Stop Motion Animation
Stop motion animation is created using 25 frames per second but each frame has been individually set up using different techniques. When the frames are played simultaneously, it created the illusion of movement. These are the 5 types of stop motion animation.
1. Cell Based Animation
This is a traditional form of animation used in the production of cartoons or animated movies where each frame of the scene is drawn by hand, as animation progressed the frames were then drawn on clear sheets of plastic which meant they didn't have to completely start from scratch with every frame. 25 frames per second creates the illusion of movement. Sometimes animators would create simple movements such as running and use the same few images of running legs whilst changing the background; which would reduce production time.
Snow white and seven dwarfs
Snow white was released in 1937 after 4 years of production. It was the the first feature length cel-animated film to be made in motion picture history. It required more than 1,500,000 individual pen-and-ink drawings and water-color paintings. Walt Disney was persistent on the film being made despite the many that thought it wasn't possible. He had to mortgage his house to help finance the film's production, which eventually ran up a total cost of $1,488,422.74, which was a lot for a feature film in 1937. The film premiered at the Carthay Circle Theatre on December 21, 1937, and was released nationwide on February 4, 1938. Internationally it earned $8 million during its initial release and was briefly the highest grossing film of its time.
Betty Boop
Max Fleischer created the Animated cartoon, Betty Boop, with help from animators including Grim Natwick. Betty Boop originally appeared in the Talkartoon and Betty Boop film series, which were produced by Fleischer Studios and released by Paramount Pictures. She has also been featured in comic strips and mass merchandising.
Mary Poppins
Mary Poppins was released it 1964 and is an American musical fantasy film directed by Robert Stevenson and produced by Walt Disney. Although Mary Poppins is live action film, there are scenes which include animated characters. The main characters stay real but everything around them is 2D animation. This is because they have jumped into the chalk drawings on the pavement and it reminds us that they aren't in the real world. P.L. Travers, the writer of the books which the film is inspired by originally refused to allow any animation in the film at all but Disney overruled her, citing contract stipulations that he had final say on the finished print.
2. Cut out
Cut out animation is made using flat characters, props and backgrounds often made from paper, card, stiff fabric or photographs. The images are moved in very small amounts for each frame to create the illusion of movement.
This is an example which we made in class using cut outs from newspapers. We managed to make the mouth seem like it was moving by cutting it out and slipping a piece of skin color paper and black paper and moving it so it looked like sometimes his mouth was closed and sometimes it was open. We also cut out arms and props to appear on the original picture, moving them slightly with each frame.
Lotte Reiniger's Cinderella is animated using cut outs and silhouettes. This short film has very detailed and beautifully crafted silhouettes to show what the characters look like without having to see anything but their outline.
Charlie and Lola is a kids TV show which is created using cut outs of characters which are moved slightly in each frame. There are different cut outs for different facial expressions and outfits that the characters wear. There are also cut outs for props used. It is all drawn to look child friendly as though it is a drawing that has came out of a page.
Pixilation
This is stop motion animation using people. It sometimes means that people have to stay still for long periods of time if their are other things going on around them that have to be set up. However, software now allows people to see their previous frame as a ghost image over their camera so they can match up their position from the last and perhaps alter it slightly. This animation can use props as well as people.
We created our own simple Pixilation using the apple software, we done this by moving and quickly taking photos of our movement to make it look almost like a video although it is just a series of images.
Norman McLaren took photos of people for animation. In his film 'Neighbours', he creates a narative about two men fighting over a flower and makes it seem more dramatic by using the advantage of altering each frame before its taken. He does this in many ways in his short film, one way being how he takes individual pictures of the men whilst airborn in a jump and doing this over and over, each time in a different spot to make it look like the men are flying. He also paid attention to how the actors must look with their facial expressions and body language.
This music video for In Your Arms by Kina Grannis was entirely stop motion made with pictures made out of 288,000 jelly beans (Jelly bean art) with 2,460 frames and with Kina Grannis also stood infront of many of the frames lip syncing to the song and sometimes playing guitar still within the stop motion. It includes both pixilation and model animation. The music video took almost 2 years to shoot as each picture was hand made with Kina laying on a peice of glass over the top of each Jelly Bean frame after it was made. An animated video was made before hand and they matched each frame of the animated video to each piece of jelly bean art by projecting each frame onto a table and creating the jelly bean art onto the table. A previous video was also made of Kina singing but the actual music video was not green screened, the makers used the previous video to reference her position for every frame. Although it was time consuming this music video is very impressive and although Kina isn't a well known artist, the video has gained over a million views on YouTube.
Time Lapse
A time lapse is often created by taking pictures of something that happens over a long period of time to create the illusion that is it happening very quickly.
For example this is a time lapse of an outdoors scene which changes over a year due to the seasons. This will have probably been made by taking a picture a day over a year of the same place.
Time Lapse of pregnancy, over 9 months. This will of been created by taking a picture every day from knowing when the woman was pregnant to her having the baby. There are also images set up to tell the story, including the scans and little images around the woman to make it more enjoyable.
Time Lapse of flowers blooming. This will be created by taking a photo every so often of the flower until it blooms. It creates the illusion that the flower is blooming very quickly when in fact it will of taken a few weeks at least.
Model Based
This technique is stop motion animation using models. Usually the models are created of clay because it is easy to sculpt the clay to make different shapes and even create facial expressions and body language when making clay people. The models could also be inanimate objects, sometimes objects with extra things added to them such as a computer mouse with googly eyes stuck to it. You then take a photo of one frame and then change the position of shape of the clay and take another photo. This then builds up to create a full animation sequence.
One example of Model Base Stop motion is Corpse Bride, a feature film by Tim Burton and Mike Johnson, made using clay models and stop motion animation. It began production in 2003 and was released September 12th, 2005. This type of model animation takes a long time as the models are very carefully detailed for every frame, this includes the way the facial expressions and body language change as well as the movement of the clothes and hair as the characters move. As this is done for every character in each frame, the background is also set up to match the scene so you can see why making a film using this technique can take as many years as this did.
However, this is a much simpler piece of model based animation I found on youtube called Candy Stop motion. It has been created purely using sweets. For each frame the sweets move to create different shapes and words. As the background is very simple and each model is an inanimate object. the only thing that needs to change in each frame is the position of the objects. Therefor this won't take as long to set up each frame.
For our own Model Based stop motion animation, we made clay models of little creatures, gave them eyes and some hands and feet and used a webcam to take individual pictures of them. For each picture we took we moved them slightly, using the ghost effect we could see how far we moved the models for each frame. When we decided we were finished we played it back and this is what we got as a result.
