Developers

-Willis O'Brien-

Willis Harold O'Brien was an Irish American stop motion pioneer. According to ASIFA Hollywood he is responsible for some of the best known images in cinema history. O'Brien is best know for The lost world and King Kong. Today, stop motion animation is not as appreciated as it was in the days king kong was made, this is becuase king kong was a full length feature film, therefore it was widely respected that Willis O'Brien managed to do this with the use of stop motion animation. To make King Kongs armature, a 10 pound steel skeleton was used, this is said to be the birth of armatures as a similar concept is still used today in stop motion movies.
O'Brien had always shown an interest in making models out of rubber to show characteristics and then moved on to showing movement. From this simply uninterested hobby, he went on to produce amazing films with the use of stop motion.

-Ray Harryhausen-

Ray Harryhausen is the creator of the stop motion animation brand "Dymation". Harryhauden is most notable for his work on the film Jason and the Argonauts including the famous fight against seven skeletons.
From a young age he would often visit the Grauman's Chinese Theater, therefore he was able to watch films that further went on to inspire him to go forward and produce his own work. He brought himself a camera and began to make his won stop motion films featuring dinosaurs made of clay.
Harryhausen's first movie was a failure, after this he went on and made a film called 'evolution', this film that he had produced was centered around dinosaurs, even though it was all produced in a garage, it still turned out well and look well animated. This really was the kick start to his career.

This is a famous clip from Jason and the Argonauts, this clip shows the use of stop motion animation and human acting.

-Jan Svankmajer-

Jan Svankmajer, born in 1934, was a czech film maker, he was most known for his surreal films which combined moving image with stop motion, he is a self named surrealist. Svankmajer greatly influenced present stop motion animators such as The Brothers Quay.
Jan Svankmajer is one of the more recent developers in the stop motion animation industry because of his very new style of producing his work. His imagination was developed after someone brought him a puppet theatre, this is weirdly shown in his work.
Svankmajer's most famous works include, Alice, Faust and Conspirators of Pleasure, more of his recent film is Surviving Life which was made and produced in 2010.
His work inspired animators of stop motion to be more experimental and take bigger risks when producing stop motion films.
Svankmajer is still producing today and its said he will be releasing a film in 2015.
Surrealism:
Surrealism is a form of visual or written artwork, it works together with the element or surprise and unexpected juxtaposition. 

Here is a surrealistic short film myself and my group made, the inspiration came from Jan Svankmajer. The film is made up from random images that dont fit into their surroundings.

Techniques

-Persistence of Vision- 

'Persistance of vison' relates to how the retina remembers an image for a split second after the person actually sees the image, after this it leads itself to animation by creating the illusion of movement. When images of objects are playing in a quick sequence its leads to animation but adopting the illusion of movemen. the fractional gaps between the images are not noticed by the viewer because that persistence fills the gaps to make it seem seamless.

-Frame Rates-

Frame rates (frequency of frames) are the amount of frames used per second in a sequence of stop motion animation. The frames refers to the photos used. The more frames used per second and small movements of the object between frames will give off a smoother finish and give a better illusion of movement.

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Cinematography Skills Workshop

Here is a video that demonstrates the different camera angles and movements. From making this short video, we found out what the effective and what non effective camera angles and movements could be used for our stop motion TV advert,].

Pioneers

-Stop Motion Pioneers-

Joseph Plateau 

Joseph Plate, born in Belgium 1801, was the first person to demonstrate the illusion of movement, he did this by using a counter rotating disk with repeating images in the small additions of motion of one side and the other side are regularly spaced slits. This device he called a phenakitoscope. Without the work of Plateau, stop motion animation would not be what it is today, he discovered the main technique to creating the illusion of movement is to use repeating images in small increments for whats know as today as each frame. 

William Horner 

The zetrope was invented in England by William Horner in 1834, he named the device the 'Daedalum', this means 'the wheel of the devil, however is was later developed by an American, William F Lincon and named the zetrope which means 'wheel of life'.

With similar principles to the phenakitoscope, the images for the zetrope were drawn on a strip of paper which was set at the bottom half of a circular metal drum. The drum was mounted on a device so it could spin, the viewer would look through slits in the top half of the drum to see the moving image, the faster to drum span, the smoother the image.

William Horner further developed the ideas of Joseph Plateau and projected the potential of stop motion.

