Stop motion
Encyclopedia
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. Clay
figures are often used in stop motion for their ease of repositioning. Motion animation using clay is called clay animation
or clay-mation.
The term "stop motion", related to the animation technique, is often spelled with a hyphen
(stop-motion). Both orthographical variants, with and without the hyphen, are correct, but the hyphenated one has, in addition, a second meaning, not related to animation or cinema. Stop-motion: "a device for automatically stopping a machine or engine when something has gone wrong" (The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 1993 edition).
Stop motion is often confused with the time lapse
technique, where still photographs of a live surrounding are taken at regular intervals, and combined into a continuous film.
for The Humpty Dumpty Circus (1897), in which a toy circus of acrobats and animals comes to life. In 1902, the film Fun in a Bakery Shop used the stop-trick technique in the "lightning sculpting" sequence. French trick film maestro Georges Méliès
used true stop motion to produce moving title-card letters for one of his short films, but never exploited the process for any of his other films . The Haunted Hotel (1907) is another stop motion film by J. Stuart Blackton
, and was a resounding success when released. Segundo de Chomón
(1871–1929), from Spain, released El Hotel Eléctrico
later that same year, and used similar techniques as the Blackton film. In 1908, A Sculptor's Welsh Rarebit Nightmare was released, as was The Sculptor's Nightmare, a film by Billy Bitzer. Italian animator Roméo Bossetti impressed audiences with his object animation tour-de-force, The Automatic Moving Company in 1912. The great European stop motion pioneer was Wladyslaw Starewicz (1892–1965), who animated The Beautiful Lukanida (1910), The Battle of the Stag Beetles (1910), The Ant and the Grasshopper (1911).
One of the earliest clay animation films was Modelling Extraordinary, which dazzled audiences in 1912. December 1916 brought the first of Willie Hopkins' 54 episodes of "Miracles in Mud" to the big screen. Also in December 1916, the first woman animator, Helena Smith Dayton, began experimenting with clay stop motion. She would release her first film in 1917, an adaptation of William Shakespeare
's Romeo and Juliet
.
In the turn of the century, there was another well known animator known as Willis O' Brien (known by others as O'bie). His work on The Lost World
from 1925 is known, but he is most admired for his work on King Kong
, a milestone of his films made possible by stop motion animation.
refined the technique of "free-form" clay animation with his Oscar-nominated 1965 film Clay (or the Origin of Species). 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. Notable among these are the pinscreen animation films of Jacques Drouin, made with the original pinscreen donated by Alexander Alexeiff and Claire Parker.
Italian stop motion films include Quaq Quao
(1978), by Francesco Misseri, which was stop motion with origami
, The Red and the Blue
and the clay animation kittens Mio and Mao
. Other European productions included a stop motion-animated series of Tove Jansson
's The Moomins (from 1979, often referred to as "The Fuzzy Felt Moomins"), produced by Film Polski and Jupiter Films.
One of the main British Animation teams, John Hardwick and Bob Bura, were the main animators in many early British TV shows, and are famous for their work on the Trumptonshire
trilogy.
Disney experimented with several stop motion techniques by hiring independent animator-director Mike Jittlov
to do the first stop motion animation of Mickey Mouse
toys ever produced for a short sequence called Mouse Mania, part of a TV special commemorating Mickey Mouse's 50th Anniversary called Mickey's 50th in 1978. Jittlov again produced some impressive multi-technique stop motion animation a year later for a 1979 Disney special promoting their release of the feature film The Black Hole
. Titled Major Effects, Jittlov's work stood out as the best part of the special. Jittlov released his footage the following year to 16mm film collectors as a short film titled The Wizard of Speed and Time
, along with four of his other short multi-technique animated films, most of which eventually evolved into his own feature-length film of the same title. Effectively demonstrating almost all animation techniques, as well as how he produced them, the film was released to theaters in 1987 and to video in 1989.
trilogy: the chess sequence in Star Wars
, the Tauntauns and AT-AT walkers in The Empire Strikes Back
, and the AT-ST walkers in Return of the Jedi
were all stop motion animation, some of it using the Go films. The many shots including the ghosts in Raiders of the Lost Ark
and the first two feature films in the RoboCop
series use Phil Tippett's go motion
version of stop motion.
In 1980, Marc Paul Chinoy directed the 1st feature-length clay animated film; a film based on the famous Pogo comic strip. Titled I go Pogo, it was aired a few times on American cable channels, but has yet to be commercially released. Primarily clay, some characters required armatures, and walk cycles used pre-sculpted hard bases legs.
Stop motion was also used for some shots of the final sequence of Terminator
movie, also for the scenes of the small alien ships in Spielberg
's Batteries Not Included in 1987, animated by David W. Allen
. Allen's stop motion work can also be seen in such feature films as The Crater Lake Monster
(1977), Q - The Winged Serpent
(1982), The Gate (1986) and Freaked (1993). Allen's King Kong Volkswagen
commercial from the 1970s is now legendary among model animation enthusiasts.
