List of stop motion artists - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Henry Selick

Henry Selick is an American stop motion director, producer and writer who is best known for directing The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach and Coraline...

is a well-known force in the world of stop motion

Stop motion

Stop motion is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence...

animation, with Coraline
Coraline (film)
Coraline is a 2009 stop-motion 3D fantasy/horror children's film based on Neil Gaiman's 2002 novel of the same name. It was produced by Laika and distributed by Focus Features. Written and directed by Henry Selick, it was released widely in US theaters on February 6, 2009, after a world premiere at...

– based on Neil Gaiman's best-selling novella and released in 2009 – being his most recent and successful work. Coraline
Coraline (film)
Coraline is a 2009 stop-motion 3D fantasy/horror children's film based on Neil Gaiman's 2002 novel of the same name. It was produced by Laika and distributed by Focus Features. Written and directed by Henry Selick, it was released widely in US theaters on February 6, 2009, after a world premiere at...

, the first stop motion animated feature to be shot entirely in stereoscopic 3-D, received lavish critical praise and became the second highest grossing stop motion feature in history. Kenneth Turan, writing for the Los Angeles Times, said, "The third dimension comes of age with 'Coraline.' The first contemporary film in which the 3-D experience feels intrinsic to the story instead of a Godforsaken gimmick, 'Coraline' is a remarkable feat of imagination, a magical tale with a genuinely sinister edge." Coraline, released by Focus Features, is the first feature film made by LAIKA, an animation company based in Portland, Oregon and headed up by Travis Knight.
Selick made his feature film directing debut in 1993 with The Nightmare Before Christmas
The Nightmare Before Christmas
The Nightmare Before Christmas, often promoted as Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, is a 1993 stop motion musical fantasy film directed by Henry Selick and produced/co-written by Tim Burton. It tells the story of Jack Skellington, a being from "Halloween Town" who opens a portal to...

, the first full-length, stop motion feature from a major studio. An instant holiday classic based on producer Tim Burton's story, "Nightmare" was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects and Selick won the International Animated Film Society's Annie Award for Best Creative Supervision.
In 1996, Selick followed with a second feature, James and the Giant Peach
James and the Giant Peach (film)
James and the Giant Peach is a 1996 musical fantasy film directed by Henry Selick, based on the 1961 novel of the same name by Roald Dahl. It was produced by Tim Burton and Denise Di Novi. The film is a combination of live action and stop-motion animation....

, again produced by Burton, which combined stop motion animation

Animation

Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...

with live-action book ends. The film received widespread critical acclaim and won first prize at the world-renowned Annecy Film Festival in 1997.

Selick studied animation at CalArts in California in the late 1970s with classmates John Lasseter

John Lasseter

John Alan Lasseter is an American animator, director and the chief creative officer at Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios. He is also currently the Principal Creative Advisor for Walt Disney Imagineering....

, Brad Bird

Brad Bird

Phillip Bradley "Brad" Bird is an Academy Award-winning American director, voice actor, animator and screenwriter. He is best known for writing and directing Disney/Pixar's The Incredibles and Ratatouille . He also adapted and directed the critically acclaimed 2D animated 1999 Warner Brothers...

, and John Musker

John Musker

John Musker is an American animation director. Along with Ron Clements, he makes up the duo of one of the Disney animation studio's leading director teams.-Life and career:...

. Joe Ranft

Joe Ranft

Joseph Henry "Joe" Ranft was an American screenwriter, animator, storyboard artist and voice actor who worked for Pixar and Disney. His brother, Jerome Ranft, is a sculptor who also worked on several Pixar movies....

, Tim Burton, Jorgen Klubien, and Rick Heinrichs also attended CalArts, and both groups worked together at Disney Studios, with Ranft, Burton, Klubien, and Heinrichs collaborating with Selick in the years that followed on his feature films. While an animator at Disney, Selick received a grant to make an experimental short film, Seepage, that combined hand-drawn animation with life-size cut-out human figures that he animated with stop motion. Leaving Disney in the early 80's, Selick moved to the Bay Area of California to work on the cut-out animated feature, Twice Upon A Time as a sequence director. He went on to direct many stop motion TV ads including nine Pillsbury Doughboy

Pillsbury Doughboy

Poppin' Fresh, more widely known as the Pillsbury Doughboy, is an advertising icon and mascot of The Pillsbury Company, appearing in many of their commercials. Many commercials from 1965 until 2004 conclude with a human finger poking the Doughboy's stomach...

spots, but it was his work on his stop motion ads for MTV and his short pilot episode, Slow Bob In The Lower Dimensions, that caught the public's eye and reunited him with his old friend Burton, who, fresh off his success as a live-action director, revived his brilliant idea for a film, The Nightmare Before Christmas
The Nightmare Before Christmas
The Nightmare Before Christmas, often promoted as Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, is a 1993 stop motion musical fantasy film directed by Henry Selick and produced/co-written by Tim Burton. It tells the story of Jack Skellington, a being from "Halloween Town" who opens a portal to...

