-animation (animated by Jim Danforth) in two other feature films, The Time Machine (1960) and 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964), the latter nominated for a Special Effects Oscar, and the former winning the EFX Oscar award. The Time Machine (AKA HG Wells' The Time Machine) is a 1960 Science fiction film based on British Science Fiction writer 7 Faces of Dr Lao is a 1963 film adaptation of the 1935 fantasy novel The Circus of Dr Pal's work is documented in two feature films by Arnold Lebovitt, released in the mid-80s, The Puppetoon Movie and The Fantastic World of George Pal which are currently available on DVD. The Puppetoon Movie is a 1987 animated film made of dozens of Puppetoons shorts by George Pal with Your Host Gumby and Pokey the Horse More of Danforth's skilled model animation can be seen in Jack the Giant Killer (1962), the ending fire ladder sequence for It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963), "The Zanti Misfits" and "Counterweight" episodes of the original The Outer Limits TV series (1963), and, with equally prolific model animator David Allen, in Equinox (also titled "The Beast") (1967, 1970), Flesh Gordon (1974), and the prehistoric comedy Caveman (1981). Jack the Giant Killer ( 1962) is a United Artists Feature film starring Kerwin Mathews in a fairy tale story about a young man who It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World is a 1963 American Comedy film directed by Stanley Kramer about the madcap pursuit of $350000 " The Zanti Misfits " is an episode of the original The Outer Limits television show A counterweight is an equivalent counterbalancing weight that balances a load For the album by Progressive Metal band Voivod see The Outer Limits (album. Equinox is a 1970 American Horror film. Originally made in 1967 under the title The Equinox Flesh Gordon is a 1974 science fiction and comedy adventure film Caveman is a 1981 Slapstick Comedy film financed by George Harrison, written and directed by Carl Gottlieb and starring

Dominating children's TV stop-motion programming for three decades in America was Art Clokey's Gumby series, which lasted into the 70s, and spawned a feature film, Gumby I in 1995. Gumby is a dark green Clay humanoid figure who was the subject of a 233-episode series of American Television which spanned over a 35-year period Using both freeform and character clay animation, the series also used much object animation as Gumby and his clay pals interacted with various toys. Clokey started his adventures in clay with a 1953 freeform clay short film called Gumbasia (1953) which shortly thereafter propelled him into his more structured Gumby TV series.

The Walt Disney studio dabbled with puppet-object animation in 1959 with the release of a 21-minute experimental short, Noah's Ark, nominated for an animated film Oscar for that year. Walter Elias Disney (December 5 1901 – December 15 1966 was a multiple Academy Award -winning American Film producer, director, Screenwriter Disney didn't exploit the technique until their association with Tim Burton, starting with Burton's short film Vincent in 1982. Vincent is a 1982 Stop-motion Short film written designed and directed by Tim Burton and Rick Heinrichs

Although not technically animation, American children's television in the 1950s had often used string-puppets (also called marionettes, an entirely live-action process which some people have mistaken for a form of animation), such as those in Howdy Doody and various children's science fiction series such as Supercar and Fireball XL5 in the early and mid 60s, spoofed in the 2004 feature film, Team America: World Police. Supercar was a children's TV show produced by Gerry Anderson and Arthur Provis's AP Films for ATV and ITC Entertainment. Fireball XL5 was a Science fiction -themed children's television show produced in Slough, Berkshire, UK in 1962 by the husband and Team America World Police is a 2004 Comedy film, written by Trey Parker, Matt Stone, and Pam Brady and directed In Britain the glove-puppet had been part of popular culture from the days of Punch and Judy, with American glove puppet counterparts featured in Bob Clampett's late 1940s & 50s TV show of Time for Beany in the Los Angeles area (an early multiple Emmy winner, which he developed into the animated cartoon series Beany and Cecil in the early 60s), and Shari Lewis' NBC hand puppet shows featuring "Hush Puppy", "Charley Horse" and most famously "Lamb Chop" in the early 60s, all influences on the later highly developed and refined puppet work of Jim Henson. Punch and Judy is a traditional popular English Puppet show featuring the characters of Punch and his wife Judy Time for Beany was an American Television series with puppets for characters which aired locally in Los Angeles starting in 1949 and nationally on the improvised Shari Lewis (born Sonia Phyllis Hurwitz; January 17, 1933 – August 2, 1998) was a Jewish American The National Broadcasting Company ( NBC) is an American Television network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Lamb Chop is a Fictional Sock puppet sheep created by Comedian For other uses of "Henson" see Henson. James Maury "Jim" Henson (September 24 1936 &ndash May 16 1990 was one of

In November 1959 the first episode of Sandmännchen was shown on East German television, a children's show that had Cold War propaganda as its primary function. Unser Sandmännchen, Das Sandmännchen, Abendgruß, Sandmann, Sandmännchen (Little Sandman) is a German children's bedtime television Cold War is the state of conflict tension and competition that existed between the United States and the Soviet Union (USSR and their respective allies from the New episodes are still being produced in Germany, making it one of the longest running animated series in the world. However, the show's purpose today has changed to pure entertainment.

