The Techniques and Development of Stop Motion Animation

PART 1 - PIONEERS

Numerous people have been credited with pioneering animation and cinema in general, in numerous different ways.

One of the earliest devices that transmitted a moving image was the Phenakistoscope (sometimes spelled 'phenakitoscope/phenakitiscope/phenakistiscope'). This technology was invented by Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau, who was born in 1801, and was considered a child prodigy since he could read at the age of 6. He later carried out numerous pieces of research into the effects of light and colour on the retina, and eventually invented the Phenakistoscope, which was the first device to give an image the illusion of motion.

The device consisted of a spinning disc, which had a series of images that progressed slowly from one to the next, and a number of slits at equal intervals along the edge.

The user would look through the slits at a mirror and due to the stroboscopic effect the slits had in tandem with the images, they would appear to move.

The term 'phenakistoscope' comes from the Greek 'phenakizein' which means 'to deceive' or 'to cheat', because the device 'tricks' the eyes into motion.

Source - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenakistoscope

A natural progression after the Phenakistoscope was the Zoetrope, which was invented at roughly the same time. Operating upon many of the same principles as the Phenakistoscope does, the Zoetrope consisted of a carousel with slits around the edges, with a strip of paper in the middle with the successive 'frames' of the animation printed on it.


This is an improvement over the Phenakistoscope in many ways:

 - A mirror isn't required for its use

 - More reliable

 - More than one person can use it at once

'Zoetrope' comes from the Greek 'ζωή (zoe)', meaning 'life', and 'τρόπος (tropos)', meaning 'to turn' altogether roughly translating as 'wheel of life'.
The device's invention is credited to British mathematician William Horner in 1834, who initially named it the 'Daedaleum' - most likely in reference to the Greek myth of Daedalus, however the name has been mistakenly interpreted as 'wheel of the devil'. The device gained its current name when it was patented in the US in the late 1860s by one William F Lincoln.

Source - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoetrope

In 1877 a successor to the Zoetrope came in the form of the Praxinoscope.

Although largely similar to the Zoetrope at first glance, the Praxinoscope improves upon its predecessor by using a succession of mirrors in the middle of the device as opposed to the Zoetrope's slits. These work in turn to keep each 'frame' somewhat static whilst the device turns - creating a brighter, more sharp moving image.

This invention is attributed to Charles-Émile Reynaud, a French inventor. He later went on to modify his device by allowing it to project its images onto a screen, naming his new invention the 'Théâtre Optique'.



'Praxinoscope' roughly translates as 'action-viewer' from the Greek 'πρᾶξις'(action), and 'σκοπός'(watcher).

Source - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praxinoscope

Around the late 1880's Thomas Edison invented the Kinetoscope. Initially a one-at-a-time system, the Kinetoscope pioneered the moving image technology that would dominate the industry all the way until the introduction of Video, which is the running of a film over a light source with a shutter.

Edison was inspired to build the Kinetoscope after meeting with Eadweard Muybridge after a demonstration of the latter's 'zoopraxiscope' device. He was seeking to build a machine that 'did for the eye what the phonograph (earlier name for the gramophone) did for the ear'.

The kinetoscope wasn't initially projection-based, as Edison didn't think projection would 'catch on', but later revisions of the kinetoscope which were projection-based ended up superceding the original.

Source - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetoscope


A couple of years later, Auguste and Louis Lumière sought to right the faults that they had noticed with Edison's device, and came out with the Cinématographe. Lighter than the Kinetoscope, and more portable (it was hand-cranked as opposed to electrically powered), and possessing the ability to project images onto a large screen so that many people could view the images at once meant that the Cinématographe was a hit all over the world.


Source - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinematograph


Once the cinema ball was well and truly rolling, a man by the name of Georges Méliès accidentally invented visual effects.

Méliès was an artistically inclined child, having worked in the stage industry before discovering film. He accidentally discovered what he called the 'stop trick' technique when he was filming something and his camera jammed, losing some frames. Méliès thought nothing of this to start with, until, reviewing his footage, he noticed that around the point where the camera jammed things jumped around or even turned into something else entirely. This technique is so simple, yet it is used even today in film.

Source - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_M%C3%A9li%C3%A8s

As part of our looking at early animation technology, we took it upon ourselves to construct our own 'thaumatropes'. A very basic form of moving image illusion, it consists of blending two images together so that they appear as one static image. Here is mine that I made:

'Thaumatrope' comes from the Greek 'θαῦμα (thauma)' meaning 'wonder', and 'τρόπος (tropos)', meaning 'to turn'.