, and asked Selick to direct it. Selick put together a studio in San Francisco called "Skellington Productions" with producer Kathleen Gavin and production manager Phil Lofaro and grew his small band of story artists, animators, puppet makers, set builders, and lighters – including Ranft, Eric Leighton, Trey Thomas, Anthony Scott, Paul Berry, Pete Kozachik, Bo Henry, Bonita DeCarlo, etc. – into a full-fledged production team who spent three years making the film. Burton, directing first "Batman Returns" and then "Ed Wood Jr." in Los Angeles while "Nightmare" was being made up north, reviewed storyboards and footage every weeks and sent his talented collaborator, Rick Heinrichs, up north to develop the look of Halloween Town in the film.

Fifteen years after the first theatrical release of "Nightmare", Selick has come full circle with Coraline
Coraline (film)
Coraline is a 2009 stop-motion 3D fantasy/horror children's film based on Neil Gaiman's 2002 novel of the same name. It was produced by Laika and distributed by Focus Features. Written and directed by Henry Selick, it was released widely in US theaters on February 6, 2009, after a world premiere at...

, leading a brilliant team of artists, animators, lighters, and technicians – many of them veterans from "Nightmare" – to create another hand-made, all stop motion feature film.

Tim Burton

Timothy William "Tim" Burton is an American film director, film producer, writer and artist. He is famous for dark, quirky-themed movies such as Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow, Corpse Bride and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet...

is very active in the field of stop motion animation. One of Burton's first films, Vincent
Vincent (film)
Vincent is a 1982 stop-motion short film written, designed and directed by Tim Burton and Rick Heinrichs. At approximately six minutes in length, there is currently no individual release of the film...

, is a six minute stop motion animation about a young boy who wants to be Vincent Price. Several of his early live-action films such as Pee Wee's Big Adventure and Beetlejuice

Beetlejuice

Beetlejuice is a 1988 American comedy horror film directed by Tim Burton, produced by The Geffen Film Company and distributed by Warner Bros...

made use of stop motion. In 1993, Burton produced the all-stop motion animation The Nightmare Before Christmas
The Nightmare Before Christmas
The Nightmare Before Christmas, often promoted as Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, is a 1993 stop motion musical fantasy film directed by Henry Selick and produced/co-written by Tim Burton. It tells the story of Jack Skellington, a being from "Halloween Town" who opens a portal to...

. 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
James and the Giant Peach (film)
James and the Giant Peach is a 1996 musical fantasy film directed by Henry Selick, based on the 1961 novel of the same name by Roald Dahl. It was produced by Tim Burton and Denise Di Novi. The film is a combination of live action and stop-motion animation....

, a blend between stop motion animation and live action film. In 2005 Corpse Bride
Corpse Bride
Corpse Bride, often promoted as Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, is a 2005 stop-motion-animated fantasy musical film directed by Mike Johnson and Tim Burton. It is set in a fictional Victorian era village in Europe. Johnny Depp led an all-star cast as the voice of Victor, while Helena Bonham Carter ...

was released, another stop motion piece from Burton. Computer animation of the aliens for his 1996 science fiction comedy, Mars Attacks!
Mars Attacks!
Mars Attacks! is a 1996 American science fiction film directed by Tim Burton and based on the cult trading card series of the same name. The film uses elements of black comedy, surreal humour, and political satire, and claims to be also a parody of multiple science fiction B movies...

was deliberately made to look like stop motion when the film's budget did not allow for the use of the actual stop motion process, blurring the line between the two forms of animation.

Nick Park

Nicholas Wulstan "Nick" Park, CBE is an English filmmaker of stop motion animation best known as the creator of Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep....

and the Aardman team also produce commercials and music videos, notably the video for Peter Gabriel

Peter Gabriel

Peter Brian Gabriel is an English singer, musician, and songwriter who rose to fame as the lead vocalist and flautist of the progressive rock group Genesis. After leaving Genesis, Gabriel went on to a successful solo career...