In the 1960s, the French animator Serge Danot created the well-known The Magic Roundabout (from 1965) which played for many years on the BBC. Serge Danot (1931 in Nantes, France &mdash 23 December 1990 was a French animator and former advertising executive The Magic Roundabout (Known in the original French as Le Manège enchanté) was a children's television programme created in Another French/Polish stop-motion animated series was Colargol (Barnaby the Bear in the UK, Jeremy in Canada), by Olga Pouchine and Tadeusz Wilkosz. Colargol is a fictional bear created by French writer Olga Pouchine in the 1950s

A British TV-series The Clangers (1969) became popular on television. The British artists Brian Cosgrove and Mark Hall (Cosgrove Hall Films) produced a full-length film The Wind in the Willows (1983) and later a multi-season TV-series The Wind in the Willows based on Kenneth Grahame's classic children's book of the same title. Cosgrove Hall Films is a British Animation studio based in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester, England that is a major producer of children's The Wind in the Willows is a 1983 79-minute film by the studio Cosgrove Hall for Thames Television and aired on the ITV network The Wind in the Willows is a 52-episode TV series that originally aired between 1984 and 1987 based on characters from Kenneth Grahame 's classic story The Kenneth Grahame ( March 8, 1859 – July 6, 1932) was a British Writer, most famous for The Wind in the Willows The Wind in the Willows is a classic of Children's literature by Kenneth Grahame, first published in 1908. They also produced a documentary of their production techniques, Making Frog and Toad.

Disney once again 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 50th in 1978. Mike Jittlov (born June 8, 1948) is an American Animator and the creator of short films and one feature length movie using forms of Mickey Mouse is a comic animal Cartoon character who has become an icon for The Walt Disney Company.

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. For the 2006 film see Black Hole (2006 film The Black Hole is a 1979 Science fiction movie directed by Titled Major Effects, Jittlov's work stood out as the best part of the special. Jittlov released his footage the following year to 16 mm 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. The Wizard of Speed and Time is a 1989 low-budget feature film written directed and starring animator Mike Jittlov, as well as a 1979 16 mm 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.

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 kitties Mio and Mao. Quaq Quao was an Italian Animated television series for children based on the adventures of a Duck. (from oru meaning "folding" and kami meaning "paper" is the ancient Japanese Art of Paper folding.

A stop-motion animated series of Tove Jansson's "The Moomins" (from 1979), produced by Film Polski and Jupiter Films was also a European production, made in different countries like Poland and Austria. Tove Marika Jansson ( August 9, 1914 – June 27, 2001) was a Finnish Novelist, painter, Illustrator The Moomins ( Swedish: Mumin, Finnish: Muumi) are the central characters in a series of Books and a Comic strip by Finnish This stop-motion was rather primitive, sometimes the puppets "moved" by a series of stills instead of showing actual movements.

In North America, Jules Bass produced a series of popular Christmas specials such as Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman (using 'Animagic', their trade name for their version of stop motion puppetry) (1964). Jules Bass (born September 16, 1935 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American director producer composer and author Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is a song and popular Christmas story about Santa Claus 's ninth and lead reindeer who possesses an unusually red-colored " Frosty the Snowman " is a popular song written by Walter "Jack" Rollins and Steve Nelson and first recorded by Gene Autry and the Cass County The specials were animated in Japan by Japanese stop-motion pioneer Tadahito Mochinaga. For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic Japan topics. also known as Tad Mochinaga, was a pioneer Japanese Stop-motion animator Another clay-animated children's TV series Davey and Goliath, produced by Art Klokey, lasted from 1960 to 1977. Davey and Goliath was the title of a 1960s Stop-motion animated television series Rankin/Bass also produced a puppet animation feature length film, Mad Monster Party in 1967 and combined puppet animation with live action in The Daydreamer, their feature film released in 1966. Rankin/Bass Productions Inc (formerly Videocraft International Ltd Mad Monster Party? is an animated movie that was released in 1967 by Embassy Pictures for Rankin/Bass Productions Inc The Daydreamer is a 1966 Rankin/Bass Stop-motion puppet animation and Live-action musical Fantasy film.