Emile Reynaud 

French science teacher, Emile Reynaud brought a new and more developed illusion of movement to the public eye. Emile Reynaud invented the praxinoscope in 1877. 

The praxinoscope is similar to the zetrope, it uses a strip with printed images on it which fit into a metal drum which rotates on an axis. What makes it different to the zetrope is that Reynaus added a cylinder in the middle of the drum with mirrors on it to reflect the images on the side of the drum, also he added a candle and lampshade on top so the images projected can be viewed in low light. The mirror system allows the image to only be seen in one place to give a better projection of the illusion of movement.

Edward Muybridge

Edward Muybridge was a photographer that spent the majority of his life living in the United States. He is well known for this zoopraxiscope, the device is used for projecting motion pictures that pre dated the flexible perforated film strip.

in 1882, Muybridge created Horse in Motion, for some people this was considered to be the first moving picture. It was in 1879 when Muybridge created the zoopraxiscope, this device could project images in sequence that gave off the illusion of movement. It is said that Muybridges designs went on to inspire Thomas Edison and William Dickson to design another device that created the illusion of movement called the kinetoscope.

The Lumiere Brothers

Auguste and Louis Lumiere were born in Lyon France. In 1894 they developed a camera and called it the cinemattographe. The Lumiere brothers films they produced would normally be around 50 seconds long, they would only be taken in one shot with the camera staying on a tripod fixed in the same position all the time. They were the producers of the first movie seen by an audience with moving image alongs side the picture being projected onto a screen. The work of the Lumiere brothers are known as the starters of cinema and strongly influenced further development of cinema seen today. 

George Pal

Being a director, producer and animator, George Pal won many awards. Born in 1908 in Hungary but lived in America. He was principally associated with the genre of Sci Fi. George Pal was nominated of Academy awards no less then seven convective years.

Pal was part of the development of films such as 'The Time Machine' and the original 'War of the Worlds'.  War of the Worlds is a Sci-Fi movie which highlights how the animation genre has changed and developed over the years. George Pal used puppets that needed alot of different heads to give the illusion of speech, this was a mojor development in the stop motion industry that Pal was the founder of, this is how Pals work inspired stop motion animators today. 

Research (Tv Advert)

-Research-

-Our initial idea is to advertise for a niche company, http://www.tunnelvisionuk.com/, they sell ear stretchers for beginners to extremists of ear stretching. Tunnel Vison UK is a small company which started early 2012, currently the company is only website based and specialises in selling ear stretchers but is planning on bringing out a clothing line along side their current products. As seen below we have emailed the company asking for permission to advertise on their behalf. The target audience for the advert would be for people aged between 16 to 25, this is the same target audience as the company its self is.

-After the email above was sent, we received and almost instant reply from the owner of Tunnel Vision UK giving up permission to advertise on his behalf, we will discus our intention with him after myself and Sen have full researched Tv advertising and how stop motion has been used in Tv.

-Stop Motion Used in Tv Advertising- 

Sony used stop motion animation to advertise one of there new phones. The advert use's figures that, with the aid of stop motion, give off the illusion of movement from still frame images. I like the story line to this advert and the aesthetics of the characters. For this advert it is clear the intended audience is for people who like hi tec devises, this would have a mixed gender audience with an age rage of around 16-30 years of age, even though the child like voice in the advert could highlight it is invented for children, clearly this is no the case as smart phones such as this are expensive and made of older people to use the applications on them.

This is an animation for an advert by Guiness, this is a form of stop motion I personally have not seen before. It is a simple stop motion video but very affective. It hardly has anything to do with beer other then the fact you hold the beer with your hand. I really like the use of the hand in the advert and am interested in using this in my own tv advert with the use of stop motion.  

Another advert by sony uses claymation, the mass extent of the patience and persion of this advert is huge. An advert of this extent using stop motion would be a lengthy process, having to shape the clay of each frame and keep the rhythm consistant. To produce something of this extent under the budget we have will not work well and wouldn't give the aesthetic pleasure other forms of stop motion would.

This advert for Microsoft Xbox also uses claymation, this advert really highlights how much you can do with stop motion and how detailed it can be with the use of clay, however doing something like this requires a lot of artistic skill, something we are not able to get. This advert is inspiring but nothing something myself and sen will be able to produce.