's "Sledgehammer", which uses many different animation techniques, including pixilation

Pixilation

Pixilation is a stop motion technique where live actors are used as a frame-by-frame subject in an animated film, by repeatedly posing while one or more frame is taken and changing pose slightly before the next frame or frames. The actor becomes a kind of living stop motion puppet...

involving Gabriel holding poses while each frame was shot and moving between exposures, effectively becoming a human puppet. More recently Aardman used this technique on a series of short films for BBC Three

BBC Three

BBC Three is a television network from the BBC broadcasting via digital cable, terrestrial, IPTV and satellite platforms. The channel's target audience includes those in the 16-34 year old age group, and has the purpose of providing "innovative" content to younger audiences, focusing on new talent...

entitled Angry Kid
Angry Kid
Angry Kid is a series of stop motion animations written, designed, created and directed by Darren Walsh. Angry Kid was produced by Aardman Animations, depicting the mini-adventures of a troubled 15-year-old known as "Angry Kid"...

, which starred a live actor wearing a mask. 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
A Grand Day Out is an award-nominated 1989 animated film directed and animated by Nick Park at Aardman Animations in Bristol. This was the first adventure featuring the eccentric inventor Wallace and his quiet but smart dog Gromit...

. Since then, Nick Park has directed the following films for Aardman: The Wrong Trousers
The Wrong Trousers
The Wrong Trousers is a 1993 animated film directed by Nick Park at Aardman Animations in Bristol, featuring his characters Wallace and Gromit...

, Creature Comforts
Creature Comforts
Creature Comforts was originally a 1989 British humorous animated short film about how animals feel about living in a zoo, featuring the voices of the British public "spoken" by the animals. It was created by Nick Park and Aardman Animations...

, A Close Shave
A Close Shave
A Close Shave is a 1995 British animated film directed by Nick Park at Aardman Animations in Bristol, featuring his characters Wallace and Gromit. It was his third half-hour short featuring the eccentric inventor Wallace and his quiet but intelligent dog Gromit, following 1989's A Grand Day Out,...

, "Cracking Contraptions", the feature film Chicken Run
Chicken Run
Chicken Run is a 2000 British stop-motion animation film made by the Aardman Animations studios, the production studio of the Oscar-winning Wallace and Gromit films...

, and more recently, another feature film Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit is a 2005 British clay-mation animated comedy horror film, the first feature-length Wallace and Gromit film. It was produced by DreamWorks Animation and Aardman Animations, and released by DreamWorksPictures...

, co-produced with DreamWorks Animation

DreamWorks Animation

DreamWorks Animation SKG, Inc. is an American animation studio based in Glendale, California that creates animated feature films, television program and online virtual worlds...

. Nick Park's latest work is the new Wallace and Gromit

Wallace and Gromit

Wallace and Gromit are the main characters in a series consisting of four British animated short films and a feature-length film by Nick Park of Aardman Animations...

short (30 minutes) called A Matter of Loaf and Death
A Matter of Loaf and Death
A Matter of Loaf and Death is an animated television short created by Nick Park, and the fourth of his shorts to star his characters Wallace and Gromit...

, broadcast on BBC One

BBC One

BBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution...

on Christmas Day 2008. Nick Park has won several Academy Awards for Best Animation.

Ray Harryhausen

Willis O'Brien's student Ray Harryhausen

Ray Harryhausen

Ray Harryhausen is an American film producer and special effects creator...

made many movies using a more elaborate version of puppet animation called model animation

Model animation

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.-Works:Model animation was pioneered by Willis O'Brien, and it was first used in The Lost World...

, 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. Example of his model animation techniques; most famously, are the seven-skeleton sequence from Jason and the Argonauts (1963). 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.

Phil Tippett

In the mid-1970s, Phil Tippett, a stop motion animator inspired by the works of Willis O'Brien and Ray Harryhausen, was tapped by George Lucas to work on Star Wars. After creating the Chess Set sequence and participating in the Cantina scene as a member of the monster band for the seminal movie, Phil was enlisted to join Lucas when he relocated ILM from Los Angeles to the Bay Area.
During Tippett's tenure at ILM he earned an enduring place in the Star Wars galaxy by animating the Imperial Walkers and Tauntaun in The Empire Strikes and then was knighted as head of the studio's creature shop for Return of the Jedi. In addition to his artistic contributions Tippett's technical ingenuity was evident with the invention of the 'Go-Motion' animation technique in 1982 – a forerunner of today’s computer graphic imaging. He earned his first Academy Award© nomination for Dragonslayer and by 1983 received his first Oscar for Return of the Jedi.
In 1984, Tippett left ILM and, along with his partner Jules Roman, founded Tippett Studio in a garage in Berkeley to create a 10-minute experimental film called Prehistoric Beast. The Emmy award winning CBS special, Dinosaur!, quickly followed it.
Fast forward several decades, the company now occupies four buildings in Berkeley, employs up to 200 artists and technicians and is best known for its outstanding CG character animation work.
The early days of Tippett Studio saw sequences designed, built and animated using stop motion for movies like Robocop, with the out of control robot ED209, and later Robocop 2, with the evil mayhem created by the Cain robot.

