Video Essay by Max Woolfenden

Stop motion over the period of its existence has had a long journey to
what it is today. The development of animation is a culmination of
pioneers and new technological advancements, working together to
create the animation techniques and quality we know today. The
introduction of better cameras and techniques with the great minds
behind them has established the landscape of animation in the modern
era. These great minds have had a big part in furthering the genre of stop
motion, changing the aesthetic and style, and opening new doors for
artistic creativity. In the modern day, animation is now a huge sector of
the film industry and now is a standard genre for certain type of media
products. Stop Motion animation is the technique of taking individual
photos and using them as frames, with the end goal of stitching the
images/frames together to make a moving piece of footage.
Many pioneers worked on the development of stop motion animation but
one of the first was a Belgian physicist named Joseph Plateau. Plateau
introduced a demonstration to create an illusion of a moving image. He
used rotating disks with different frames on them to create an optical
illusion of moving image, which made the pictures look like they were
moving. This was helped by persistence of vision, which allowed the
invention to work. Persistence of vision is when the brain retains a visual
image a short period after the removal of the visual source. This retention
of memory makes the change of pictures seem seamless and fluid, if
there was no persistence of vision the image would look choppy and
sudden. An example of persistence of vision would be how a fireworks
look like a smooth motion in the sky. Watching a firework looks smooth
and flowing since you are looking at different times of the firework
explosion, without persistence of vision, the firework would look choppy
and sudden. The invention Joseph made, the Phenakistoscope, was
introduced in 1832, and was shown to audiences to dazzle and shock
them with his special moving animations. This work was significant since it
was one of the main forms of true stop motion animation, which helped
the genre greatly improve.
Around 40 years later another pioneer contributed to the field. Thomas
Edison, another pioneer was an American inventor who, developed many
inventions such as the Phonographic stop motion camera. The camera
was capable of taking a rapid stream of photographs which could be
stitched together to make a short film to later be projected. Edison also
invented the Kinetoscope which was used for stop motion animation. This
created small films that could be viewed through a small window. In the
small window, a moving piece of film travelled across a light source, with
a higher speed shutter. Thomas Edison used an extremely high frame rate
for the industry standard at the time, at 46 frames per second. In
comparison 1920s black and white film only used between 20-26 frames
per second.

11 Years after Thomas Edison started inventing, The Lumire brothers

changed the landscape of the film industry dramatically. The French duo
created the Cinmatographe, which was a camera projector and printer,
the first of its kind. They camera was shown to public on the 28th of
December 1895 and was brought with much appraise. The camera used a
frame rate of 16 frames per second, this frame rate was considered low at
industry standard but was still acceptable. Their invention created a new
form of showcase that artists could use to present their animations on a
big screen. Cinmatographe later created the widely known term Cinema
and paved the way for what we have today.
As time passed and the form of stop motion continued to develop, key
people added to its success, known as Developers. A developer that had a
major influence to the medium was Willis H. OBrien. OBrien was an
American motion picture, special effects and animation pioneer. He
contributed to animation classics, regarded as some of the best animation
pieces in history. A few of his contributions range from King Kong, 1933
and Mighty Joe Young, 1949. Most of OBriens animations were made from
the very malleable material Clay due to its properties. This material was
easy to move and could be used to create more frames using small
movements, this made the final product more life like. He used this for his
film King Kong, trying to make the the gorilla as life like as possible but
with the constraints of a low frame rate making the image less fluid. This
model movement gave the object a personality on screen, which was
extremely popular with audiences. Before taking the role of creating the
moving Gorilla, he wanted to reference his work with the real like animal.
He often studied the Gorillas at the zoo to make his work as life like as
possible. This attention to detail was one of the main reasons for his
tremendous success.
Another Developer was Ray Harryhausen, an American visual effect
creator. Harryhausen loved the work of Willis H. OBrien, especially the
work he did on King Kong. Taking influence from this he decided to
experiment with stop motion animation and later contacted OBrien about
the work he created. Meetings that ensued between the two, helped home
Harryhausens skills and landed him a job creating a colour film named
Jason and the Argonauts. The film featured the iconic scene of Jason sword
fighting with several animated skeletons. The key development here was
that Jason was a real life human fighting animated figures, creating a
major development in stop motion. This technique of layering stop motion
on footage was known as Dynamation, created by Ray Harryhausen. The
process was simple but very effective. He projected a live action image
onto a rear screen in front of which was placed the animation table with
the model. He would then place a glass sheet in front of both. When the
live action plate had been shot Ray would establish where he wanted to
make his matte line and so by looking through the camera viewfinder he
would re-establish that line and with a wax pencil on the end of a stick,
follow that line by drawing it on the glass. When he was satisfied that the
line was accurate he would then paint out, with black matt paint, the