A puppet animation feature-length film directed by Marc Paul Chinoy and based on the famous "Pogo" comic strip was produced in 1980. Pogo was the title and central character of a long-running (1948-75 daily Comic strip created Titled I go Pogo, it was aired a few times on American cable channels but, sadly, was never released to video.

Although seemingly a natural marriage, stop-motion has very rarely been shot in stereoscopic 3D throughout film history. Stereoscopy, stereoscopic imaging or 3-D (three-dimensional imaging is any technique capable of recording three-dimensional visual Three-dimensional space is a geometric model of the physical Universe in which we live The first 3-D stop-motion short is In Tune With Tomorrow[2] (aka Motor Rhythm) (1939) by John Norling[3]. The second stereoscopic stop-motion release is The Adventures of Sam Space[4] (1955) by Paul Sprunck[5]. The third and latest stop-motion short in stereo 3-D is The Incredible Invasion of the 20,000 Giant Robots from Outer Space[6] (2000) by Elmer Kaan[7] & Alexander Lentjes[8][9][10]. This is also the first ever 3-D stereoscopic stop-motion & CGI short in the history of film. Allegedly, the very first all-stop-motion 3-D feature is scheduled for a 2008 release: Coraline[11] by Henry Selick, being produced out of Nike shoe founder Phil Knight's new "Leika" animation studio in Portland, Oregon, formerly Will Vinton's "Claymation" studio. For the vampire character Coraline on the television series "Moonlight", see Moonlight (TV series. Henry Selick (born November 30 1952) is an American Stop motion director, producer and writer who is best known for directing

Current work

Aardman also produced commercials and music videos, notably the video for Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer", which uses most of the animation techniques outlined above, including pixilation which involved Gabriel holding a pose while each frame was shot and moving between exposures, effectively becoming a human puppet. Aardman Animations Ltd, also known as Aardman Studios, is an Academy Award -winning British Animation studio based in Bristol, Peter Brian Gabriel (born 13 February 1950 in Chobham, Surrey, England) is an English Musician and Songwriter. Pixilation (from pixilated) is a Stop motion technique where live actors are used as a frame-by-frame subject in an animated film by repeatedly posing More recently Aardman used this technique on a series of short films for BBC Three entitled Angry Kid, which starred a live actor wearing a mask. BBC Three is a television channel from the BBC broadcasting via Digital cable, terrestrial, IPTV and satellite platforms Angry Kid is a series of Stop motion animations from Darren Walsh at Aardman Animations, depicting the mini-adventures of a 15 year old British The actor's pose and the mask's expression had to be altered slightly for each exposure. Aardman has also created many films, of which some have become household names. Nick Park joined Aardman after they took interest in his college project, A Grand Day Out. A Grand Day Out (full name A Grand Day Out with Wallace and Gromit) is an award-nominated 1989 Animated film directed and animated Since then, Nick Park has worked for Aardmans, and also made with them: The Wrong Trousers, Creature Comforts, A Close Shave, "Cracking Contraptions", and more recently, the feature film Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, co-produced with DreamWorks Animation. The Wrong Trousers is a 1993 Animated film directed by Nick Park at Aardman Animations in Bristol, featuring his characters Creature Comforts was originally a 1989 Short film made in United Kingdom about how Animals feel about living in a Zoo, and later became A Close Shave is a 1995 Animated film directed by Nick Park at Aardman Animations in Bristol, featuring his characters Wallace & Gromit The Curse of the Were-Rabbit is a 2005 British stop-motion animated film the first feature-length Wallace and Gromit DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc ( is an independent American Animation studio which primarily produce a series of critically and commercially successful Nick Park is currently making a new Wallace and Gromit short (30 minutes) called Trouble at' Mill, which is expected to be broadcast in late 2008. A Matter of Loaf and Death (formerly Trouble at' Mill) is a forthcoming Television short created by Nick Park, and the fourth of his

Cuppa Coffee Studios is based in Toronto and has also pioneered many of the modern techniques associated with Stop Motion. Started in 1992 by Adam Shaheen and Bruce Alcock, the company has grown to now the single largest producer of Stop Motion for TV with over 250 employees and 38 Studios. They have produced the classic Celebrity Death Match, Rick and Steve, Starveillance, A Very Barry Christmas and JoJo's Circus. Celebrity Deathmatch is a Claymation Parody Television show that pits celebrities against each other in a Wrestling ring Rick & Steve The Happiest Gay Couple In All The World is a Stop motion animated sitcom created by Q Starveillance is a Claymation television series created by Celebrity Deathmatch creator Eric Fogel that debuted JoJo's Circus is a Musical comedy series for Preschool children