We then made our own zoetrope animations, but for lack of an actual zoetrope to display them in, I have taken a picture of each frame to demonstrate:

We found a zoetrope! Here's a gif of my zoetrope centre in an actual zoetrope:

A short while after we made praxinoscope centres. Here's my centre animated without a praxinoscope:

And here it is in an actual praxinoscope:

PART 2 - DEVELOPERS

Animation is very different today to how it was 120 years ago. Different technologies have been created, improved upon, and used, and there are a number of people in the industry today that are considered leaders in these particular fields.

PIXAR



I have created a Prezi about Pixar which can be seen here.

GEORGE PAL



George Pal was a European animator responsible for the popular and novel Puppetoons series during the 1940s. He grew up in Austria-Hungary, before moving to Berlin in 1931 to found Trickfilm-Studio ('Trickfilm' means 'Animation' in German). As the Nazis came to power, Pal left Germany for America and found work at Paramount Pictures. It was in this time that he made the Puppetoons shorts.

The 'Puppetoons' were made using stop-motion animation, but tended to mix a kind of replacement/frame-by-frame animation along with stop-motion's 'real life' nature by making seperate models for each frame and simply replacing them on each frame.

Here's one of his Puppetoons, Hoola Boola:



After making the Puppetoons, Pal moved on to live-action films, making films such as War of the Worlds and The Time Machine.

Source - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Pal

OTMAR GUTMANN



Otmar Gutmann is most known for creating the children's TV show Pingu. He was born in Germany in 1937.

Pingu ran from the late 80s until around 2006, but is still re-run on CBeebies today. It is a 'claymation' involving a family of penguins who live in an igloo.

'Claymation' is a form of stop-motion animation wherein the characters are made out of clay, and this is appropriate for this kind of content as hand-drawn animation would probably take too long for the format of television.

Here's a clip from Pingu:



Source - http://www.btecmediaen2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/class-presentations-techniques-and.html

NICK PARK + AARDMAN



Nick Park was born in 1958 and is responsible for the creation of Wallace and Gromit at Aardman Studios.

They have been specifically stop-motion based for many years, however they recently tried their hand at computer-generated animation with Flushed Away and Arthur Christmas. 2017's 'Early Man' will signify their return to stop-motion.

Nick Park's Wallace and Gromit started out with A Grand Day Out, a short film in 1990 which was nominated for Best Animated Short, but lost out to another Nick Park short Creature Comforts. Since then there have been 3 more short films and a feature-length.

Here's a clip from Wallace and Gromit:



Source - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Park

WILLIS O'BRIEN



Willis O'Brien is considered one of the pioneers of stop-motion animation. Starting out with sculptures and models, he moved into stop-motion wherein he gained the attention of Thomas Edison, who allowed him to make more films.

He is responsible for a lot of stop-motion techniques still used today, including but not limited to model design, and a bunch of other shit really

After a few years of varying success, he obtained funding for his passion project involving a giant gorilla fighting dinosaurs, and thus King Kong was born. It is his most memorable film.

Here's a clip:



Source - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willis_H._O'Brien

TIM BURTON



Tim Burton was born in 1958 and is well-known for his dark, gothic style. He is most known for his work on films such as The Nightmare Before Christmas and The Corpse Bride. Most of his stop-motion films have had more than a hand's help from Henry Selick, who directed The Nightmare Before Christmas as well as Coraline and other such films.

Burton started out in stop-motion animation at the age of 13, when he made his own adaptation of HG Well's The Island of Doctor Moreau. From there he attracted Disney's attention, where he worked as an animator on a few films before he split due to creative differences.

He works in stop-motion animation, specifically that with highly detailed character models and armatures in order to achieve the slightly eerie/creepy effect that his films give.

Here's a clip from The Corpse Bride:



Source - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Burton

DREAMWORKS



Dreamworks Animation SKG are a spin-off of the colossal Dreamworks Studios SKG, and have been responsible for around 29 popular animated films in the last 20 years.

The animation studio came about thanks to a merger between Dreamworks' original animation subsidiary and Pacific Data Images. A lot of people from Steven Spielberg's previous animation studio Amblimation came over to Dreamworks after it shut down, and that's why they do animation.

They started out in 3D animation with Antz, but then made 2D films The Prince of Egypt and The Road to El Dorado. They continued alternating with 2D and 3D films with Shreks 1 and 2, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron and Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas until around 2004 when they made 3D their priority. They haven't made any 2D films since, because Sinbad bombed pretty badly.

Both 3D computer animation and 2D cel animation are very expensive and elaborate forms of animation that require lots and lots of people and take many years to complete.