Of note are the films of Czech filmmaker Jan Švankmajer
, which mix stop motion and live actors. These include Alice
, an adaptation of Lewis Carroll's
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
, and Faust
, a rendition of the legend of the German scholar
. The Czech school is also illustrated by the series Pat & Mat
(1979–2004). Created by Lubomír Beneš and Vladimír Jiránek, and it was wildly popular in a number of countries.
Since the general animation renaissance headlined by the likes of Who Framed Roger Rabbit
and The Little Mermaid
at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, there have been an increasing number of traditional stop motion feature films, despite advancements with computer animation
. The Nightmare Before Christmas
, directed by Henry Selick
and produced by Tim Burton
was one of the more widely-released stop motion features. Henry Selick also went on to direct James and the Giant Peach
and Coraline
, and Tim Burton went on to direct Corpse Bride
.
Another individual who found fame in clay animation is Nick Park
, who created the characters Wallace and Gromit
. In addition to a series of award-winning shorts and featurettes, he won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature
for the feature-length outing Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
. Chicken Run
, his first feature-length production, grossed over $100 million at the North American box-office, and garnered critical praise. Other notable stop motion feature films released since 1990 include Fantastic Mr. Fox
and $9.99
, both released in 2009, and The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb
(1993).
In December 2010, the NBC show Community
had an entire episode in stop motion when character Abed wakes up to discover that everything is in stop motion animation, Professor Duncan and the study group help him try to discover the true meaning of Christmas.
throughout film history. The first 3D stop motion short was In Tune With Tomorrow (also known as Motor Rhythm) in 1939 by John Norling. The second stereoscopic stop motion release was The Adventures of Sam Space in 1955 by Paul Sprunck. The third and latest stop motion short in stereo 3D was The Incredible Invasion of the 20,000 Giant Robots from Outer Space in 2000 by Elmer Kaan and Alexander Lentjes. This is also the first ever 3D stereoscopic stop motion and CGI short in the history of film. The first all stop motion 3D feature is Coraline
(2009), based on Neil Gaiman
's best-selling novel
and directed by Henry Selick.
Another recent example is the Nintendo 3DS video software which comes with the option for Stop Motion videos. This will be released by December 8, 2011 as a 3DS system update.
, co-developed by Phil Tippett
and first used on the films The Empire Strikes Back
(1980), Dragonslayer
(1981), and the RoboCop
films. Go motion involved programming a computer to move parts of a model slightly during each exposure of each frame of film, combined with traditional hand manipulation of the model in between frames, to produce a more realistic motion blur
ring effect. Tippett also used the process extensively in his 1984 short film Prehistoric Beast
, a 10 minutes long sequence depicting a herbivorous dinosaur (Monoclonius
), being chased by a carnivorous one (Tyrannosaurus
). With new footage Prehistoric Beast became Dinosaur!
in 1985, a full length dinosaurs documentary hosted by Christopher Reeve
. Those Phil Tippett's go motion tests acted as motion models for his first photo-realistic use of computers to depict dinosaurs in Jurassic Park
in 1993. A 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). The 2011 film, "Fantastic Mr. Fox" was also entirely filmed in stop motion.
. 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.
series—which spawned a feature film, Gumby I in 1995—using both freeform and character clay animation. 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.
Rankin/Bass
is a very famous stop motion company. Since the 1960s it has been making many stop motion Christmas specials such as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
, The Year Without a Santa Claus
, Santa Claus is Coming to Town
, and many others.
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. 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
(1965) which played for many years on the BBC
. Another French/Polish stop motion animated series was Colargol
(Barnaby the Bear in the UK, Jeremy in Canada), by Olga Pouchine and Tadeusz Wilkosz.
A British TV-series 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. They also produced a documentary of their production techniques, Making Frog and Toad.
Another example is "Pingu
" (1986) about a penguin who lives with his family in an igloo
.
In the 1990s Trey Parker
and Matt Stone
made two original shorts and the pilot of South Park
almost entirely out of construction paper.
The animated series Robot Chicken
continues to primarily utilize stop motion animation, using custom made action figures and other toys as principal characters. Other action figures, called Stikfas
, are very popular stop motion figures and are not extremely expensive. Moral Orel
is another stop motion based show, along with the upcoming Mary Shelley's Frankenhole
, both created by Dino Stamatopoulos
.
Also Another Example is A little curious from 1999 has Stop-motion characters like
bob the ball and doris the door.
and 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, thanks to the ease of modern stop motion software and online video publishing. Many new stop motion shorts use clay animation into a new form.
Also, singer-songwriter Oren Lavie
's music video for the song Her Morning Elegance was posted on YouTube on January 19, 2009. The video, directed by Lavie and Yuval and Merav Nathan, uses stop motion and has achieved great success with over 15 million views, also earning a 2010 Grammy Award nomination for "Best Short Form Music Video".
Stop motion has occasionally been used to create the characters for computer games, as an alternative to CGI. the Virgin Interactive Entertainment Mythos
game Magic and Mayhem
(1998) featured creatures built by stop motion specialist Alan Friswell, who made the miniature figures from modelling clay and latex rubber, over armatures of wire and ball-and-socket joints. The models were then animated one frame at a time, and incorporated into the CGI elements of the game through digital photography. "ClayFighter
" for the Super Nintendo and The Neverhood
for the PC
are other examples.