Another more complicated variation on stop motion is go motion, co-developed by Phil Tippett and first used extensively on the film Dragonslayer (1981) and the final sequence of Howard the Duck (1986), which involves programming a computer to move parts of a model slightly during each exposure of each frame of film, combined with traditional hand manipuation of the model in between frames, to produce a more realistic motion blurring effect. Go motion is a variation of Stop motion Animation, and was co-developed by Industrial Light & Magic and Phil Tippett for the 1980 Phil Tippett (born 1951) is a movie director and an award-winning Visual effects Supervisor and Producer who specializes in creature Dragonslayer is a 1981 Live action Fantasy movie set in a fictional medieval country similar to Britain. Howard the Duck (also known as Howard A New Breed of Hero in Europe is a 1986 live-action film produced by Lucasfilm and Motion blur is the apparent streaking of rapidly moving objects in a still image or a sequence of images such as a movie or Animation. Tippet also used the process extensively in his impressice short film, "Prehistoric Beast", circa 1990, and his go motion tests acted as motion models for the first photo-realistic use of computers to depict dinosaurs in Jurassic Park in 1993. Jurassic Park is a 1993 Science fiction film directed by Steven Spielberg and based on the novel of the same name by Michael A lo-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). Vladislav Starevich ( August 8, 1882 - February 26, 1965) born Władysław Starewicz, was a Polish Stop-motion

Although nowadays the almost universal use of CGI (computer generated imagery) has effectively rendered stop motion obsolete as a serious special effects tool in feature film, its low entry price, and still-unique "look" and "feel" on film means it is still used on some projects such as in children's programming (most notably on the acclaimed "Bump in the Night" series from the 1990s), as well as in commercials and comic shows such as Robot Chicken. Computer animation Computer-generated imagery (also known as CGI) is the application of the field of Computer graphics or more specifically 3D computer graphics Robot Chicken is an Emmy -Award Winning American Stop motion animated television series created by Seth Green and Matthew The argument that the textures achieved with CGI cannot match the way real textures are captured by stop motion also makes it valuable for a handful of movie-makers, notably Tim Burton, whose puppet-animated film Corpse Bride was released in 2005. Adam Jones, Grammy Award-winning guitarist/musician/visual artist for the Grammy Award-winning progressive rock band Tool,[1] uses stop motion capturing techniques for the majority of Tool's music videos as well. The band members of Tool do not appear in their videos, but rather use a combination of clay animation and stop motion. Jones' studies began in 1983 at the Hollywood Makeup Academy by learning "straight make-up". His focus of interest shifted to film, and he began to work as a sculptor and special effects designer for such films as Jurassic Park and Terminator 2: Judgment Day. It was here where he learned the stop-motion camera techniques he would later apply in Tool's music videos: "Sober" (on which he collaborated with Fred Stuhr), "Prison Sex", "Stinkfist", "Ænima", "Schism", and "Parabola". [2]

The internet is also home to hundreds, and possibly thousands, of short digital films known as Brickfilms. A brickfilm is any Film made using LEGO, Mega Bloks, or other similar plastic construction block toys Brickfilms films are, for the most part, object animation stop motion films featuring LEGO minifigures as a vital component. Object animation is a form of Stop motion Animation that involves the animated movements of any non-drawn objects such as toys blocks Dolls etc Lego, officially trademarked LEGO, is a line of construction Toys manufactured by the Lego Group, a privately Minifigures are small Plastic figural Toys produced by Danish toy manufacturer Lego, which are customarily sold with Lego sets as characters The limited flexibility of Lego's minifigs make for both ease of use and less than realistic action, which might be said to constitute a vital part of their appeal.

Another craze on the internet are youths purely animating with clay figures on public video sites such as Google video. They are often extremely simple, bordering on "freeform", but effective. Some barely have a face, but the comedic or violence proportions exceeding those of conventional clay puppets, with grisly crime scenes riddled by clay gunfire and hapless victims falling in a sniper's cross hairs. The comedy helps the viewer enjoy the animation without noticing the simpleness of the clay puppet. Many younger people begin their experiments in movie making with stop motion. Many new stop motion shorts combine brickfilming and clay animation into a new form. [12]

In the 60s and 70s, independent clay animator Eliot Noyes Jr. refined the technique of "free-form" clay animation with his Oscar-nominated 1965 film Clay or the Origin of Species and He Man and She Bar (1972). Noyes also used stop motion to animate sand laying on glass for his musical animated film Sandman (1975). 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. Norman McLaren, C C, C Q (b April 11 1914 - d January 27 1987) was a Scottish-born Canadian Animator Notable among these are the pinscreen-animation films of Jacques Drouin, Alexeiff Parker, and Gaston Sarault such as Mindscape (1976).

