Welcome to the world of stop motion animation.

Stop motion animation

is a filming technique that manipulates objects to look as if they are
moving on their own: the objects are moved ever so slightly between
each photo being taken creating the illusion that objects are moving
continuously as the frames are played, this illusion is called
'persistence of vision'. This happens because the frame's rate is
moving faster than the speed human eye can comprehend. It is this
illusion that is called persistence of vision.

Frame rate per second is how many pictures are in one second, if a it
says 12 frames per second then it is a very quick frame because there
there are only very few pictures in that one second whereas if you have 100
then it will be a lot slower because the video needs to add more picture
into a certain frame.

The two most famous stop motion animators working today are Tim
Burton and Nick Parks of Aardman animations. Both have managed to
adapt their skills of Claymation to suit different audiences and that
is why they have become two of the biggest names in the world of stop
Aardman was started in 1972 by Peter Lord and David Sproxton.
who created Morph, one of the most recognizable characters ever for a
kids [Link] 4 subsequently commissioned a show called
'conversational pieces' in 1982. Since then Aardman made adverts, TV
shows and Oscar-winning feature-length films with the Wallace and
Gromit series. Aardman animations differ from Tim Burton's work; they
create colorful films for the whole family. Rather than making
mythical or impossible characters, Aardman anthropomorphizes instead
of using puppets their signature look is clay and wire. This makes it a
lot easier to change the characters’ emotions. The problem with this
type of animation is that if something goes wrong then you have
restart the whole scene because it would make the scene look jumpy if
the mouth shifted very suddenly in another direction it would also
make it look unrealistic. This process of stop motion with this material
makes the whole process a lot longer than with puppets or another
material for that matter. With 40 animators working on feature length
film, 20 frames per second instead of the usual 24 and with over 20
characters you can understand why it takes them so long to create an
Aardman films. In the pursuit of realism, each of the characters wore
different scarfs, not only to tell them apart but to hide the seams in the
clay.

With Tim Burton, it is his growth in the film industry that makes him so
unique and irreplaceable to Hollywood. His talent of being able to go
from stop motion films like Nightmare before Christmas to films like
Beetlejuice. Tim Burton creates sinister cartoons, with the characters
usually being undead and having human emotions and problems
except these human traits tend to be exaggerated like the groom in
Corpse Bride. Burton is known for his classic gothic films for young
teenagers, films like Beetlejuice, Nightmare before Christmas, and
Alice in Wonderland. Alice in Wonderland made $1 billion worldwide.
He has a signature look with his films, which is a decaying look even if
they are bright colors there will still be a dingy look to it all. Burton has
a career as a director these days moving from the role of an animator
for the Disney corporation in the 1980s. With all of his stop motion
films where he uses materials he makes the animators use their non-
dominant hand to manipulate and create the figures so that they can
portray if signature, twisted look.

Nightmare before Christmas reflected Burton’s talent as an animator.

The film had 227 puppets involved in it with 21 frames per second and the
lead character Jack Skeleton had approximately 400 heads. Each
smile, each frown had to be changed ever so slightly to convey every
emotion. The film took 3 years to make. You can easily see the
inspiration/techniques he had learnt from past animators like Willis
O’Brien with his idea of moving the models ever so slightly and taking
picture on each movement to create the illusion of all the separate
pictures moving as one. Except Burton was one of the first
animators/directors to use different emotions on characters and
certainly the first to make the characters so dramatic with dancing and
singing. This would have put great strain on his animators because it
would have that to create the persistence of vision; the frames per
second would have to be amped up and dropped down depending on
the tempo of the song. These days, you could fix that with editing
equipment but in the early 90’s the editing equipment wasn’t
sophisticated enough.

Now let’s start from the beginning: the inventors that help us see the
persistence of vision would create the idea of stop frame and frame
rates and the people who revolutionised the movement of models. The
Pioneers of this technique were the Lumiere brothers and George Pal.