-Stop Motion Animation Definition-
Stop motion is an animation technique used to make a physically manipulated object 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 joint or clay figures are often used in stop motion for their ease of repositioning. Stop motion animation using plasticine is called clay-mation. Not all stop motion requires figure or models; many stop motion films can involve using human, household appliances and other things for comedic effect. (sourced from Wikipedia- to highlight in detail what stop motion is)
-Main Forms Of Stop Motion-

Claymation:

Pixilation:

Cut out animation:

-Stop Motion (Flip Book)-

A flip book is one of the easiest and, if done well, most effective and instant forms of 'stop motion animation'. I used a standard 50 pages note book in orders to make this flip book, this means 50 frames, the more frames used and the minimal movement of the object between frames will give a smoother animation. The illusion of movement is give with 'stop motion animation' formats like a flip book as, according to scientists, the viewer will remember the previous frame therefore overall creating a moving image.

-Stop Motion (Claymation)-

Claymation is a form of stop motion using clay, the figures are made and moved for each frame to give the illusion of movement. Above is a claymation clip myself and and two other produced. It is in a simple form of claymation and under a very cheap budget. We used around 24 frame a second to produce a smoother image. After looking on youtube, we gained inspiration from watch other stop motion videos including blue tac from amateur animators. We found it hard keeping the clip consistent to give a smooth images, often the clay (blue tac) figures would deform and would ruin the flow of the work.

-Producers of Stop Motion Animation-

-Aardman-

Here is a quick video I produced explaining some key points on the history of Aardman.

Aardman brought stop-motion animation to the big screen in a different light, the films they produce are aimed at a child audience as they produce children's comedy animation, they same techniques Aardman use are also used in Tim Burtons 'The Nightmare Before Christmas', they both use the same techniques of stop-motion animation but differens uses of genre. The characters used in Aardman films are used to attract a children's audience, for example Wallace from 'Wallace and Gromit' is a comedic old man that is quite silly in a funny way with a dog with human like features. In order to produce quality clay-mation figures as character, the use of armatures under the clay is vital. In stop-motion, still frames are taken in sequence and the character is moved small amounts each frame to create and illusion of movement, the armature allows the character to be easily moved for each frame to give a smooth movement of the object, to do this in an affective and quality way, the armature is vital. The use of clay-mation is limited as it is key that the clay is smooth and does not get dirty to give the best affect and with 24 frames needs a second the process takes a long time. Aardmans film 'Chicken Run' look three years to develop and produce, with a budget of $45 million, they turned over a profit of $224, 834, 464, the film was a huge box office hit. To date, it is the highest grossing stop-motion animation move.

Sourced from: Wikipedia

Aardman's productions:

-Tim Burton-

Tim Burton is an American film director. He become famous for making dark, quirky themed movies, such as 'The Nightmare Before Christmas' and 'Frankenweenie' using stop-motion. Tim Burton also directer and produced non stop motions films such as 'Charlie And The Chocolate Factory' and 'Planet Of The Apes'. In order to produce movies such as 'The Nightmare Before Christmas' and 'Frankenweenie' Burton used the form of stop-motion animation, clay-mation to produce them. Just like Aardman, Tim burton uses stop motion, therefore the film is made up of still images, to create the illusion of movement, the characters are slightly moved for each frame of still image. Tim Burtons movies are often dark and gloomy and genred as a fantasy, the best and most well known example of this is  'The Nightmare Before Christmas'. The films Tim Burton produces and directs are aimed at a wide target audience from children to adults. The same as Aardmans films, Tim Burtons uses armatures to aid the illusion of movement when making stop-motion films. The limitation to this technique are they can not use real life sets, the sets must also be made to a small scale but must remain detailed to give a good affect. 'The Nightmare Before Christmas' had a budget value of $18 million and turned over a profit of $75,082,668, this was a massive production as it was released in 1993.

Tim Burtons Productions:

-Brothers Quay-

Stephen and Timothy Quay, born in 1947, are identical twin brothers from America. The are considered as influential stop motion animators, however brother quay was highly influenced by Jan Svankmajer, so much they made a film to do with him- The cabinet of Jan Svankmajer. The majority of there films featured puppets made from parts off dolls and other organic and inorganic materials. The films would often  have a dark and moody feel to them, the films would also have no structured dialogue. The Quay's most famous work would be The Street of crocodiles, a 1986 stop motion short film consistent of 21 minuets long that was directed and produced by the Quays. The street of crocodiles would originally a novel written by Burno Schulz. The short films follows the adventures of a puppet.








Quays Productions: