Stop Motion Techniques

Stop - Frame

Stop motion/Stop frame is an animation technique to make any object such as plasticine animals look as if it’s moving on its own. This is done by moving the object in small steps

between photographed frames, so it appears the object has life when the frames are played together as a continuous sequence. Plasticine or clay figures like Wallace and

Gromit are very often used in stop frame animation because they are easy to reposition. Stop frame animation using this method is called clay animation or “clay-mation". Not all

stop motion includes figures; many stop frame videos can be done using humans, household appliances and a vast range of other things for comedic effect.

Frame Rate

Frame rate is the occurrence (rate) at which an imaging device such as a digital camera can produce repetitive images called frames. The term also relates to film/video cameras, computer

graphics and games. Frame rate is usually known as frames per second (FPS) and is also stated in progressive scan

monitors as hertz (Hz).

Persistence of vision

Persistence of vision is the phenomenon of the eye of which an afterimage is thought to stay for about one twenty-fifth of a second on the retina. The myth was debunked in 1912 by

Wertheimer but still persists in many citations, and classic and modern film-theory texts. A more reasonable theory to explain

motion perception are two specific illusions: phi phenomenon and beta movement.

Pioneers: William Horner

William Horner was an animation pioneer, he designed the zoetrope. He invented the zoetrope in 1834. The zoetrope produces an impression of action from a rapid succession. It was basically a improvement on the phenkitascope. It lead to the praxinoscope being created and also to animation being viewed much simpler. This made animation easier to be seen because the small slits on the side where the viewer looked in provided a better effect than the phenkitascope. the designs on the zoetrope vary from animals to football players, and is still used today.

Pioneers: Eadweard Muybridge

Eadweard James Muybridge was an English pioneer in animation, he was a photographer important for his work in photographic studies of motion and in motion-picture projection. He chose his name Eadweard Muybridge, this is because he believed it to be the original Anglo-Saxon form of his name. He immigrated to the America as a young man but remained unknown until 1868, when his photographs of Yosemite Valley, California, made him worldwide famous. Muybridge is well known for his work on animal movement in 1877 and 1878, which he used several cameras to capture motion in stop-frame photographs, and his zoopraxiscope, a device that projected motion pictures that pre-dated the film strip used in cinematography.

Developers of animation: Ray Harryhausen

Raymond Frederick "Ray" Harryhausen is an American visual effects creator, writer and producer. He made a range of stop-frame model animations, also known as "Dynamation.”Among his most known work is his animation on ‘Mighty Joe Young’ which he did along with pioneer Willis O'Brien, who won the Academy Award for special effects. The 7th Voyage of Sinbad which was his first color film and ‘Jason and the Argonauts’, this featured a famous sword fight against seven skeletal soldiers.

Developers of animation: Jan Svankmajer

Jan Svankmajer is a Czech filmmaker/artist whose work spreads across several forms of media. He is a self-labeled surrealist who is known for his surreal and unusual animations and features, which have greatly inspired others such as Terry Gilliam, the Brothers Quay, and lots of other artists.

Contemporary animators: Tim Burton

Timothy Walter "Tim" Burton is an American film director, film producer, writer and artist. He earned his name for his famous, dark and quirky-themed movies such as Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas and Sweeney Todd. Burton is well known for using recurring actors in his work; one of them is Johnny Depp, who has become a good friend of Burton’s ever since the first film they made together. He also wrote and illustrated the poetry book ‘The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy’.

Contemporary animators: Aardman animations

Aardman Animations, which is also known as ‘Aardman Studios’ is an English animation studio located in Bristol in

the United Kingdom. They are known for films created using stop-frame clay animation figures, especially those

featuring Plasticine characters such as the famous Wallace and Gromit. However, they successfully entered the

computer animation market with Flushed Away in 2006.

Favorites: Aardman Studios

Aardman Studios is one of my favorite animation companies, their

work is widely known and very famous worldwide, some of their

best are Wallace and Gromit, Flushed Away and Morph. They

make their animations seem almost real, the movements of the

characters are very smooth and they have a high frame rate which creates the realistic effect.

Favorites: Tim Burton

Tim Burton’s animation films I think, work very well, like Aardman Studios the movements are smooth and the frame rate is high which means there’s no jerks between the slides. This makes the animation seem much more real and has a better effect on the viewer.

Different techniques

Time lapse: An animation created by taking a series of photographs over a length of time, the animation is then made by putting all the photos together and then increasing the speed of the clip. This technique is often used with clouds and growing plants to make speed up the movement.Claymation: An animation created by using clay/plasticine figures and animals. The characters are easily deformable so the movements can have a good effect, this is done the same way as any other animation, taking pictures of each movement then joining them together to create one continuous video.

Using found objects: An animation created by using random objects found around the house, studio etc. This technique gives the objects life and seem as if they move on their own. It differs from the other techniques because the objects are for example, a broom, sunglasses or shoes, things that usually have no character.

Different formats

Music video: A good example of this is Aardman Studio’s video for Peter Gabriel’s ‘Sledgehammer’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1tTN-b5KHg

Cinema: There have been many animation films made, some good examples are, Wallace and Gromit, The Nightmare before Christmas and Coralline.

Advertisement: Animation in advertising has become more popular with some rather big companies using it, Lloyd’s tsb use computer animation for their adverts.