Thomas A. Edison created the kinetoscope, this ran film between a light
and a peep hole, and when you look through the peep hole it created
the illusion of all the images moving as one. He wanted to make an
instrument which recorded and reproduced the pictures in a motion like
the phonograph had done for the human ear. The film reel was
stretched over two wheels that rotated the images like a conveyor belt.
The 'tape' had to be very tight to make a clear picture; if the cogs
buckled then the film stopped and could ruin the film reel. There were
so many cogs with the kinetoscope that when it was cranked it made
so much noise and distracted the audience; but later versions of the
instruments were improved which led to the invention of the
Cinematograph. The Lumière brothers created the first ever film.
projector called the cinematograph. Which meant they also created the
first projector which meant the first cinemas, they took the inspiration
from the kinetoscope which shone light onto images to make the
illusion of them moving each time the light stopped for less than a
second. The brothers' invention put the film reel inside, in-between a
light and a lens. The light would shine on the film and therefore
project it. The machine was hand cranked and went around the speed
of 16 frames per second which was considerably faster than Edison’s
Kinetescope which went at 48 fps. This meant that a lot less film was
used and that the noise of the machine was reduced because it ran
smoother overcoming the noise problem of Edison’s Machine. The films
didn’t buffer nearly as much as Edison’s because the film was placed
on a wheel, so when the hand crank is turned the wheel with the film
on runs on it.

The movement of models in stop motion first started with George Pal.
Pal was a pioneer of stop motion, he created the first science fiction
films. He first started illustrating posters and then once his talent was
recognized he worked at the UFA Studios in Berlin and shortly after
joining became director of his department. He created the idea of stop
motion photography, unlike Willis O'Brien who invented the concept of
making stop motion into persistence of vision. Instead of a cartoon
approach to his work, Pal invented his own way of making inanimate
objects move by using stop motion photography. He was one of the
first animators/directors to personify inanimate objects for example he
gave cigarette ‘faces’. Pal created the idea that with each movement
you could take a picture and create the illusion of the image moving.
He was the first person to combine the unknown of space and stop motion.
which from a stop frame point of view allows a lot more room for
creative movement because the audience won’t know how the
monsters move. This opened up a lot more ideas for how to make stop
motion models as before this there were only pictures or static models
but Pal created models with clay – a technique which to this day is still
used for feature length stop motion films. The use of clay allowed the
A story that possesses both a narrative and the ability to focus on emotions.
and move the limbs.

Willis O’Brien developed CGI effects in animation as early as 1949. He

helped create one of the most iconic scenes in film history; King Kong
on New York's Empire State Building. O'Brien made the giant gorilla out
of modeling clay and came up with the idea that if you moved the
model very gradually and took a photo on each movement and editing
the separate pictures to make the illusion of the pictures moving like
film. He used a large frame rate this means there were a lot of pictures
per second, the frame rate for the Empire State scene was 24 frames
per second. His contributions to films such as the Lost World and Joe
Young didn't go unnoticed in Hollywood. The ASIFA-Hollywood said 'he
was responsible for the best moving images in cinematic history.
won countless awards including 'best visual effects' at the Academy
Awards 1950 for Mighty Joe Young. A young O’Brien spent his spare
time drawing and sculpting this earned him a job as a draftsman at an
architect firm and then a cartoonist for the San Francisco Daily News.
As assistant to the head architect of the 1915 San Francisco World’s
Some of his sculptures were displayed and this is where he was.
first recognised as an artist. The pieces that were displayed were
animated sculptures from O'Brien's past jobs like his model of a
dinosaur and a caveman from his job as a paleontologist. Because of
his groundbreaking work in the animation industry, Herman Wobber
an exhibitor saw his talents and offered him a commission to make his
own short film. Edison hired him to animate short films with prehistoric
themes behind them. It was O’Brien that developed models in stop
motion by using different materials like clay, better pictures and better
technology with understanding that the more frames you have per
second, the better the outcome.

Ray Harryhausen was one of the most influential stop motion animators.
and was inspired by George Pal’s science fiction shorts and Willis
O’Brien's action stop motion scenes. Harryhausen is most well-known
for feature films such as Clash of the Titans in 1981 and Jason and the
Argonauts in 1961. He created a kind of stop motion called
'dyanimation' which is essentially models working with human actors.
Such as this classic skeleton fight scene from Jason and the
Argonauts. As you can see in the skeleton battle here, the film was
over lapped so it make it seem as though the actors and skeletons
were shot at the same time but what actually happens is the actors are
filmed first on set and then the models are on a white set with exactly
the same lighting that so that they can crop the foreground out so it
Looks like the monsters and the actors are on the same set. After
seeing King Kong Harryhausen was fascinated by stop motion and so
took it up as a hobby but a friend was able to set up a meeting where
O’Brien could critique his work; he was told to go to art design and
sculpture classes, shortly after he was hired by George Pal to create
short animated films. It was this that led to the creation of dynamation and
then work with O’Brien.

References

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