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...
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. Clay
Plasticine
Plasticine, a brand of modelling clay, is a putty-like modelling material made from calcium salts, petroleum jelly and aliphatic acids. The name is a registered trademark of Flair Leisure Products plc...
figures are often used in stop motion for their ease of repositioning. Motion animation using clay is called clay animation
Clay animation
Clay animation or claymation is one of many forms of stop motion animation. Each animated piece, either character or background, is "deformable"—made of a malleable substance, usually Plasticine clay....
or clay-mation.
The term "stop motion", related to the animation technique, is often spelled with a hyphen
Hyphen
The hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. The hyphen should not be confused with dashes , which are longer and have different uses, or with the minus sign which is also longer...
(stop-motion). Both orthographical variants, with and without the hyphen, are correct, but the hyphenated one has, in addition, a second meaning, not related to animation or cinema. Stop-motion: "a device for automatically stopping a machine or engine when something has gone wrong" (The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 1993 edition).
Stop motion is often confused with the time lapse
Time Lapse
Time Lapse is the first live album by guitarist Steve Hackett. The album is drawn from live performances at the Savoy Theater in New York City and at Central TV Studios in Nottingham.-Track listing:...
technique, where still photographs of a live surrounding are taken at regular intervals, and combined into a continuous film.
History
Stop motion animation has a long history in film. It was often used to show objects moving as if by magic. The first instance of the stop motion technique can be credited to Albert E. Smith and J. Stuart BlacktonJ. Stuart Blackton
James Stuart Blackton , usually known as J. Stuart Blackton, was an Anglo-American film producer of the Silent Era, the founder of Vitagraph Studios and among the first filmmakers to use the techniques of stop-motion and drawn animation...
for The Humpty Dumpty Circus (1897), in which a toy circus of acrobats and animals comes to life. In 1902, the film Fun in a Bakery Shop used the stop-trick technique in the "lightning sculpting" sequence. French trick film maestro Georges Méliès
Georges Méliès
Georges Méliès , full name Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès, was a French filmmaker famous for leading many technical and narrative developments in the earliest cinema. He was very innovative in the use of special effects...
used true stop motion to produce moving title-card letters for one of his short films, but never exploited the process for any of his other films . The Haunted Hotel (1907) is another stop motion film by J. Stuart Blackton
J. Stuart Blackton
James Stuart Blackton , usually known as J. Stuart Blackton, was an Anglo-American film producer of the Silent Era, the founder of Vitagraph Studios and among the first filmmakers to use the techniques of stop-motion and drawn animation...
, and was a resounding success when released. Segundo de Chomón
Segundo de Chomón
Segundo Víctor Aurelio Chomón y Ruiz was a pioneering Spanish film director. He produced many short films in France while working for Pathé Frères and has been compared to Georges Méliès, due to his frequent camera tricks and optical illusions.-Selected filmography:*1902: Choque de trenes,...
(1871–1929), from Spain, released El Hotel Eléctrico
El Hotel eléctrico
El hotel eléctrico is a 1908 silent Spanish comedy-fantasy film directed by Segundo de Chomón.-Background:The film displays one of the earliest uses of stop motion animation in history, though it is not de Chomón's first try at this technique. His 1906 film, Le théâtre de Bob, use animated puppets...
later that same year, and used similar techniques as the Blackton film. In 1908, A Sculptor's Welsh Rarebit Nightmare was released, as was The Sculptor's Nightmare, a film by Billy Bitzer. Italian animator Roméo Bossetti impressed audiences with his object animation tour-de-force, The Automatic Moving Company in 1912. The great European stop motion pioneer was Wladyslaw Starewicz (1892–1965), who animated The Beautiful Lukanida (1910), The Battle of the Stag Beetles (1910), The Ant and the Grasshopper (1911).
One of the earliest clay animation films was Modelling Extraordinary, which dazzled audiences in 1912. December 1916 brought the first of Willie Hopkins' 54 episodes of "Miracles in Mud" to the big screen. Also in December 1916, the first woman animator, Helena Smith Dayton, began experimenting with clay stop motion. She would release her first film in 1917, an adaptation of William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
's Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written early in the career of playwright William Shakespeare about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately unite their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular archetypal stories of young, teenage lovers.Romeo and Juliet belongs to a...
.
In the turn of the century, there was another well known animator known as Willis O' Brien (known by others as O'bie). His work on 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...
from 1925 is known, but he is most admired for his work on 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...
, a milestone of his films made possible by stop motion animation.
1960s and 1970s
In the 1960s and 1970s, independent clay animator Eliot Noyes Jr.Eli Noyes
Eli Noyes is an American animator who has created many animation and design for companies around the world.Eli brings a comedic flair to his productions, which include Monitor and Ace Award winning projects for television, award-winning films for children, inventive commercials and title...
refined the technique of "free-form" clay animation with his Oscar-nominated 1965 film Clay (or the Origin of Species). 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
The Sand Castle
The Sand Castle is a 1977 stop motion animated short by Co Hoedeman. Winner of the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film at the 50th Academy Awards, the film was produced by Gaston Sarault for the National Film Board of Canada.-External links:*...
