Stop Motion Animation

By Devlo

Stop Motion History

Stop motion is an animation technique that makes physically manipulated object or person 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.

Dolls with movable joints or clay figures are often used in stop motion for their ease of repositioning.
Stop motion animation using plasticine is called clay animation or "clay-mation". Not all stop motion
requires figures or models; many stop motion films can involve using humans, household appliances.

Stop motion animation has a long history. It was often used to show objects moving. The first instance of
the stop motion technique can be credited to Albert E. Smith and J. Stuart Blackton for Vitagraph's 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 Mlis used stop motion animation once to produce moving title-card letters
in one of his short films, and a number of his special effects are based on stop motion photography. In
1907, The Haunted Hotel is a new stop motion film by J. Stuart Blackton, and was a resounding success
when released. Segundo de Chomn (18711929), from Spain, released El Hotel Elctrico 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 Romo Bossetti impressed audiences with his object animation tour-deforce, The Automatic Moving Company in 1912. The great European stop motion pioneer was Wladyslaw
Starewicz (18921965), who animated The Beautiful Lukanida (1910), The Battle of the Stag Beetles
(1910), The Ant and the Grasshopper (1911).

Henry Selick

Henry Selick who was born on the 30th

November 1952, he is a current American Stop
Motion director, and writer who is best known
for directing The Nightmare before
Christmas, James and the Giant Peach and
Coraline He studied at the program, in
experimental animation at California Institute
of Arts under the guidance of Jules Engel.

Stop Motion Work

He was born in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, the son of Melanie (Nee
Molan) and Charles H. Selick. Raised in Rumson Selick did draw
from ages 3 to 12. Selicks fascination with animation came at a
young age, when he first saw both Lottie Reinigers Stop Motion
movie The Adventures of Prince Achmed, And the animated
creatures of the 7th Voyage of Sinbad by Ray Rarryhausen. After
studying science at Rutgers University and art at the Syracuse
University and central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in
London, he eventually enrolled at Calarts to study animation.
While a student he made two short films called Phrases and Tube
Tails, which were nominated for Student Academy Awards.

Disney

After his academic studies, he went to work for Walt Disney

Studios as an "in-betweener" and animator trainee on such
films as Pete's Dragon and The Small One. He became a
full-fledged animator under Glen Keane on The Fox and the
Hound. During his time at Disney, he met and worked
around the likes of Tim Burton, Rick Heinrichs, Jorgen
Klubien, Brad Bird, John Musker, Dan Haskett, Sue and
Bill Kroyer, Ed Gombert, and Andy Gaskill. Years later, he
claimed he learned a lot to improve his drawing, animation,
and storytelling skills from Disney legend Eric Larson.

Coraline

Coraline is a 2009 American stop-motion 3D dark fantasy 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 United States theatres on February 6,
2009, after a world premiere at the Portland International Film Festival.
The film was made with Gaiman's approval and cooperation.

The film was released to critical acclaim, and made $16.85 million
during opening weekend, ranking third at the box office. At the end of
its box office run, the film had grossed over $124.5 million worldwide.
Coraline won Annie Awards for best music, character design, and
production design and received Academy Award and Golden Globe
nominations for Best Animated Feature.

Stills
This image of Henry Selick shows
him working on a scene of Coraline,
he has set up a playback screen to
see how things will pan out when
directing his movie.

In the Image this will have been a

walking frame of her and her cat,
as you can see the background is
clear which you can add a back
drop to add effect to the movie.

Claymation

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.
Traditional animation, from cel animation to stop motion, is produced by
recording each frame, or still picture, on film or digital media and then playing
the recorded frames back in rapid succession before the viewer. These and other
moving images, from zoetrope to films to videogames, create the illusion of
motion by playing back at over ten to twelve frames per second. Each object or
character is sculpted from clay or other such similarly pliable material as
Plasticine, usually around a wire skeleton called an armature, and then arranged
on the set, where it is photographed once before being slightly moved by hand to
prepare it for the next shot, and so on until the animator has achieved the desired
amount of film. Upon playback, the human mind of the viewer perceives the
series of slightly changing, rapidly succeeding images as motion.

Will Vinton

Will Vinton (born November 17, 1947) is an

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

Education

During the 1960s, Vinton studied physics, architecture

and filmmaking at the University of California, Berkeley,
where he was influenced by the work of Antoni Gaudi.
During this time, Vinton made a black-and-white featurelength documentary film about the California counterculture movement titled Gone For a Better Deal, which
toured college campuses in various film festivals of the
time. Two more films about student protest followed,
Berkeley Games and First Ten Days, as well a narrative
short Reply, and his first animation, Culture Shock.

Meeting clay animator Bob Gardiner in the Berkeley, California area in the
early 1970s, Vinton brought him to Portland and they commandeered
Vinton's home basement to make a quick 1-minute test film of clay
animation, called Wobbly Wino, completed in early 1973.
Gardiner refined his sculpting and animation skills while Vinton built a
system for animating his Bolex Rex-5 16mm camera and they began work
in mid-1973 on an 8-minute 16mm short film about a drunk wino who
stumbles into a closed art museum and interacts with the paintings and
sculptures. Completed in late 1974 after 14 months of production, the
innovative film combined Gardiner's amazing sculpting skills with Vinton's
considerable camera skills and Closed Mondays stunned film festival
judges around the world. Closed Mondays then won an Oscar for best
animated short film in the spring of 1975, the first film produced in
Portland to do so.