George Pal

One acclaimed European puppet animation producer to break out in America was Hungarian animator George Pal

George Pál

George Pal , born György Pál Marczincsak, was a Hungarian-born American animator and film producer, principally associated with the science fiction genre...

, 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
Puppetoons
George Pal's Puppetoons were a series of animated puppet films made in Europe in the 1930s and in the U.S. in the 1940s. They are memorable for their use of "replacement" animation: using a series of different hand-carved wooden puppets for each frame in which the puppet moves or changes...

under the Paramount

Paramount Pictures

Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...

banner, seven of which were nominated for Academy Awards for best animated film. 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
The Great Rupert
The Great Rupert, is a 1950 comedy family film, produced by George Pal, directed by Irving Pichel and starring Jimmy Durante, Tom Drake and Terry Moore...

(1949), tom thumb (film)
Tom thumb (film)
Deliberately uncapitalised, tom thumb is a 1958 fantasy-musical film directed by George Pal and released by MGM. It was based on the fairy tale of the same name...

(1958), and The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm
The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm
The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm is a 1962 American film directed by Henry Levin and George Pal. The latter was the producer and also in charge of the stop motion animation. The film was one of the highest grossing films of 1962. It won one Oscar and was nominated for three additional...

(1962). Pal used model animation (animated by Jim Danforth) in two other feature films, The Time Machine
The Time Machine (1960 film)
The Time Machine is a 1960 American science fiction film based on the 1895 novel of the same name by H. G. Wells in which a man in Victorian England constructs a time-travelling machine which he uses to travel to the future...

(1960) and 7 Faces of Dr. Lao
7 Faces of Dr. Lao
7 Faces of Dr. Lao is a Metrocolor 1964 film adaptation of the 1935 fantasy novel The Circus of Dr. Lao by Charles G. Finney. It details the visit of a magical circus to a small town in the southwest United States, and the effects that visit has on the people of the town...

(1964), the latter nominated for a Special Effects Oscar, and the former winning the EFX Oscar award. Pal's work is documented in two feature films by Arnold Lebovitt, released in the mid-80s, The Puppetoon Movie
The Puppetoon Movie
The Puppetoon Movie, released in June 1987, is an animated film that pays tribute to the Oscar-winning Puppetoons of George Pal. Written, produced, and directed by Arnold Leibovit and Arnold Leibovit Entertainment, The Puppetoon Movie is composed of animated sequences featuring George Pal's Academy...

and The Fantastic World of George Pal which are currently available on DVD. 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

Counterweight

A counterweight is an equivalent counterbalancing weight that balances a load.-Uses:A counterweight is often used in traction lifts , cranes and funfair rides...

" episodes of the original The Outer Limits
The Outer Limits (1963 TV series)
The Outer Limits is an American television series that aired on ABC from 1963 to 1965. The series is similar in style to the earlier The Twilight Zone, but with a greater emphasis on science fiction, rather than fantasy stories...

TV series (1963), and, with equally prolific model animator David Allen, in Equinox
Equinox (film)
Equinox is a 1970 American horror film. Originally made in 1967 under the title The Equinox... A Journey into the Supernatural it was directed by Dennis Muren, and stars Edward Connell as Dave, Barbara Hewitt as Susan Turner Frank Bonner as Jim Hudson and award-winning science fiction/horror writer...

(also titled "The Beast") (1967, 1970), Flesh Gordon
Flesh Gordon
Flesh Gordon is a 1974 American science fiction adventure comedy film. It is an erotic spoof of the Flash Gordon serial films from the 1930s. The screenplay was written by Michael Benveniste, who also co-directed the film with Howard Ziehm...

(1974), and the prehistoric comedy Caveman
Caveman (film)
Caveman is a 1981 American slapstick comedy film written and directed by Carl Gottlieb and starring Ringo Starr, Dennis Quaid, Shelley Long and Barbara Bach.-Plot:...

(1981).