, produced by Dutch-Canadian animator Co Hoedeman
Co Hoedeman
Jacobus Willem Hoedeman is a Dutch-Canadian filmmaker known for his mastery of stop motion animation and technical innovation in films that reveal his close observation of human and social interaction.-Biography:...
. Hoedeman was one of dozens of animators sheltered by the National Film Board of Canada
National Film Board of Canada
The National Film Board of Canada is Canada's twelve-time Academy Award-winning public film producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes documentary, animation, alternative drama and digital media productions...
, 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
Norman McLaren
Norman McLaren, CC, CQ was a Scottish-born Canadian animator and film director known for his work for the National Film Board of Canada...
, who brought in many other animators to create their own creatively controlled films. Notable among these are the pinscreen animation films of Jacques Drouin, made with the original pinscreen donated by Alexander Alexeiff and Claire Parker.
Italian stop motion films include Quaq Quao
Quaq Quao
Quaq Quao was an Italian animated television series for children based on the adventures of a duck.The series consisted of 26 episodes of 5 minutes duration. It was filmed using stop-motion with origami figures and was written and directed by Francesco Misseri with music by Piero Barbetti. Quaq...
(1978), by Francesco Misseri, which was stop motion with origami
Origami
is the traditional Japanese art of paper folding, which started in the 17th century AD at the latest and was popularized outside Japan in the mid-1900s. It has since then evolved into a modern art form...
, The Red and the Blue
The Red and the Blue (series)
The Red and the Blue was an Italian stop motion animated television series for children. It has two characters, antagonistic shapeshifters, one colored red, the other blue. It is by ....
and the clay animation kittens Mio and Mao
Mio Mao
Mio Mao , also known as Mio and Mao, is an Italian children's TV show produced by Misseri Studios , L+H Films , and Channel 5...
. Other European productions included a stop motion-animated series of Tove Jansson
Tove Jansson
Tove Marika Jansson was a Swedish-Finnish novelist, painter, illustrator and comic strip author. She is best known as the author of the Moomin books.- Biography :...
's The Moomins (from 1979, often referred to as "The Fuzzy Felt Moomins"), produced by Film Polski and Jupiter Films.
One of the main British Animation teams, John Hardwick and Bob Bura, were the main animators in many early British TV shows, and are famous for their work on the Trumptonshire
Trumptonshire
Trumptonshire is a fictional county, created by Gordon Murray, in which Camberwick Green, Trumpton and Chigley are located. According to Murray, the three communities are based on real locations that are one and a half miles from each other at the corners of an equilateral triangle...
trilogy.
Disney experimented with several stop motion techniques by hiring independent animator-director 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...
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. 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
The Black Hole
The Black Hole is a 1979 American science fiction film directed by Gary Nelson for Walt Disney Productions. The film stars Maximilian Schell, Robert Forster, Joseph Bottoms, Yvette Mimieux, Anthony Perkins, and Ernest Borgnine, while the voices of the main robot characters are provided by Roddy...
. Titled Major Effects, Jittlov's work stood out as the best part of the special. Jittlov released his footage the following year to 16mm film collectors as a short film titled The Wizard of Speed and Time
The Wizard of Speed and Time
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 short film, also by Jittlov.-1979 Short film:...
, along with four of his other short multi-technique animated films, most of which eventually evolved into his own feature-length film of the same title. Effectively demonstrating almost all animation techniques, as well as how he produced them, the film was released to theaters in 1987 and to video in 1989.
1980s to present
In the 1970s and 1980s, Industrial Light & Magic often used stop motion model animation for films such as the original Star WarsStar Wars
Star Wars is an American epic space opera film series created by George Lucas. The first film in the series was originally released on May 25, 1977, under the title Star Wars, by 20th Century Fox, and became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, followed by two sequels, released at three-year...
trilogy: the chess sequence in Star Wars
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, originally released as Star Wars, is a 1977 American epic space opera film, written and directed by George Lucas. It is the first of six films released in the Star Wars saga: two subsequent films complete the original trilogy, while a prequel trilogy completes the...
, the Tauntauns and AT-AT walkers in The Empire Strikes Back
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back is a 1980 American epic space opera film directed by Irvin Kershner. The screenplay, based on a story by George Lucas, was written by Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan...
, and the AT-ST walkers in Return of the Jedi
Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi is a 1983 American epic space opera film directed by Richard Marquand and written by George Lucas and Lawrence Kasdan. It is the third film released in the Star Wars saga, and the sixth in terms of the series' internal chronology...
were all stop motion animation, some of it using the Go films. The many shots including the ghosts in Raiders of the Lost Ark
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Raiders of the Lost Ark is a 1981 American action-adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg, produced by George Lucas, and starring Harrison Ford. It is the first film in the Indiana Jones franchise...
and the first two feature films in the RoboCop
RoboCop
RoboCop is a 1987 American science fiction-action film directed by Paul Verhoeven. Set in a crime-ridden Detroit, Michigan in the near future, RoboCop centers on a police officer who is brutally murdered and subsequently re-created as a super-human cyborg known as "RoboCop"...
series use Phil Tippett's go motion
Go motion
Go motion is a variation of stop motion animation, and was co-developed by Industrial Light & Magic and Phil Tippett.- History :Tippett and Industrial Light & Magic created the go motion technique for the first time for some shots of the tauntaun creatures and AT-AT walkers in the 1980 Star Wars...
version of stop motion.
In 1980, Marc Paul Chinoy directed the 1st feature-length clay animated film; a film based on the famous Pogo comic strip. Titled I go Pogo, it was aired a few times on American cable channels, but has yet to be commercially released. Primarily clay, some characters required armatures, and walk cycles used pre-sculpted hard bases legs.
Stop motion was also used for some shots of the final sequence of Terminator
The Terminator
The Terminator is a 1984 science fiction action film directed by James Cameron, co-written by Cameron and William Wisher Jr., and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Biehn, and Linda Hamilton. The film was produced by Hemdale Film Corporation and distributed by Orion Pictures, and filmed in Los...
movie, also for the scenes of the small alien ships in 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...
's Batteries Not Included in 1987, animated by David W. 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...
. Allen's stop motion work can also be seen in such feature films as The Crater Lake Monster
The Crater Lake Monster
The Crater Lake Monster is a 1977 B-rated horror film directed by William R. Stromberg for Crown International Pictures, and starring Richard Cardella...
(1977), Q - The Winged Serpent
Q (film)
Q is a 1982 horror film written and directed by Larry Cohen and starring Michael Moriarty, Candy Clark, David Carradine, and Richard Roundtree.-Plot:...
(1982), The Gate (1986) and Freaked (1993). Allen's King Kong Volkswagen
Volkswagen
Volkswagen is a German automobile manufacturer and is the original and biggest-selling marque of the Volkswagen Group, which now also owns the Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, SEAT, and Škoda marques and the truck manufacturer Scania.Volkswagen means "people's car" in German, where it is...
commercial from the 1970s is now legendary among model animation enthusiasts.
Of note are the films of Czech filmmaker 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...
, which mix stop motion and live actors. These include Alice
Alice (1988 film)
Alice is a 1988 Czechoslovak film directed by Jan Švankmajer. Its original Czech title is Něco z Alenky, which means "Something from Alice". It is a free adaptation of Lewis Carroll's first Alice book, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, about a girl who follows a white rabbit into a bizarre fantasy...
, an adaptation of Lewis Carroll's
Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is an 1865 novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures...
, and Faust
Faust (1994 film)
Faust is a 1994 Czech film directed by Jan Švankmajer. It merges live-action footage with stop-motion footage and includes imaginative puppetry and claymation. The Faust character is played by Petr Čepek. The film was produced by Jaromír Kallista...
, a rendition of the legend of the German scholar
Faust
Faust is the protagonist of a classic German legend; a highly successful scholar, but also dissatisfied with his life, and so makes a deal with the devil, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. Faust's tale is the basis for many literary, artistic, cinematic, and musical...
. The Czech school is also illustrated by the series Pat & Mat
Pat & Mat
Pat & Mat is a Czech stop-motion animated series featuring two handymen, Pat and Mat...
(1979–2004). Created by Lubomír Beneš and Vladimír Jiránek, and it was wildly popular in a number of countries.
Since the general animation renaissance headlined by the likes of Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a 1988 American fantasy-comedy-noir film directed by Robert Zemeckis and released by Touchstone Pictures. The film combines live action and animation, and is based on Gary K. Wolf's novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit?, which depicts a world in which cartoon characters...
and The Little Mermaid
The Little Mermaid
"The Little Mermaid" is a popular fairy tale by the Danish poet and author Hans Christian Andersen about a young mermaid willing to give up her life in the sea and her identity as a mermaid to gain a human soul and the love of a human prince...
at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, there have been an increasing number of traditional stop motion feature films, despite advancements with computer animation
Computer animation
Computer animation is the process used for generating animated images by using computer graphics. The more general term computer generated imagery encompasses both static scenes and dynamic images, while computer animation only refers to moving images....
. 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...
, directed by Henry Selick
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...
and produced by Tim Burton
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...
was one of the more widely-released stop motion features. Henry Selick also went on to direct 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....
and 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...
, and Tim Burton went on to direct 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 ...
.
Another individual who found fame in clay animation is Nick Park
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....
, who created the characters 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...
. In addition to a series of award-winning shorts and featurettes, he won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature
Academy Award for Best Animated Feature
The Academy Award for Best Animated Feature is one of the annual awards given by the Los Angeles-based professional organization, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...
for the feature-length outing 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...
. 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...
, his first feature-length production, grossed over $100 million at the North American box-office, and garnered critical praise. Other notable stop motion feature films released since 1990 include Fantastic Mr. Fox
Fantastic Mr. Fox (film)
Fantastic Mr. Fox is a 2009 American stop-motion animated film based on the Roald Dahl children's novel of the same name. This story is about a fox who steals food each night from three mean and wealthy farmers. The farmers are fed up with Mr Fox's theft and try to kill him, so they dig their way...
and $9.99
$9.99
$9.99 is a 2008 Australian/Israeli stop motion film written and directed by Tatia Rosenthal, with the screenplay by Etgar Keret. This film marks the third collaboration between Rosenthal and Keret...
