Stop Motion Animation

How successful have modern stop motion techniques been in reaching their target audience.

Claymation - The Nightmare Before Christmas This specific animation was created with the intention to entertain, as it was made in the format of a film. The film was aimed at the younger demographic because of its cartoon-y feel as well as its creator having experience creating products for this age.

Puppet - Fantastic Mr.Fox This animation was created again with the intention to entertain, as it was published as a film. This specific film was aimed at a young audience which is apparent through its bright vibrant colours and easy to follow story line, that would attract their target audience.

Paper Cut Out - Honda Advertisement This animation was created with the intention to inform and educate as it is an advertisement that promotes as well as gives the audience a bit of history into the product. This advertisement would be aimed at those aged 17 and over for it entails vehicles which can only be driven by those that age and above. This animation would have been successful as it covers a large timescale and therefore a large audience.

Found Objects - Planet Fashion Advertisement This animation was used as an advertisement, and therefore was created with the intention to inform the audience about a product.This advertisement was aimed at a working male audience from a wide variety of careers and lifestyles from engineers to travelers. This animation would have been successful because of its professional animation and style that would attract their target audience.

Intro This post will be explaining the in depth process that is taken when creating each type of stop motion from found object to claymation.

Continuity When it comes to stop motion, continuity is the most important factor to understand and do correctly with upmost precision for it there is an unexplained, unwanted change to the stop motion and the continuity is ruined, so is the quality of the stop motion.

Lighting Lighting is another important factor in stop motion that links hand-in-hand with continuity. Lighting can sometimes be the factor that damages the quality of a stop motion product if the light levels constantly change between frames, making the changing frames very obvious and therefore it needs to be taken into serious consideration to create the best possible stop motion product. To create the best possible lighting set-up for capturing the stop motion photo’s, the lighting in the room must always be at the same level with the setup in a place where shadows will not be cast from the light-shade or objects. You must also be careful if working near windows or natural lighting as depending on the time of day and season it will change very often and ruin the continuity - therefore it is most effective to shut the blinds/curtains or work away from sources of natural light. Finally the create the most effective lighting set-up, using a lamp will create a constant source of light for the product and can be moved into specific locations in order to prevent casting a shadow, unlike when working with room lighting alone. In order to prevent moving the lamp when it needs to recharge, place the set-up near a plug socket so the lamp can charge without it having to move from its ideal location and cause continuity issues.

Camera Another important factor when creating a stop motion product is the camera set-up. The camera has to be set-up in a specific constant location in order to prevent a jolted untidy feel to the stop motion which happens when the camera is not kept in the same position. This can be done similar to the lamp with lighting by placing the camera and set-up next to a plug socket. To ensure the camera is steady, using a tripod is the most effective which means that the pictures will fit nicely in sequence - raising the quality of the overall product.

The Process Creating a stop motion product is a simple yet slow and monotonous process that has several different styles (as explained in depth previously). The first step involves setting up the area where the product will take place and adjusting the camera, lighting and objects/characters to their perfect position. This is important as the set-up (lighting and camera) cannot change in the slightest in order to keep a smooth transition between each still. When this is done the creator takes the first still shot and moves the object/character very slightly, taking another picture - creating the illusion of movement. This is done hundreds of times and pieced together at the end during editing in order to make the object/character appear as it is moving. If the object/character is moved too quickly or too differently in comparison to the previous still, the end product will not be as smooth and decrease the overall illusion of movement - for the separate shots will become obvious to locate.

Modern Animation: Found Objects

Object animation is a form of stop motion animation that involves the animated movements of any non-drawn objects such as toys, blocks, dolls and everyday objects. It is created like all the other modern day stop motions by taking a ‘found object’ and taking a picture of it, then moving it ever so slightly and taking a new picture. This is repeated dozens of times in order to give the illusion that the object is moving. This animation is extremely easy to do as the characters used are all everyday objects that can be found anywhere and made into a story. This type of animation however requires the most creative of minds as the character have to be an already existing entity and cannot be created like the other types of modern animation.

The videos made by this creator on YouTube is incredibly popular with over 100 million views for the video shown below, clearly demonstrating that this form of modern animation is extremely popular in the current day.

Because this type of animation is still favored this means that companies still produce advertisements in this way, as shown above, as well as small independent artists using it in order to stand out from the more well known types of modern animation - such as claymation or paper animation.

Modern Animation: Paper Cut Out

Paper cut out stop motion animation is a way of creating animations using flat characters and props shaped out of coloured paper, card or fabric. These shapes are positioned on a surface and moved very slightly between pictures, as in traditional stop motion, in order to give the illusion of movement when the frames and put together in chronological order.

Paper cut out animation is the easiest type of stop motion animation to do because of the lack of skill needed and the availability of the materials needed, meaning any age can do it - something that makes this animation stand out. However it also restricts how much an animator can do with the production as it is in 2D, rather than the rest of the animation techniques covered which is 3D and is the more sought after today.

Even today the use of paper animation is still seen in many different forms of media distribution, including the above Honda advertisement and even a couple of new video games such as Cuphead and Bendy and the Ink Machine use a style that makes the game appear as if it is paper animation, showing the relevance of this type of animation even today.

Modern Animation: Puppet

Puppet animation is the most commonly used technique in stop motion. When creating the animation the characters, which are represented as puppets and are usually made of fabric, are manipulated in order to imitate movement by a minimal change in the position of limbs and expressions for each frame and each picture. When done professionally, it involves a variety of skills including drawing, sculpting, building, molding, sewing, metalwork and more. On the most basic level, however, a stop motion puppet can be a single string of wire.