Cuppa Coffee Studios

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, the company has grown to now the single largest producer of stop motion for TV with over 250 employees and 48 Studios. All production is conducted at the 75000 square feet (6,967.7 m²) facility.They have produced the classic Celebrity Deathmatch
Celebrity Deathmatch
Celebrity Deathmatch is a claymation television show that depicts celebrities against each other in a wrestling ring, almost always ending in the loser's gruesome death. It was known for its excessive amount of blood used in every match and exaggerated physical injuries...

, Rick and Steve, Starveillance
Starveillance
Starveillance was a claymation television series created by Celebrity Deathmatch creator Eric Fogel that debuted on January 5, 2007 on E!. The show is produced by Toronto-based Cuppa Coffee Studio...

, A Very Barry Christmas and JoJo's Circus
JoJo's Circus
JoJo's Circus is a musical comedy series for preschool children. The series debuted in 2003 and airs in the United States on the Disney Channel as part of the Playhouse Disney morning programming schedule at 6am eastern time. The program airs daily on both the UK and Australian versions of...

and Glenn Martin DDS, Life's a Zoo
Life's a Zoo
Life's a Zoo is a Canadian stop-motion animation situation-comedy created by Adam Shaheen and Andrew Horne II. It is directed by Alexander Gorelick. A co-production of Cuppa Coffee Studios and Teletoon, "Life's a Zoo.tv" was named Best Animated Program or Series at the 24th Annual Gemini Awards...

, A Miser Brothers Christmas, Crashbox

Crashbox

Crashbox is an educational children's television game show that airs on the HBO Family digital cable television channel in the United States. It aims to educate grade-school children in history, math, vocabulary, and other various subjects....

and Ugly Americans

Ugly Americans

Ugly Americans: The True Story of the Ivy League Cowboys Who Raided the Asian Markets for Millions is a book by Ben Mezrich that recounts the exploits of an American called John Malcolm arbitraging index futures in Japan in the 1990s...

. The studio has won over 200 international broadcast awards for its work and an award winning Commercial and Broadcast Design Departments.

Suzie Templeton

Suzie Templeton is a director, animator and writer of stop motion animation films. She is best known for her 2006 animated adaptation of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf....

is most Famous for her work on the film Peter and the Wolf in which she won the Academy Award for Best Animation.

Adam Jones

Adam Jones (musician)

Adam Thomas Jones is a three time Grammy Award-winning Welsh-American musician and visual artist, best known for his position as the guitarist for Grammy-Award winning band Tool. Jones has been rated the 75th Greatest Guitarist of all time by the Rolling Stone and placed 9th in Guitar World's Top...

, Grammy Award-winning guitarist/musician/visual artist for the Grammy Award-winning progressive rock band Tool

Tool (band)

Tool is an American rock band from Los Angeles, California. Formed in 1990, the group's line-up has included drummer Danny Carey, guitarist Adam Jones, and vocalist Maynard James Keenan. Since 1995, Justin Chancellor has been the band's bassist, replacing their original bassist Paul D'Amour...

, 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
Jurassic Park (film)
Jurassic Park is a 1993 American science fiction adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Michael Crichton. It stars Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough, Martin Ferrero, and Bob Peck...

and Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Terminator 2: Judgment Day is a 1991 science fiction action film directed by James Cameron and written by Cameron and William Wisher Jr.. It stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Robert Patrick, and Edward Furlong...

. 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

Prison Sex (song)

"Prison Sex" is a song by American rock band Tool. The song was released as their first single from their debut album Undertow. The song is unique for its use of modified drop-B tuning.-Music video:...

", "Stinkfist

Stinkfist

"Stinkfist" is a song by American rock band Tool. It is released as the first single and first music video from their second album Ænima. Due to its name and perceived subject, the song had its lyrics altered and its title changed by TV and radio programmers, who also shortened the track...

", "Ænema

Ænema

"Ænema" is a Grammy Award-winning song by rock band Tool, released as the third single from their second album Ænima. Adam Jones made a video for the song using stop-motion animation that appears on Salival. The song reached number twenty-five on the U.S...

", "Schism"

Schism (song)

"Schism" is a song by American rock band Tool. It was the first single and music video from their third full-length album, Lateralus. In 2002, Tool won the Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance for the song....

, and "Parabola"

Parabola (song)

"Parabola" is a song by the American rock band Tool, the song was released as the second single from their third studio album Lateralus. It was released in 2002 as a promo only, however, on December 20, 2005, the single was re-released, which includes the song and a DVD containing the music video...

. The techniques and style of Tool's music videos, particularly Sober and Prison Sex, borrow heavily from the work of The Brothers Quay.

Willis O'Brien

The great pioneer of American stop motion was Willis O'Brien

Willis O'Brien

Willis Harold O'Brien was an Irish American pioneering motion picture special effects artist who perfected and specialized in stop-motion animation. He was affectionately known to his family and close friends as "Obie"....