, both released in 2009, and The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb
The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb
The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb is a 1993 stop-motion animated film made by bolexbrothers, and funded by the BBC, La Sept, producer Richard Hutchinson and Manga Entertainment, which also distributed the film on video...
(1993).
In December 2010, the NBC show Community
Community (TV series)
Community is an American television comedy series created by Dan Harmon that airs on NBC. The series is about a group of students at a community college in the fictional locale of Greendale, Colorado. The series heavily uses meta-humor and pop culture references, often parodying film and television...
had an entire episode in stop motion when character Abed wakes up to discover that everything is in stop motion animation, Professor Duncan and the study group help him try to discover the true meaning of Christmas.
Stereoscopic stop motion
Stop motion has very rarely been shot in stereoscopic 3DThree-dimensional space
Three-dimensional space is a geometric 3-parameters model of the physical universe in which we live. These three dimensions are commonly called length, width, and depth , although any three directions can be chosen, provided that they do not lie in the same plane.In physics and mathematics, a...
throughout film history. The first 3D stop motion short was In Tune With Tomorrow (also known as Motor Rhythm) in 1939 by John Norling. The second stereoscopic stop motion release was The Adventures of Sam Space in 1955 by Paul Sprunck. The third and latest stop motion short in stereo 3D was The Incredible Invasion of the 20,000 Giant Robots from Outer Space in 2000 by Elmer Kaan and Alexander Lentjes. This is also the first ever 3D stereoscopic stop motion and CGI short in the history of film. The first all stop motion 3D feature is Coraline
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...
(2009), based on Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman
Neil Richard Gaiman born 10 November 1960)is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre and films. His notable works include the comic book series The Sandman and novels Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book...
's best-selling novel
Coraline
Coraline is a horror/fantasy novella by British author Neil Gaiman, published in 2002 by Bloomsbury and Harper Collins. It was awarded the 2003 Hugo Award for Best Novella, the 2003 Nebula Award for Best Novella, and the 2002 Bram Stoker Award for Best Work for Young Readers...
and directed by Henry Selick.
Another recent example is the Nintendo 3DS video software which comes with the option for Stop Motion videos. This will be released by December 8, 2011 as a 3DS system update.
Go motion
Another more-complicated variation on stop motion is go motionGo motion
Go motion is a variation of stop motion animation, and was co-developed by Industrial Light & Magic and Phil Tippett.- History :Tippett and Industrial Light & Magic created the go motion technique for the first time for some shots of the tauntaun creatures and AT-AT walkers in the 1980 Star Wars...
, co-developed by 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 first used on the films The Empire Strikes Back
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back is a 1980 American epic space opera film directed by Irvin Kershner. The screenplay, based on a story by George Lucas, was written by Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan...
(1980), Dragonslayer
Dragonslayer
Dragonslayer is a 1981 fantasy movie set in a fictional medieval kingdom, following a young wizard who experiences danger and opposition as he attempts to defeat a dragon....
(1981), and the RoboCop
RoboCop
RoboCop is a 1987 American science fiction-action film directed by Paul Verhoeven. Set in a crime-ridden Detroit, Michigan in the near future, RoboCop centers on a police officer who is brutally murdered and subsequently re-created as a super-human cyborg known as "RoboCop"...
films. Go motion involved programming a computer to move parts of a model slightly during each exposure of each frame of film, combined with traditional hand manipulation of the model in between frames, to produce a more realistic motion 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...
ring effect. Tippett also used the process extensively in his 1984 short film Prehistoric Beast
Prehistoric Beast
Prehistoric Beast is a ten minutes long experimental animated film fully conceived and made by Phil Tippett in 1984. This sequence is considered as being the first film produced by the Tippett Studio, founded by Tippett himself in 1984...
, a 10 minutes long sequence depicting a herbivorous dinosaur (Monoclonius
Monoclonius
Monoclonius was a ceratopsian dinosaur from the Judith River Formation of Late Cretaceous Montana and Canada. It is often confused with Centrosaurus, a similar genus of ceratopsian . Monoclonius was described by Edward Drinker Cope in 1876...
), being chased by a carnivorous one (Tyrannosaurus
Tyrannosaurus
Tyrannosaurus meaning "tyrant," and sauros meaning "lizard") is a genus of coelurosaurian theropod dinosaur. The species Tyrannosaurus rex , commonly abbreviated to T. rex, is a fixture in popular culture. It lived throughout what is now western North America, with a much wider range than other...
). With new footage Prehistoric Beast became Dinosaur!
Dinosaur!
Dinosaur! is an American television documentary about dinosaurs. It was first aired on CBS in the United States on November 5, 1985. Years later, in 1991, another documentary entitled Dinosaur!, not related with that one, was hosted on A&E by CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite.-Content:Directed by...
in 1985, a full length dinosaurs documentary hosted by Christopher Reeve
Christopher Reeve
Christopher D'Olier Reeve was an American actor, film director, producer, screenwriter, author and activist...