Corky Quakenbush created three dozen stop motion animated films for Fox network's Mad TV in the late 1990s that helped fuel a movement of comic stop-motion for adults. Parodying famous feature movies and TV shows, the shorts drew their humor from the mixing of the innocence of puppets and the profanity of violence in mainstream contemporary situations. One example is Raging Rudolph, written by Spencer Green and Mary Vilano, a re-telling of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" as if directed by Martin Scorsese. Quakenbush also created "reality animation" to mimic handheld documentary newsgathering for Clops, written by Blaine Capatch, a parody of the groundbreaking reality show, Cops in which puppet policement bust famous stop-motion characters. COPS is an American Documentary television series that follows Police officers and Sheriff 's deputies during patrols and other police Other parodies followed, such as Furious George, a spoof of the innocent Curious George children's book series. Curious George is the Protagonist of a series of popular Children's books by the same name written by Hans Augusto Rey and Margret Rey.

Tim Burton is very active in the field of stop motion animation. One of Burton's first films, Vincent, is a six minute stop motion animation about a young boy who wants to be Vincent Price. Vincent is a 1982 Stop-motion Short film written designed and directed by Tim Burton and Rick Heinrichs In 1993, Burton produced the all-stop motion animation The Nightmare Before Christmas. The Nightmare Before Christmas (also known as Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas) is a 1993 stop-motion Fantasy The film was in production for three years due to the length of time it takes to shoot stop motion. The main characters in the film were puppets that in order to create realism in the film were structured hundreds of face models with different expressions. The film is based on a poem Burton wrote inspired by "T'was the Night Before Christmas" it was then directed by Henry Selick. Selick later directed the adaptation of James and the Giant Peach, a blend between stop motion animation and live action film. James and the Giant Peach is a 1996 Fantasy film directed by Henry Selick, based on the Roald Dahl book of the same name In 2005 Corpse Bride was released, another stop motion piece from Burton. Burton is a major director when it comes to stop motion, due to the scale of the films he produces. Computer animation of the aliens for his 1996 science fiction comedy, Mars Attacks was deliberately made to look like stop motion when the film's budget didn't allow for the use of the actual stop motion process, blurring the line between the two forms of animation. Mars Attacks was a highly popular Science fiction Trading card series released in 1962.

In the 1970s and 80s, Industrial Light & Magic often used stop motion model animation for the Original trilogy of Star Wars. Industrial Light & Magic ( ILM) is a motion picture Visual effects company that was founded in May 1975 by George Lucas and is owned Star Wars is an epic Space opera franchise initially conceived by George Lucas during the 1970s and significantly expanded Star Wars is an epic Space opera franchise initially conceived by George Lucas during the 1970s and significantly expanded The chess sequence in Episode 4 A New Hope, the Tauntauns and machine walkers in Episode 5 The Empire Strikes Back and various Imperial machines in episode 6 Return of the Jedi are all stop motion animation, some of it using the Go Motion process. The out-of-control machines in the first two "Robocop" feature films use Phil Tippett's Go Motion version of stop motion also. Stop motion was also used for some shots of the final sequence of the first "Terminator" movie, as they were for the scenes of the small alien ships in Spielberg's Batteries Not Included in 1987, animated by David Allen. *batteries not included is a 1987 family film directed by Matthew Robbins about an apartment block under threat from property development which is saved by cute

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). The Crater Lake Monster is a 1977 B-rated Horror film directed by William R Q (also known as The Winged Serpent and as Q - The Winged Serpent) is a 1982 Horror film written Allen's King-Kong Volkswagen commercial from the 1970s is now legendary among model animation enthusiasts.

In the 1990s Trey Parker and Matt Stone made two original shorts and the pilot of South Park almost entirely out of construction paper. Randolph Severn "Trey" Parker III (born October 19, 1969) is an American Animator, Screenwriter, Film director Matthew Richard "Matt" Stone (born May 26, 1971) is an Academy Award - nominated Emmy Award - winning American Animator South Park is an animated American television comedy series created and written by Trey Parker and Matt Stone for Comedy Central

The animated series Robot Chicken continues to primarily utilize stop-motion animation, using custom made action figures and other toys as principal characters. Robot Chicken is an Emmy -Award Winning American Stop motion animated television series created by Seth Green and Matthew An action figure is a posable character Figurine, made of Plastic or other materials and often based upon a movie, Comic book, Video game Other action figures, called Stikfas are very popular stop motion figures and aren't extremely expensive.

See also

References

  1. ^ GRAMMY.com
  2. ^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Jones#Film_work

External links

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