This is one of the more difficult type of animations to create effectively, as it involves learning a variety of skills to some good standard, and the pieces needed to create the characters can be more expensive than other techniques in stop motion. However it is arguably the most attractive technique in stop motion, especially when working with animals and clothing, as faux fur and cloth is used to replicate this idea - making it truly realistic to the materials and feel of the actual thing.

One of the most well-known puppet animations was Fantastic Mr. Fox (which many people think is actually claymation), originally based off a classic novel written by Roald Dahl.

Modern Animation: Claymation

The term claymation was invented by, now director and producer, Will Vinton who at the time owned an animation studio that helped artist produce claymation movies. Claymation, or clay animation, was brought about in 1897 when modelling clay was first invented. In order to make the claymation animation, the artist would mold characters out of clay and take multiple pictures of them, moving the character very slightly between each one to give the illusion of movement. The first claymation animation film was called The Sculptor's Welsh Rarebit Dream and was produced in 1908 by Edison Manufacturing.

Will Vinton is one of the most known producers/directors that works mostly with stop motion animation - particularly claymation - and has produced award-winning stop motion feature films such as Coraline, ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls and Kubo and the Two Strings.

When evaluating modern animation, I discovered that it is one of the easier techniques to get the materials for as it requires only clay, and sometimes wire, which is widely available and cheap - therefore everyone is able to do this kind of animation. On the otherhand it can be difficult to use clay for animation since it has to be molded by hand and therefore an issue with continuity could appear if the clay is moved and cannot be molded to its original position, or if a finger print remains on the clay.

One of the most famous and well-know claymation movies was Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, that was released in 1993 and took nearly two years to produce. 

The History of Stop Motion: The Praxinoscope

The Praxinoscope was invented in 1876 by French inventor Charles-Emile Reynaud and was the successor to the Zoetrope. This invention used a strip of pictures around the inner surface of a spinning cylinder with an inner circle of mirrors placed in a position so that the reflections of the pictures appeared stationary as the wheel rotated. When looking in the mirrors therefore the person would see a quick succession of images giving the impression of motion.

When evaluating this invention and the previous Zoetrope, it is very obvious that there has been a large margin of improvement for the original narrow viewing slits, that could be difficult to use, have been replaced which lead to a brighter and less distorted picture. This new design however made it more difficult to create as the materials being used were harder to collect and more expensive during the time the invention was created.

The History of Stop Motion: The Daedalum and The Zoetrope

The Daedalum, a reference to the Greek myth of Daedalus, was created a year after the Phenakistoscope in 1833 by British Mathematician William Horner, after studying its mathematical principles. The phases of movement are seen in the form of an infinite loop through the slits in between the changing images. You see one image then no image then a slightly different second image, giving the impression of movement.

The Daedalum later became the Zoetrope, which was invented by William Lincoln and Milton Bradley in 1865. The Zoetrope was almost identical to the design of the Daedalum, however the slits were placed on the level above the pictures rather than between them, which allowed easily replaceable strips of images. When evaluating the new version of the Daedalum, the Zoetrope, I discovered that this same model was then improved 3 years later by James Maxwell which used concave lenses instead of slits, resulting in the image appearing in the middle must sharper and steadier than the original Zoetrope.

The History of Stop Motion: The Phenakistoscope

The Phenakistoscope was invented in 1832 by Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau who was one of the first to promote and create the illusion of the moving image. The idea behind his invention was that you would look through one of the several small slits on a disk, with an image printed on it, and look at the reflection in a mirror. You would then spin the disk which gave the impression of a moving image as each frame of movement was broken up by a slit - preventing the movement from blurring.

This contraption was a simple yet effective idea that was relatively easy to create and provided a new kind of entertainment for a wide range of audiences.

When evaluating this product, I discovered one of the main drawbacks of the Phenakistoscope which is that there is a limited amount of room available for the patterns or objects to be drawn or printed. This results in a limited amount of time for the animation to take place, and therefore it would be unlikely for a narrative to be told through the Phenakistoscope.

The History of Stop Motion: The Thaumatrope

The Thaumatrope was invented in 1825 by English physician John Paris. It was a Victorian toy made from a simple disc or card that when spun by it’s two pieces of string, positioned on either side, the card would rotate and the two images on either side would seen to combine. It was presented to the Royal College of Physicians to represent the persistence of vision. 

Although it was relatively simple it was enjoyable for its target audience of children who were able to both buy the toy, or even make their own personalised ones themselves. 

Unfortunately, this invention would be overwhelmed by the invention of moving image constructions that followed a few years later, for although it gave of illusions of two combining images the image didn’t move - making it less desirable than others.

Introduction to Stop Motion

Stop Motion Animation is a photographic film making technique where an object is placed in front of a still camera and moved multiple times, taking a photo at every one of these instances.

It is the only art form in existence that uses every other art form or technology known to humanity and is one of the oldest film making techniques.

Our first introduction to projection was created by Venetian inventor Giovanni Fontana in 1650 and was named the ‘Magic Lantern’. This was just a lantern with a strip of animation sliding past a crude lens, lit up by a lone candle.

Throughout this blog I am going to evaluate and explore the history of stop motion animation, looking at each invention as time progressed and the audience of the time. I will also be including several of the best stop motion animations of all time, as well as the different formats and techniques used to create these products.