. Those Phil Tippett's go motion tests acted as motion models for his first photo-realistic use of computers to depict dinosaurs in Jurassic Park
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...
in 1993. A lo-tech, manual version of this blurring technique was originally pioneered by Wladyslaw 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...
in the silent era, and was used in his 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...
(1931). The 2011 film, "Fantastic Mr. Fox" was also entirely filmed in stop motion.
Comparison to CGI
Its low entry price, and still unique "look" and "feel" on film means stop motion is still used on some projects such as in children's programming, as well as in commercials and comic shows such as Robot ChickenRobot Chicken
Robot Chicken is an American stop motion animated television series created and executive produced by Seth Green and Matthew Senreich along with co-head writers Douglas Goldstein and Tom Root. Green provides many voices for the show...
. The argument that the textures achieved with CGI
Computer-generated imagery
Computer-generated imagery is the application of the field of computer graphics or, more specifically, 3D computer graphics to special effects in art, video games, films, television programs, commercials, simulators and simulation generally, and printed media...
cannot match the way real textures are captured by stop motion also makes it valuable for a handful of movie makers, notably Tim Burton
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...
, whose puppet-animated film 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 in 2005.
Stop motion in television
Dominating children's TV stop motion programming for three decades in America was Art Clokey's GumbyGumby
Gumby is a green clay humanoid character created and modeled by Art Clokey, who also created Davey and Goliath. Gumby has been the subject of a 233-episode series of American television as well as a feature-length film and other media...
series—which spawned a feature film, Gumby I in 1995—using both freeform and character clay animation. 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.
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...
is a very famous stop motion company. Since the 1960s it has been making many stop motion Christmas specials such as 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...
, The Year Without a Santa Claus
The Year Without a Santa Claus
The Year Without a Santa Claus is a 1974 Rankin/Bass stop motion animated television special. It usually airs during the Christmas season on United States television. The story is based on Phyllis McGinley's 1956 book of the same name, illustrated by Kurt Werth.-Summary:The show is set in the...
, Santa Claus is Coming to Town
Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town (TV special)
Santa Claus is Comin' to Town is a 1970 stop motion television special, made by Rankin-Bass with models carved from wood . The film stars actor Fred Astaire as S.D. Kluger, the narrator, and Mickey Rooney as Kris Kringle/Santa Claus...
, and many others.
In November 1959 the first episode of Sandmännchen
Sandmännchen
Unser Sandmännchen, Das Sandmännchen, Abendgruß, Sandmann, Sandmännchen is a German children's bedtime television programme using stop motion animation...
was shown on East German television, a children's show that had Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
propaganda as its primary function. 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
Serge Danot
Serge Danot was a French animator and former advertising executive.Danot was born in Nantes, France. He is best known for creating the animated series, Le Manège enchanté in 1965, which became known in its English-language version, written and narrated by actor Eric Thompson for the BBC , asThe...
created the well-known The Magic Roundabout
The Magic Roundabout
The Magic Roundabout was a children's television programme created in France in 1963 by Serge Danot...
(1965) which played for many years on the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
. Another French/Polish stop motion animated series was Colargol
Colargol
Colargol is a fictional bear created by French writer Olga Pouchine in the 1950s. Colargol first became famous through a series of children's recordings by Philips in the 1960s...
(Barnaby the Bear in the UK, Jeremy in Canada), by Olga Pouchine and Tadeusz Wilkosz.
A British TV-series Clangers
Clangers
Clangers is a popular British stop-motion animated children's television series of short stories about a family of mouse-like creatures who live on, and in, a small blue planet . They speak in whistles, and eat green soup supplied by the Soup Dragon...
(1969) became popular on television. The British artists Brian Cosgrove and Mark Hall (Cosgrove Hall Films
Cosgrove Hall Films
Cosgrove Hall Films was a British animation studio based in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester, that once was a major producer of children's television programmes. Cosgrove Hall's programmes are still seen in over eighty countries...
) 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
Kenneth Grahame
Kenneth Grahame was a Scottish writer, most famous for The Wind in the Willows , one of the classics of children's literature. He also wrote The Reluctant Dragon; both books were later adapted into Disney films....
's classic children's book
The Wind in the Willows
The Wind in the Willows is a classic of children's literature by Kenneth Grahame, first published in 1908. Alternately slow moving and fast paced, it focuses on four anthropomorphised animal characters in a pastoral version of England...
of the same title. They also produced a documentary of their production techniques, Making Frog and Toad.
Another example is "Pingu
Pingu
Pingu is a British-Swiss stop-motion claymated television series created by Otmar Gutmann. The series was produced by The Pygos Group and Trickfilmstudio for Swiss television. The show is about a family of anthropomorphic penguins at the South Pole. The main character is the family's son and title...
" (1986) about a penguin who lives with his family in an igloo
Igloo
An igloo or snowhouse is a type of shelter built of snow, originally built by the Inuit....
.
In the 1990s Trey Parker
Trey Parker
Trey Parker is an American animator, screenwriter, director, producer, voice artist, musician and actor, best known for being the co-creator of the television series South Park along with his creative partner and best friend Matt Stone.Parker started his film career in 1992, making a holiday short...
and Matt Stone
Matt Stone
Matthew Richard "Matt" Stone is an American screenwriter, producer, voice artist, musician and actor, best known for being the co-creator of South Park along with creative partner and best friend, Trey Parker....
made two original shorts and the pilot of South Park
South Park
South Park is an American animated television series created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone for the Comedy Central television network. Intended for mature audiences, the show has become famous for its crude language, surreal, satirical, and dark humor that lampoons a wide range of topics...
almost entirely out of construction paper.