. 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
The Dinosaur and the Missing Link: A Prehistoric Tragedy
The Dinosaur and the Missing Link: A Prehistoric Tragedy is a 1917 American comedy silent film animated by Willis O'Brien that premiered in 1915, and is one of O'Brien's only wholly animated films...

(1916), R.F.D. 10,000 B.C.: A Mannikin Comedy (1917/18), The Ghost of Slumber Mountain
The Ghost of Slumber Mountain
The Ghost of Slumber Mountain was a 1918 film, written and directed by special effects pioneer Willis O'Brien, produced by Herbert M. Dawley, and starred both men; Dawley played Uncle Jack Holmes, while O'Brien played the ghost of Mad Dick the Hermit...

(1919), The Lost World

The Lost World (1925 film)

The Lost World is a 1925 silent film adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's 1912 novel of the same name. The movie was produced by First National Pictures, a large Hollywood studio at the time, and stars Wallace Beery as Professor Challenger. This version was directed by Harry O...

(1925), King Kong
King Kong (1933 film)
King Kong is a Pre-Code 1933 fantasy monster adventure film co-directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, and written by Ruth Rose and James Ashmore Creelman after a story by Cooper and Edgar Wallace. The film tells of a gigantic island-dwelling apeman creature called Kong who dies in...

(1933), The Son of Kong
The Son of Kong
The Son of Kong is a 1933 American adventure film/monster movie produced by RKO Pictures. Directed by Ernest Schoedsack and featuring special effects by Buzz Gibson and Willis O'Brien, the film starred Robert Armstrong, Helen Mack and Frank Reicher...

(1933), and, with the assistance of a young Ray Harryhausen

Ray Harryhausen

Ray Harryhausen is an American film producer and special effects creator...

, Mighty Joe Young (1949), yet these were but a few of the many films he animated. O'Brien's Nippy's Nightmare (1916) was the 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

Marcel Delgado

Marcel Delgado was a sculptor and model-maker. His technique revolutionized the stop motion film industry. He is best known for his work on the 1933 film King Kong....

, Victor Delgado and Mario Larrinaga, led to some of the most memorable and remarkable stop motion moments in film history.

O'Brien's imaginative use of stop motion, and his ambitious and inventive filmmaking, has inspired generations of film greats such as Ray Harryhausen

Ray Harryhausen

Ray Harryhausen is an American film producer and special effects creator...

, George Lucas

George Lucas

George Walton Lucas, Jr. is an American film producer, screenwriter, and director, and entrepreneur. He is the founder, chairman and chief executive of Lucasfilm. He is best known as the creator of the space opera franchise Star Wars and the archaeologist-adventurer character Indiana Jones...

, Steven Spielberg

Steven Spielberg

Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...

, Peter Jackson

Peter Jackson

Sir Peter Robert Jackson, KNZM is a New Zealand film director, producer, actor, and screenwriter, known for his The Lord of the Rings film trilogy , adapted from the novel by J. R. R...

, Jim Danforth

Jim Danforth

Jim Danforth is a stop-motion animator, known for model-animation and matte painting. Danforth is known for his work on When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth , a sequel of sorts to Ray Harryhausen's One Million Years B.C....

, Art Clokey

Art Clokey

Arthur "Art" Clokey was a pioneer in the popularization of stop motion clay animation, beginning in 1955 with a film experiment called Gumbasia, influenced by his professor, Slavko Vorkapich, at the University of Southern California.After the Gumbasia project, Art Clokey and his wife Ruth came up...

, Pete Kleinow

Sneaky Pete Kleinow

Peter E. "Sneaky Pete" Kleinow was an American country-rock musician, songwriter, and a motion picture special effects artist...

, Tim Burton

Tim Burton

, David Allen

David W. Allen

David W. Allen was a film and television stop-motion model animator.Considered among the finest stop-motion model animators, Dave Allen has contributed some of the best stop-motion sequences to many feature films, rivaling the work of other premier model animators Ray Harryhausen and Jim...

, Phil Tippett

Phil Tippett

Phil Tippett is a movie director and an award-winning visual effects supervisor and producer, who specializes in creature design and character animation.-Early career:...

and Will Vinton

Will Vinton

Will Vinton is an American director and producer of animated films. He was born in McMinnville, Oregon, near Portland. He has won an Oscar for his work, and several Emmy Awards and Clio Awards for the work of his studio.- Education :...

