My Philosophy of Education

1 HISTORY OF STOP-MOTION ANIMATION In stop-motion animation, a model is posed in a miniature set, or against a blue screen, and is recorded frame by frame with subtle adjustments to the model being made along the way. The act of adjusting the model is never seen and only the final frame is recorded, thus creating the illusion of a character that was captured moving at will. In the history of stop-motion animation, characters have been made of different materials including clay, rubber, wood and other materials. The origins of this technique may have been born in the creation of time-lapse footage for novelty or scientific reasons. Here photos would be taken in intervals over a long period of time, capturing the movement of a cloudy sky, a flower or other natural subjects. Scientists commonly used this technique for studying the growth of plant life, which was ideal because of the subtle changes in the subjects. The result was an eye-opening experience of the subtle movements of the natural world. In Hollywood, when puppets and costumes seemed too phony, stop-motion animation was the answer to the technical challenge of creating life-like fantasy creatures for the big screen. Some of the first main- stream successful uses of the stop-motion technique were in feature films like The Lost World (1925) and King Kong (1933). 2 Willis O’Brien was the talented animator that brought the now famous Kong alive for thrilled audiences everywhere. He also worked on the highly successful Mighty Joe Young (1949) a movie that was just recently remade. In the mid 50s films a new pioneer named Ray Harryhausen (who had worked with O’Brien) took off with projects like The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953), and It Came From Beneath the Sea (1955). It was also during the 50s that audiences saw the birth of the humorous claymation duo Gumby and Pokey. 3 Animated by Art Clokey, these characters captured the imagination of an entire generation with their ability to jump into storybooks and become involved in the action. The successful series continued on the small screen for over a decade. Harryhausen was responsible for a remarkable rebirth in this art-from along with audiences’ insatiable appetite for science fiction subject matter. Harryhausen was most known for the Sinbad film series that continued into the 60s and 70s. His ultimate achievement, Clash of the Titans (1981) was an amazing blend of miniatures, models and live action photography. Unfortunately as audiences grew more sophisticated, the stop motion process became less and less suitable for integration in live-action films. One of the problems with stop motion animation is that the model is shot in a still position. In photography if a subject is captured in motion on film or video the subject often appears blurred; an effect caused by slow shutter speeds on cameras and low lighting. Final attempts at artificially softening the hard frames produced by stop motion did little to help the art form survive. Early computer animation in films like Tron (1982), and The Last Starfighter (1984) was gaining ground as a viable method for producing realistic special effects. 4 It was only a matter of time before modern audiences were able to see extremely realistic, computer generated characters such as the resurrected dinosaurs in 1993s Jurassic Park. In the making of this film the movements of the characters could be ‘captured’ and borrowed from living creatures (like horses and lizards) and the final animation could be tweaked and refined over and over in wire frame representations until believable lifelike movement was achieved. Thus the technique of using stop motion for realistic integration with live characters has been left to the annals of history. George Lucas Though many proclaimed the technique of stop motion to be dead forever, it found renewed critical success in claymation films of the 80s such as The Adventures of Mark Twain by Will Vinton. Vinton is also well known for a California Raisins Ad. 5 The Swiss claymation series Pingu also emerged in this decade, followed by the short films of the characters Wallace & Gromit by Nick Park. Several of his films earned Oscars proving the viability of the stop motion process. In the 90s Tim Burton’s films The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach brought the stop motion experience back to theatres. 6 The 90s also saw the birth of many fully computer generated feature films such as the highly successful Toy Story (1995) from Pixar studios. Even still stop motion seems to have found a stylized niche for hand’s on animators to do their thing. Nick Park’s highly successful Chicken Run (2000) proved that stop motion was able to compete with sophisticated computer animated features in entertaining modern audiences on a grand theatrical scale. This is probably due to the fact that a good story with good characters and good production techniques will always be a winning formula with audiences. The most exciting thing about the stop motion production process is that you (yes YOU!) can make your own feature film right in your own house. Digital cameras that can capture a quality image as large as a 35mm (the format for current Hollywood films) are now modestly priced. Editing software is now reasonably priced too. In fact for a few thousand dollars you could create (your labor excluded of course) your very own Chicken Run and sell it to a studio or television channel. Better yet you could become your own virtual studio/tv channel and broadcast it on the internet. The only limitation is your patience, imagination and creativity. .

Load more