Stop-motion animation is actually just stills of an object or person moving into a slightly different position in each frame. When you string all of the frames together at a high speed a phenomenon called persistence of vision occurs. This is when the human brain perceives these frames as a fluid motion. So in short, the eye retains images shown just for a millisecond, then when the next image is show the brain links them together so that after a few images are shown you get this effortless fluid motion.
When shooting stop-motion the average frames per second or FPS is 24 just as it is in film. You can use 12 FPS and still get a good effect but it can sometimes turn out a bit jumpy, if you use anything below 12 FPS you will defiantly get a jumpy effect. In some resent films they have been using cameras that can shoot 48 FPS, some people say that it looks weird and doesn't work, others say it makes the movie better.
Before digital cameras people used movie cameras to make stop-motion animation, instead of exposing the film multiple times you just exposed one frame then wound the camera on. After you had developed the film you then put it on a reel and wind up the projector so that the film moves fast and your brain can kick in with the persistence of vision.
Object Animation
The earliest form of stop-motion is called Object Animation, this is when you photograph an object and then move it ever so slightly and then photograph it again. This may take a while to finish but it is one of the simplest forms of stop-motion, at least until you start moving several different objects at once, because if you forget to move something and only find out when you load the stills into a movie making software you have to go back and do it all over again.
The very first version of Object Animation was a short film called Humpty Dumpty Circus which was produced in 1898 by Albert E. Smith and J. Stuart Blackton but has unfortunately since been lost. The next object animation/stop-motion short film was released in 1902 by Thomas Edison (you know him, the guy who invented the lightbulb), it was called Fun in the Bakery Shop. Looking at this short you can actually see that there is a mixture of stop-motion and object animation used, sometimes filming will be stopped and the actors would freeze in there position. Then an object would then be placed or moved in the frame and the filming would continue, this would make it look like the object just magically appear in the film.
This is an advert that uses Object Animation, I think it works pretty well, it is funny and interesting. Technically this is good, you can see that it is a smooth flowing advert so I'm guessing they used 24 FPS. There is a little glitch shall we say, when the Doritos put themselves back in the bag if you look at the sofa you can see it change slightly. This is something called continuity, when something changes or moves when it shouldn't. You can tell this is a homemade video, I think that this would help sell the product because it is a person sitting at home eating and enjoying some Doritos, rather than an overly processed video of someone in a non realistic setting. I believe that it is a good use of Object Animation.
After Object Animation came Puppet Animation. Even though they were technically still objects, puppets were easier to manipulate and give character to. This would be because they were made out of wire, clay and sometimes even fur or hair. The puppets are easier to give character to because you can change and move there faces into any shape or emotion you want.
This is an example of puppet animation, it was filmed in 1964, and then re-coloured later. You can tell they are puppets and you can see them move differently, but it doesn't really matter because its the story you are more interested in. I think that telling these stories using puppets is a very good idea because it will mostly be children watching this and children play with dolls and puppets so they can relate to what the stories are trying say. Like the guy who stole all the tarts, the moral is not to steal. I think that it is very clever how they have made these puppets and then made them do all these different actions. It must have taken a lot of time and patience to get them just right.
This is a short clip from a film from A Nightmare Before Christmas by Tim Burton. He uses puppets for his stop-motion films. He has done this before and it makes the characters move in a very interesting way. These characters live in a place called Halloween Town, in fact almost all of Tim Burton's films are weird and creepy. This is a good thing because they way that he uses Puppet Animation makes most of the characters have a creepy appearance, in the way they move.
There are several film makers we would not have if Puppet animation never can to light. Willis O’Brien, Ray Harryhausen, Jan Švankmajer, The Brothers Quay and Henry Selick just to name a few. We have seen some great things from these film makers and there will hopefully be more to come from some of them. Most of these film makers actions went on to become something people use and are familiar with today, specail effects.
Pixilation
This stop motion technique uses real people instead of puppets or objects, but in doing so it becomes slightly more difficult than other forms of stop motion. This is because when you make pixilation animation and you use real people they can be very unpredictable and are not capable of staying the the exact same position for very long. To produce Pixilation Animation the actor or actress would have to stay still for long periods of time while you photograph them, then they will have to move slightly in whatever direction they need to then stop so you can re-photograph them. They would have to do this for a very long time sometimes hours with no breaks, this is because it would be very unlikely to be in the exact same position as you were before you went for a break.
This is a video I came across, it uses pixilation animation. There are various different scenarios in this video for example when they are falling or when they are in Paris, they did not forget the little details like the flash for the camera or the clouds passing by them when they were falling. When I'm watching this video I can clearly see some continuity issues like when the two people are walking to the bike, if you watch the tree on the left closely when the two people move over it, the green fabric gets ruffled and moves and then they obviously try to put it back in to place because it changes again despite this little glitch I think this is a very good example of Pixilation Animation.
This is a version of Pixilation Animation from 1952, considering the time that this was done I think that it is a very good piece of stop-motion animation. I think that doing this short film in Pixilation animation enhances the weirdness about two guys fighting over a nice smelling flower. When you first watch this short film you might not understand exactly why two guys are fighting over a flower but if you watch it till the end you realise that this short film has an underlining theme of religion. I believe that the moral of this story is to love thy neighbour, then again I could be wrong and it could be about saving plants and trees, but as this short clip can show you if you don't pay attention then you can destroy the thing you are fighting for.
Claymation
Claymation is the most well known version of stop-motion, it has been in around since 1908. The Sculptors Nightmare was the first recorded use of Claymation, the next was four year later when the Modeling Extraordinaire came out. These film became a regular thing after that, this was because of a little invention called plasticine made by an art teacher in the UK. Plasticine is a non-drying clay that can be re-shaped over and over again, because it was so easy to manipulate and sculpt people used it more and more, instead of just moving the objects over and over again. Once people realised how easy it was to move and shape they started to use it to cover wire skeletons and move about. These wire skeletons are called armature. You can see this in various different Claymation films and tv shows.
This is a clip that uses Claymation in the form I just explained. Someone made a wire skeleton and then just put plasticine over it and made faces and clothes. I find it fascinating that people have the time and patience for this type of work, it takes hours. Just moving the models little by little and then photographing them over and over again, even after that if you mess up you would have to start from the beginning because there is no way you can just place them back in the same positions as they were and carry on. This is an professional level of Claymation and it works very well.
From this Claymation clip you can see once again some very good manipulation of plasticine. I think that this is a very interesting clip, this is because even though you know that the blue plasticine is meant to be water but you can also argue that it could be something else because of the shape that it take being solid and square. There are many different things that you can take from this clip but I think the main one is that Claymation can be fun and interesting even though it take a long time to make.
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