lower section, below the line. He would then photograph the animation of
the model reacting to the live action on the plate. Afterwards he would
then create a second pass in the camera to reinstate the lower previously
matted out section so creating a combined image of the creature
seemingly as part of the live action. This lead the way for stop motion
since the bar has now been raised and many possibilities have been
opened when it comes to storytelling and entertainment. This is where
modern day artists are introduced, with their skill sets pushing the
boundaries of animation.
Contemporary artists are the developers that we have today. Timothy and
Stephen Qua are identical twins that reside in the united states of
America. The brothers work under the stage alias: The Brothers Quay.
The brothers make very surreal and supernatural animation, breaking the
status quo when it comes to typical stop animation sub genres. They have
created many music videos, adverts and short films using the medium of
stop motion animation, establishing them as a big player in the game of
animation. Since The Brother Quays work is different to the other
contemporary work, their animations stand out and could creatively push
the boundaries, creating their own sub genre of animation. In these short
films, they tell a very surreal and outlandish stories. This coincides with
very odd characters in their animations that are very hard to control,
making the viewer question the skill level involved. The animations also
always use very ordinary items such as screws and bolts but also
household items or things that would be lying around, a key theme is that
the items are never bespoke.
Onto the main and most prolific contemporary stop motion art studio,
Aardman Animations. Aardman are an award winning, Bristol based
animation company founded in 1972, created by Peter Lord and David
Sproxton. Aardman are now considered as one of the biggest stop motion
animation studios in the world, having global success in most of their
projects, obviously having greater success in some than others. Aardman
have been greatly successful due to how much time they spend in every
aspect of the creation process. This means that they dont skip anything
when it comes to Storytelling, presentation execution, etc. Their work
ranges across all of the household names such as: Wallace and Grommit,
Shaun the Sheep, Flushed Away and Chicken Run. Their work stands out
since they dont rely on the use of persistence of vision, instead they
meticulously animate, to a cinema standard, 24 frames per second
allowing the animation to flow a lot smoother and give it a more
aesthetically appealing appearance. Creating a captivating piece for all
audiences involves attention to all the small things. For example; mouths
on characters, during dialogue, are changed to match every syllable, in
turn making the animation appear more life like. Also using Clay, brought
in by Willis H. OBrien, makes all of Aardmans characters stylized and
tailored to the signature look that is always consistent throughout their
work.

In the modern era, animation is a wide used medium of producing things

such as adverts, movies for all ages and music videos to name a few. This
medium of production is very lucrative and widely used in Hollywood and
TV companies. Many children's films are now created using stop motion,
from large companies. Films like Coraline stand out, being completely stop
motion and being very successful. This form would be produced for the big
screen and making it widely available to the general public. This normally
requires the best and talented people that can be employed to make a
stop motion animation of that quality and length since the genre is
competing against the easier and quicker medium of computer animation,
used by companies such as Pixar and Dreamworks. These companies
make everything on the computer, this is easier for them since they are
not limited to any constraints of the real world. In stop motion animation
pieces today, many characters have to be made and a higher frame rate
is a requirement for today's standards. This means that many more photos
have to be taken and therefore makes the the skill level a lot higher to
produce the work and takes a lot more time until the final product. For
example, on the Coraline set, more than 28 animators would be working
at any one time on rehearsing or shooting scenes, producing 90100
seconds of finished animation each week. This is added with making the
film 3D so they had to take another frame from a slightly different angle to
complete the stereoscopic 3D technique for cinemas and home releases.