, as well as thousands of lesser known animators, both professional and amateur. Many leading science fiction and fantasy writers also credit him as a great source of inspiration.

Lou Bunin

Puppeteer Lou Bunin

Lou Bunin

Lou Bunin was a prominent puppeteer, an artist, and pioneer of stop-motion animation in the latter half of the twentieth century. While working as a mural artist under Diego Rivera in Mexico City in 1926, Bunin created political puppet shows using marionettes including a production of Eugene...

created one of the first stop motion puppets using wire armatures and his own rubber formula. Another early stop motion piece by Bunin, also in the 1930s was Bury the Axis, a short, satiric film about World War II probably commissioned for the US Government as a WPA grant. 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. Bunin was blacklist

Blacklist

A blacklist is a list or register of entities who, for one reason or another, are being denied a particular privilege, service, mobility, access or recognition. As a verb, to blacklist can mean to deny someone work in a particular field, or to ostracize a person from a certain social circle...

ed in the 1950s, putting an effective end to his commercial career. He then turned his attention to painting and drawing, while still creating numerous TV commercials using stop motion techniques, as well as a number of children's short films.

Ladislas Starevich

The great European stop motion pioneer was Ladyslaw Starewicz

Ladislas Starevich

Vladislav Starevich , born Władysław Starewicz , was a Russian and French stop-motion animator who used insects and other animals as his protagonists...

(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
The Tale of the Fox
The Tale of the Fox was stop-motion animation pioneer Ladislas Starevich's first fully animated feature film. It is based on the tales of Renard the Fox. Although the animation was finished in Paris after an 18-month period , there were major problems with adding a soundtrack to the film...

(1937), to name but a few of his over fifty animated films.

Starewicz was the first filmmaker to use stop motion animation and puppets to tell consistently coherent stories. He began by producing insect documentaries which, in turn, led to experiments with the stop motion 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

Motion blur

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. It results when the image being recorded changes during the recording of a single frame, either due to rapid movement or long exposure.- Photography :When a camera...

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.

Charles Bowers

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. 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. His color film, "Pete Roleum and His Cousins", a promotion piece about the importance of oil in contemporary life, debuted in the 1939 New York World's Fair

1939 New York World's Fair

The 1939–40 New York World's Fair, which covered the of Flushing Meadows-Corona Park , was the second largest American world's fair of all time, exceeded only by St. Louis's Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904. Many countries around the world participated in it, and over 44 million people...

Disney

The Walt Disney

Walt Disney

Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...

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. Disney didn't exploit the technique until their associations with Mike Jittlov

Mike Jittlov

Mike Jittlov is an American animator and the creator of short films and one feature length movie using forms of special effects animation, including stop-motion animation, rotoscoping, and pixilation...

in the 1970s.

Disney once again experimented with several stop motion techniques by hiring independent animator-director Mike Jittlov

Mike Jittlov

to do the first stop motion animation of Mickey Mouse

Mickey Mouse

Mickey Mouse is a cartoon character created in 1928 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks at The Walt Disney Studio. Mickey is an anthropomorphic black mouse and typically wears red shorts, large yellow shoes, and white gloves...

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.

Jules Bass

In North America, Jules Bass

Jules Bass

Jules Bass is an American director, producer, composer, and author.- Biography :Educated at New York University, he first worked at an advertising agency in New York until the early 1960s, when he founded the film production company Videocraft International with Arthur Rankin, Jr...

produced a series of popular Christmas specials such as Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (TV special)
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is a Christmas television special produced in stop motion animation by Rankin/Bass. It first aired Sunday, December 6, 1964, on the NBC television network in the USA, and was sponsored by General Electric under the umbrella title of The General Electric Fantasy Hour...

using 'Animagic

AnimagiC

The AnimagiC is a German annual anime convention and one of the largest of its kind in the German-speaking world with currently about 12,000 visitors.-History:...

', their trade name for their version of stop motion puppetry. The specials were animated in Japan by Japanese stop motion pioneer Tadahito Mochinaga

Tadahito Mochinaga

, also known as Tad Mochinaga, was a pioneer Japanese stop-motion animator. Having done many stop motion films/shorts in Japan, he is also best known as the animator for Rankin/Bass' "Animagic" specials/movies in the 1960s....

. Another clay animated children's TV series Davey and Goliath
Davey and Goliath
Davey and Goliath is a 1960s stop-motion animated children's Christian television series. The programs, produced by the Lutheran Church in America , were produced by Art Clokey after the success of his Gumby series.Each 15-minute episode features the adventures of Davey Hansen and his "talking"...

