Stop Motion

Timeline
BY TOM WHITE

The Timeline: 1800s

1833: The Zoetrope was invented
1872: Edward Muybridge begins studying motion with strategically
placed cameras.
1879:Edward Muybridge first invented aZoopraxiscope
1877Praxinoscope is invented bymile Reynaud
1890: Thomas Edison develops the Kinetoscope, a private viewing
station with one long film strip.
1894: The flip book was invented byHerman Casler
1895: The Lumiere Brothers create the Cinematograph, a
combination movie camera and projector
1898: Albert Smith and Stuart Blackton create The Humpty Dumpty
Circus, the first animated puppet film.

The Timeline 1900s

1915: Willis OBrien starts experimenting with animation.
1923: Experimentation with sound film begins in New York City.
1927: Warner Brothers releases first sound film, The Jazz Singer.
1949: Harryhausen works as OBriens protg on Mighty Joe
Young.
1953: Harryhausens first Dynamation film, Beast from 20,000
Fathoms.
1954: The first American stop-motion feature, Hansel and Gretel, is
released.
1958: Harry Hausen starts to add colour to his animations, his first
colour one being for 'The 7th Voyage of Sinbad'
1975: First animation shown on television, Tom and Jerry by Hanna
Barbera

Ray Harryhausen

Was first inspired by Willis o' Brian and his first King kong film where stop motion was used to
show him on top of the empire state building.

Started to make his own animations in his house, with his mum making the set and his dad
making the mechanics for the dinosaurs etc.

When his dad made mechanics for his props it gave a flare to his work as it gave him more
control and started to look more realistic.

His first coloured animation was with 'The living skeleton' with became famous very quickly.

Started work with live footage interlinking with animation, for example dinosaurs would pick
up human.

Started to use 24 FPS with became to be lots more work as more pictures had to be taken.

He then went on to make some popular films such as 'War of the Worlds', 'Clash of the
Titans', 'Jason and the Argonauts' and 'Sinbad'.

His work with animation and real life footage has inspired many directors even to this day,
including 'Star Trek', 'Mary Poppins' and many many more.

Eadweard Muybridge
[1] Most known for his invention of the Zoopraxiscope, Eadweard
used state of the art techniques to make his useful stop motion
tools. The Zoophaxiscope is a spinning sphere which gets threaded
through aprojectorwhich gives theillusionthat the images are
morphing into a moving image.

Hanna Barbera
[2] Founded in 1957 by William 'Hanna' and Joseph 'Barbera',
Hannah Barbera is most famous for making one of the first
successful animation 'Tom and Jerry'. They then went on to make
The Flintstones, Yogi Bear, Scooby-Doo and the Smurfs. Hanna
Barbera is on this timeline as they were one of the first animation
studios to successfully produce cartoons for television. This was in
1975, and was produced for ABC studios.

Thomas Edison
[3]Most famous for the invention of the light bulb, he also made the
phonograph and the motion picture camera. This is quite a bit step
for stop motion, as without this, it wouldn't be possible.

2D Vector Graphics
This means that the vectors are not saved as one image, which then
has the advantage of whenscaling, it does not pixelate. An example
of this is when on a program such as word, if you expand the image
the program will use vector graphics so that itdoesn'tpixelate. This
is used in animation so when they zoom into a scene,
itsdoesn'tlose the quality.

William Horner
[4] As well as being an extremely good mathematician, Willian also
invented the zoetrope. This is a spinning cylinder that has a strip of
images placed on the lower half, and on the higher half are slits to
look in. This gives the effect that its a moving image. This was a
good move for animation as this gave the idea of making anything
you want with images.

Flick Book
[5]The flick book was invented in 1894 by Herman Casler. A flick
book is basically a stop motion in the palm of your hand. How it
works is that on every page is a drawn picture, and as you 'flick'
through the pages it makes the illusion of a moving image on the
page. This gave stop motion an extra step closer towards excellent
animations.

Emile Reynaud
fCharles-mile Reynaud was a science teacher and a french
inventor, that created the Praxinoscope in 1877. This was very
similar to the zoetrope, but instead of viewing close up, it had been
made into a projector. This used film perforations, which is the first
known instance. Unfortunately the Praxinoscope soon got outdated
in 1910 for the cinematograph.

Frame Rates
[6]Frame rate is how many frames or images are shown in a
second. The higher the frame rate, the smoother the film will be. In
stop motion the frame rate cant be below 15 as it will become
choppy and noticeable but if you use 30 fps (frames per second) it
will be smooth. Most cameras use 24 fps which is smooth. The down
side of using a high fps is that it takes a lot more effort as its lots
more images to take. When animation first started the fps was quite
low but as time went on the fps has increased.

The Brothers Quay

The Brothers Quay are two identical twins that are most famous for
their film 'Street of Crocodiles' which was released in 1986. This was
a advanced step in stop motion as although it was well animated, it
was one of the first to tell a highly sophisticated story. This made
stop motion appeal to a wider audience, and made people change
their views on stop motion animation.

Aardman Animations
[7] Or also known as Aardman Studios, made in 1972 and based in
Bristol, its founder of the famous animations: Wallace and Gromit,
Shaun the Sheep, Creature comforts, Morph, Chicken Run and many
more! Their films began with stop motion, but later on moved on to
the computer animated market with 'Flushed away' (2006) which
was a massive hit.

Willis OBrien
Most famous for King Kong(1933), Willis O'Brian inspired Ray
Harryhousen at a young age to go on and make great stop motion
films. [8]According to ASIFA-Hollywood "was responsible for some of
the best-known images in cinema history,"

Cel Animation;
[9] Cel animation is where the stop motion is hand drawn. This is
100 times more time consuming than normal stop motion, as after
each frame, the set has to be drawn again. Think of this like a flick
book, but more in depth.

Rotoscoping
[11] Rotoscoping is a useful stop motion technique where the image
is projected onto a glass panel, and the artist draws over that image
so they know what happened in the last frame. This is quite an old
method, as now there are programs that show up in a lower opacity
over the picture for a guide to follow. Eadweard Muybridge's 'Horse'
was made using this trick.

Joseph Plateau
Joseph was the first man to ever make an stop-motion. He is a key
point in this presentation as without his bright idea, we wouldnt
have video recorders or stop-motion. Overall he is an inspiration to
anyone that works on stop-motion animation

Persistence Of Vision;
Persistence of vision is what you see, and how fast your eye sees
things. This is normally one sixteenth of a second, which gives stop
motion a really good look if it has a high fps.

Lumire Brothers;
[12] The Lumiere Brotheres were the first ever film makers in
history.Their first film,Sortie de l'usine Lumire de Lyon, shot in
1894, is considered the first true motion picture ever to be made.

Links
1http://inventors.about.com/od/mstartinventors/a/Muybridge.htm
2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanna-Barbera
3http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison
4 https://ahistoryofstopmotion.wordpress.com/tag/william-horner/
5 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip_book
6 http://www.mobileburn.com/definition.jsp?term=frame+rate
7 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aardman_Animations
8 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willis_H._O%27Brien
9 http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/C/cel_animation.html
10 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disney
11 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotoscoping
12 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_and_Louis_Lumi%C3%A8re