Here is a clip from The Road to El Dorado:



and here is a clip from How To Train Your Dragon 2:



Source - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DreamWorks

HAYAO MIYAZAKI + STUDIO GHIBLI



Hayao Miyazaki is a Japanese film director born in 1941. He started animating at Toei on films such as Gulliver's Travels to the Moon as an in-betweener, later leaving and founding Ghibli with Isao Takahata.

He has since made 10 feature-length films. He specialises in hand-drawn, cel animation.

Here's a clip from The Wind Rises, his newest film:



Source - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_Ghibli

BROTHERS QUAY



The Brothers Quay, known to friends and family as Stephen and Timothy, are highly influential stop-motion artists born in America in 1947. They moved to England to create films with an Eastern European style and influence.

They work in stop-motion animation, which, like Tim Burton, helps them achieve that weird/creepy/eerie look to their films.

Here's a clip from Street of Crocodiles:



Source - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brothers_Quay

DISNEY



Walt Disney and his wildly successful company have been an absolute powerhouse of animation for the last 70-or-so years. He and his brother Roy started the company as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio in 1923. After animating a few shorts featuring character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, licensing issues unfortunately meant that Oswald had to be retired, and Walt was forced to create a new character, who he first named Mortimer Mouse. Mortimer later became Mickey thanks to input from Walt's wife, and then films such as Steamboat Willie were made.

This kickstarted a few decades of 2D, cel-animated films until more recently they began to dabble in 3D animation with Chicken Little in 2005. They have released 7 3D animated movies since, including Tangled, Wreck-it Ralph, and most recently Marvel's Big Hero 6, with Zootopia upcoming in 2016.

Here is a clip from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs:




And here is a clip from Big Hero 6:




Source - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Walt_Disney_Company

PART 3 - MEDIA PLATFORMS AND AUDIENCES

Nowadays, animation is used all over the media, with all kinds of different moving image texts using animation.

TV PROGRAMMES

CHILDREN

DIPDAP



Dip Dap is a recent programme shown on CBeebies. It is 2D, computer-generated animation. This is useful in this context because the character gets into all sorts of zany situations that would be absolutely impossible (or at least very difficult) in live-action, and a lot of the jokes/twists rely on the hasty, hand-drawn style.

MIO MAO



Mio Mao started in the 70's, but has recently enjoyed a revival on Channel 5's 'Milkshake' children's segment. It is a 'claymation' about two cats finding new things.

Claymation is important to this show because filming it live-action would be a nightmare since working with animals is very difficult ranging on impossible, and also the cats in this show shape-shift and do all kinds of other things that would be difficult to do in live-action.

ADULT

THE SIMPSONS



Possibly one of, if not the most popular animated sitcom in the world, The Simpsons has been going for around 26 years and has enjoyed around 26 seasons. It used to be cel-animated but is now computer-generated.

This show would actually be somewhat achievable in a live-action format, but the show definitely wouldn't have lasted as long as it has done if it wasn't animated. Animation helps set it apart from other sitcoms, and also increases longevity since the characters don't visibly age.

BOB'S BURGERS



A more recent animated sitcom, Bob's Burgers follows the Belcher family as they own a hamburger restaurant, and the children's lives at school amongst other things. It's a computer-generated 2D animation.

Like The Simpsons, Bob's Burgers would also be somewhat achievable as a live-action sitcom, but likely wouldn't command the same sort of charm as it does being animated.

ROBOT CHICKEN



Robot Chicken is an animated sketch show featuring licensed characters and franchises created for Adult Swim. It uses stop-motion to animate posable puppets for its sketches.

Stop-motion is good for this because so much of the show is based in parody, it's much cheaper and easier to create models and sets that look much more like the characters they are parodying than it would be if it were live-action.

ADVERTS

COCA COLA



This is a 3D, computer-generated advert marketing Coca Cola.

Computer animation helps achieve the surrealist, fantastical tone that Coca-Cola is aiming for with this advert.

AMAZON KINDLE



This is one of a series of adverts promoting the Amazon Kindle. It uses stop-motion animation, with paper props and live-action actors.

If this advert was a conventional, by-the-numbers live-action advert it wouldn't be nearly as memorable and likeable as this one here.

RAC



This is a stop-motion animated advert using real world props within a garage composited over a regularly filmed actor.

Like with the Kindle advert, this style elicits a sort of charm far more memorable and effective than with a straight live-action piece.

FILM

CHILDREN

PONYO



Ponyo is a Hayao Miyazaki film slightly akin to The Little Mermaid. It is entirely cel-animated.

Part of Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli's draw and selling point is the rich, detailed art that goes into their films, and that kind of imagery just wouldn't be what it is if this film was live-action. The film also depicts some fantastical situations that would be difficult in a live-action format.