, produced by Art Klokey, lasted from 1960 to 1977. Rankin/Bass

Rankin/Bass

Rankin/Bass Productions, Inc. , also known as Rankin/Bass Animated Entertainment, was an American production company, known for its seasonal television specials, particularly its work in stop-motion animation. The pre-1974 library is currently owned by Classic Media,while the post-1974 library is...

also produced the puppet animation feature length film Mad Monster Party in 1967, and combined puppet animation with live action in The Daydreamer, their 1966 feature film.

Corky Quakenbush

Corky Quakenbush, Space Bass Films

Corky Quakenbush is an American filmmaker and television producer specializing in comedy and stop motion animation, particularly parody.-Animation:...

created three dozen stop motion animated films for Fox network's Mad TV
Mad TV
Mad TV may refer to:*MADtv, an American sketch comedy television series based on Mad magazine*Mad TV , a 1991 German television station management simulation game*MAD TV , a Greek music channel-See also:...

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
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer is a fictional reindeer with a glowing red nose. He is popularly known as "Santa's 9th Reindeer" and, when depicted, is the lead reindeer pulling Santa's sleigh on Christmas Eve. The luminosity of his nose is so great that it illuminates the team's path through...

as if directed by Martin Scorsese

Martin Scorsese

Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...

. Quakenbush also created "reality animation" to mimic hand-held documentary newsgathering for Clops, written by Blaine Capatch, a parody of the groundbreaking reality show, Cops
COPS (TV series)
Cops is an American documentary/reality television series that follows police officers, constables, and sheriff's deputies during patrols and other police activities...

in which puppet police bust famous stop motion characters. Other parodies followed, such as Furious George, a spoof of the innocent Curious George
Curious George
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. The books feature a curious brown monkey named George, who is brought from his home in Africa by "The Man with The Yellow Hat" to live with him in a big city.When...

children's book series.

Other notable artists

Other notable artists include the influential Czech animator Jiří Trnka

Jirí Trnka

Jiří Trnka was a Czech puppet maker, illustrator, motion-picture animator and film director. In addition to his extensive career as an illustrator, especially of children's books, he is best known for his work in animation with puppets, which began in 1946...

. The aesthetic tradition of the puppet film was continued by Bretislav Pojar

Bretislav Pojar

Břetislav Pojar is a puppeteer, animator and director of short and feature films.Born in Sušice, Czechoslovakia, Pojar started his career in the late 1940s with his work on The Story of the Bass Cello based on the story by Anton Chekhov and directed by master Czech puppet animator Jiří Trnka...

, Kihachirō Kawamoto

Kihachiro Kawamoto

was a Japanese puppet designer and maker, independent film director, screenwriter and animator and president of the Japan Animation Association from 1989, succeeding founder Osamu Tezuka, until his own death...

, Ivo Caprino

Ivo Caprino

Ivo Caprino was a Norwegian film director and writer, best known for his puppet films. His most famous film is Flåklypa Grand Prix , made in 1975.- Early career :...

, Jan Švankmajer

Jan Švankmajer

Jan Švankmajer is a Czech filmmaker and artist whose work spans several media. He is a self-labeled surrealist known for his surreal animations and features, which have greatly influenced other artists such as Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam, the Brothers Quay, and many others.- Life and career :Jan...

, Jiří Barta

Jirí Barta

Jiří Barta is a Czech stop-motion animation director. His films, many of which used the medium of wood for animation, garnered critical acclaim and won many awards, but after the fall of the communist government in Czechoslovakia he was unable to release anything for about 15 years...

, the (Brothers Quay

Brothers Quay

Stephen and Timothy Quay are American identical twin brothers better known as the Brothers Quay or Quay Brothers. They are influential stop-motion animators...

), bolexbrothers

Bolexbrothers

bolexbrothers is an independent British animation studio based in Bristol. The studio specialises in stop motion animation, producing numerous short films and commercials, as well as one stop motion feature film, The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb...

and Galina Beda.

A notable stop motion object animator was Germany's Oskar Fischinger

Oskar Fischinger

Oskar Fischinger was a German-American abstract animator, filmmaker, and painter. He made over 50 short animated films, and painted c. 800 canvases, many of which are in museums, galleries and collections worldwide. Among his film works is Motion Painting No. 1 , which is now listed on the...

, who animated anything he could get his hands on in a series of 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
Fantasia (film)
Fantasia is a 1940 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and released by Walt Disney Productions. The third feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, the film consists of eight animated segments set to pieces of classical music conducted by Leopold Stokowski, seven of which are...

(1940).

External links

BBC Blast Film stop motion animation advice

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