The animated series Robot Chicken
Robot Chicken
Robot Chicken is an American stop motion animated television series created and executive produced by Seth Green and Matthew Senreich along with co-head writers Douglas Goldstein and Tom Root. Green provides many voices for the show...
continues to primarily utilize stop motion animation, using custom made action figures and other toys as principal characters. Other action figures, called Stikfas
STIKFAS
STIKFAS are 3.25 inch model assembly figures/toys made by Stikfas Pte. Ltd is based in Singapore. Once built they can be customized with stickers and different pieces...
, are very popular stop motion figures and are not extremely expensive. Moral Orel
Moral Orel
Moral Orel is an American stop-motion animated television show, which originally aired on Adult Swim from December 13, 2005 to December 18, 2008...
is another stop motion based show, along with the upcoming Mary Shelley's Frankenhole
Mary Shelley's Frankenhole
Mary Shelley's Frankenhole is a stop-motion animated TV series by Dino Stamatopoulos, creator of Moral Orel. Nine of ten 15-minute episodes have aired on Cartoon Network's late night programming block, Adult Swim. Frankenhole premiered on June 27, 2010.-Premise:Dr...
, both created by Dino Stamatopoulos
Dino Stamatopoulos
Dino Stamatopoulos is an American television comedy writer, actor and producer who has worked on Mr. Show, TV Funhouse, Mad TV, The Dana Carvey Show, Late Show with David Letterman and Late Night with Conan O'Brien...
.
Also Another Example is A little curious from 1999 has Stop-motion characters like
bob the ball and doris the door.
Stop motion in other media
A craze on the internet is animating with clay figures on public video sites such as YouTubeYouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
and Google Video
Google Video
Google Videos is a video search engine, and formerly a free video sharing website, from Google Inc. Before removing user-uploaded content, the service allowed selected videos to be remotely embedded on other websites and provided the necessary HTML code alongside the media, similar to YouTube...
. 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, thanks to the ease of modern stop motion software and online video publishing. Many new stop motion shorts use clay animation into a new form.
Also, singer-songwriter Oren Lavie
Oren Lavie
Oren Lavie is an Israeli singer, songwriter, playwright, and theatre director. His music video for "Her Morning Elegance" earned a 2009 Grammy Award nomination for "Best Short Form Music Video". On March 10, 2009, Oren released his debut album, The Opposite Side of the Sea, in the United States...
's music video for the song Her Morning Elegance was posted on YouTube on January 19, 2009. The video, directed by Lavie and Yuval and Merav Nathan, uses stop motion and has achieved great success with over 15 million views, also earning a 2010 Grammy Award nomination for "Best Short Form Music Video".
Stop motion has occasionally been used to create the characters for computer games, as an alternative to CGI. the Virgin Interactive Entertainment Mythos
Mythos Games
Mythos Games is a defunct British video game developer company founded by Julian Gollop.-Games developed by Mythos Games:* Rebelstar II * Laser Squad * Lords of Chaos * Magic & Mayhem -External links:*...
game Magic and Mayhem
Magic and Mayhem
Magic & Mayhem, also known as Duel: The Mage Wars , The Art of Magic , Mana: Der Weg der schwarzen Macht , Duelo de hechiceros , Art of Magic: La Guerra dei Maghi and Arcanes , is a fantasy/mythology-themed real-time strategy game designed by Julian Gollop and developed by Mythos Games...
(1998) featured creatures built by stop motion specialist Alan Friswell, who made the miniature figures from modelling clay and latex rubber, over armatures of wire and ball-and-socket joints. The models were then animated one frame at a time, and incorporated into the CGI elements of the game through digital photography. "ClayFighter
ClayFighter
ClayFighter is a fighting game released for the Super NES in 1993, and later ported to Mega Drive/Genesis in 1994. It has been re-released on Nintendo's Virtual Console along with the two Earthworm Jim games and Boogerman, which are also by Interplay....
" for the Super Nintendo and The Neverhood
The Neverhood
The Neverhood is a 1996 PC CD-ROM adventure video game created by animator Doug TenNapel and released by DreamWorks Studios. It features claymation graphics and music by composer Terry Scott Taylor...
for the PC
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
are other examples.
See also
- List of stop motion artists
- List of stop motion films
- Go motionGo motionGo motion is a variation of stop motion animation, and was co-developed by Industrial Light & Magic and Phil Tippett.- History :Tippett and Industrial Light & Magic created the go motion technique for the first time for some shots of the tauntaun creatures and AT-AT walkers in the 1980 Star Wars...
- Still motionStill motionStill Motion is a 3-piece rock and roll band from Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania. They draw heavily on the music of the past, namely the rock era of the 60s and 70s, typified by bands like The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and The Beatles. Classic in spirit yet contemporary in scope, Still Motion's...