CHICKEN RUN



Chicken Run is one of the first feature-length films to come out of Aardman studios, entirely animated using stop-motion 'claymation' techniques.

Making this film with real chickens would be difficult to say the least, and the characters wouldn't have as much, well, character as they do in this stop-motion format.

ADULT

PERSEPOLIS

Couldn't find any good clips of this film with embedding enabled, so click here to watch it.

Persepolis is a french-language biopic following the story of Marjane Satrapi as she grows up in 70s Iran, and later moves to Europe in her adolescent years. It is adapted from the graphic novels of the same name, and is traditionally animated.

This film would be very achievable in live-action format, but it is animated mostly in order to keep in line with the graphic novel, and it also provides more character than would otherwise be there in live-action.

TITAN AE

In the absence of a decent clip I have elected to embed the trailer instead:



An older film from Fox Animation, Titan AE is a hybrid between traditional cel animation and 3D, computer-generated segments.

This is animated probably a big part because they didn't have the budget to make a similar film in live-action as it would be leagues more expensive to produce.

MUSIC VIDEOS

COLDPLAY - STRAWBERRY SWING



As part of their album campaign for Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends, Coldplay made this stop-motion video on a pavement in London with the aid of visual artist trio Shynola. It is somewhat hand-drawn as the chalk on the pavement would have to be redrawn for every frame, but it features Chris Martin and certain props animated alongside them too.

Music videos are concept-heavy in nature, and the whole point of this video is that it's animated. it wouldn't get the same sort of attention it did at all if it was just a regular live-action video.

DELTA HEAVY - GET BY



This video is stop-motion of real-world props and objects, alongside a real actor interacting with these props.

This is animated in order to imitate filmmaker PES's style (whose film is embedded later on), and wouldn't technically be possible in live-action.

TAME IMPALA - FEELS LIKE WE ONLY GO BACKWARDS



Each and every frame of this video was painted by hand, which makes it paper-based animation. This video was directed by Joe Pelling and Becky Sloan, who just so happen to be behind the Don't Hug Me I'm Scared series of videos on YouTube.

It most certainly wouldn't have been more expensive or harder to film this in live-action as a 3 and a half minute video in this format is a gargantuan feat, but as I mentioned earlier music videos are rather concept-heavy in nature and so this sort of thing is rather 'worth it' in that context.

OK GO - LAST LEAF



Ever popular for their creative music videos, OK GO's video for their song Last Leaf is completely animated on toast, and is said to have used around 217 loaves of bread (which the band stresses were out of date and were going to be thrown away anyway).

The video was animated on Flash primarily, and then each frame was laser-etched into the toast. It's technically stop-motion, but sometimes the lines between the definitions become a little blurred.

OK Go are infamous for making technically impressive and outside-the-box music videos and animation is sometimes the best way to go about this.

RYMDREGLAGE - ZOMBIE PACE



Off the back of their wildly popular video for 8 BIT TRIP, Swedish animation powerhouses Rymdreglage spent around 700 hours animating their own music video for their song Zombie Pace.

They achieved this effect by precreating the video on a computer, then projecting each frame onto the floor and putting the hama beads in the right places.  It is stop motion.

PROFESSOR KLIQ - WIRE AND FLASHING LIGHTS



This video was initially independently produced by Patator Productions, but Professor Kliq liked it so much he gave the original song a facelift and made it the official video. It's completely stop-motion, made of pieces of wire and cardboard.

WEB VIDEO

PES - FRESH GUACAMOLE



This is to date the shortest film ever to be nominated for an Oscar. It is animated via stop-motion with real-world objects and props, but featuring a live actor also. Despite its similarity to the previously embedded video for Delta Heavy, they were made by different people.

THE ANIMATION SHOW



Don Hertzfeldt's lesser-known opus The Animation Show is animated via the medium of paper.

WHO IS STOP MOTION MADE FOR?

Stop motion animation as a whole does not have an explicit target audience. There exists many films and short pieces of stop-motion animation that pander to all kinds of different target audiences, so trying to narrow it down to one would be impossible.

WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD FOR STOP MOTION?

With the rise of computer-generated animation it's pretty easy to dismiss stop-motion photography and say that its days are numbered, but I believe stop-motion animation will always have its place among other techniques. The reason 2D cel animation isn't around as much anymore is because of the cost, skill required, and time investment. This isn't to say there isn't a time investment involved with stop-motion either, but it's so much more accessible as a medium that anyone with a camera, computer and some imagination can create something with stop-motion animation. And that's why I think it's here to stay.