Fergus Lawrie

History of Stop Motion

Stop motion is an animated filmmaking technique in which
objects are physically manipulated in small sets between
individually photographed frames so that they will appear
to be in motion when the series of frames is played back as
a slow sequence. In the simplest terms, stop motion is a
photographic film making technique where an object is
moved in front of a camera and photographed many times.
The very first stop motion animation was created in 1898 called "The Humpty Dumpty
Circus" credited to J. Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith. This animated film was showing
the day and the life in a toy circus. In 1907 a film titled "The Haunted Hotel" produced by J.
Stuart Blackton became a huge hit. It showed moving
furniture and demonstrated the basic technique of
object animation. Now stop motion is demonstrated
as a film making technique used by many film makers
such as Ardman, Ray Harryhausen and Willis O'Brien,
but one of the most credited pioneers of stop motion
was Wladyslaw Starewicz. He produced many films
but one of his first films titled Lucanus Cervus which
was made in 1910 and used insects as puppets.
However one of the biggest pioneers of stop motion and
probably most famous of his time was Willis O’Brien. One of
his most famous work was the film "The Lost World" created
in 1925 was out of this world for its time. He later produced
the animation for one of film makings biggest productions
King Kong (1933). These films propelled him into a super star
and would influence many generations to come massively
throughout of the world of animators. Willis O’Brien later
wins an Oscar for best special effects in 1950 for his work in
the film Mighty Joe Young (1949). One of his earliest and
biggest fans was Ray Harryhausen who is also a very big and
world famous stop motion animator who was inspired by
O'Brien's work.
Ray Harryhausen was for many years an independent
animator who started off animating dinosaurs, building
puppets in his own garage, and just basically exploring
the world of stop motion. When Willis O’Brien invited
Ray to join him in animating on the 1949 version of
Mighty Joe Young, this allowed the young Harryhausen
to develop his skill and range as an animator.
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He would go on to animate visual effects for many films such as

The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), It Came from Beneath
the Sea (1955), 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957), along with a
ton of others. The Valley of Gwangi (1969), The Golden Voyage
of Sinbad (1974), and Clash of the Titans (1981) are considered
some of the best stop motion animated work in the world to
this day. Having in most cases animated the entirety of the
visual effects by himself.
One of the biggest influences on stop motion
productions was television since TV shows needed to be
produced quickly and with a tight budget. In 1955 "The
Gumpy Show" would be produced and animated by Art
Clokey and would go on to be a huge success. With its
main character called Gumpy and little green clay
animated character, "The Gumpy show" would go on for
eleven years and would be a gateway for many stop
motion animator's careers in the stop motion industry.
Art Clokey would then go on to create a second animated series called Davey and Goliath, a
Sunday morning show that would also be a huge influence on many generations of kids who
would maybe go on to be animators someday in their future.
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By the 1970’s, stop motion had risen by popularity

immensely, by being one of the most effective uses of visual
effects techniques, as well as a common idea for
commercials. By the 1980’s stop motion had hit its prime
time with feature films, animated television series,
commercials for major brands, and also sometimes music
videos. The 80’s were truly a golden age of stop motion
worldwide. This era of stop motion went through the most
development of how stop motion was created and what
techniques were used and also the rise of the popularity
and that stop motion became a high profiled medium of
commercials, TV series and feature films helped push
forward these developments. The amount of animation
produced during the 70s/80s was mind boggling.
Television networks like MTV would hire stop motion
artists to make their TV IDs completely out of stop
motion and produce stop motion music videos for artists
like Peter Gabriel. Soon stop motion had risen in
popularity so much that you were seeing it everywhere. Will Vinton who won an academy
award for stop motion animation opened up an animation studios up in Oregon which would
produce some of the most iconic stop motion series and characters. "The Noid" and "The
California Raisins" would be two huge clay animated commercial characters that would later
become bigger then the brands they were trying to promote. One very successful and
popular stop motion production was "Wallace and Gromit" with its first production called a
"Grand Day Out" made back in 1989. Massive cult films also used stop motion such as Stars
Wars, Empire Strikes Back and Robo Cop would be filled with stop motion effects.
Also during this era of stop motion, a far more advanced technique came into the industry
called go motion which used the effectiveness of motion blur in the framing, which is far
more realistic. One main pioneer of Go motion was Phil Tippet who worked on very big films
such as "Star Wars: A New Hope", "Empire strikes back" which you can see him in the picture
on the right. He also worked on “Star Ship Troopers", this development completely changed
the industry of stop motion.
By the early 90s the stop motion industry starting to
fall downhill. Mainly because of the growth of desktop
computers and the advancement of technology,
handmade stop motion animation was starting to fade
away as a chosen medium of choice for commercials,
films and music videos. The one film that caused the
down fall the most was Jurassic Park. Originally
Jurassic Park was going to use go motion, Phil Tippet
created stop motion for certain scenes from Jurassic park such as the kitchen scene which
was used in a similar way as a storyboard would have been used. His work was very
commendable and ground-breaking. However the Dinosaurs in Jurassic Park weren't looking
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as convincing as Steven Spielberg wanted them to and instead used metal armature puppets
who were also created by Phil Tippet but instead of stop motion they were connected to a
computer through wires to control the onscreen character generated inside the computer
and also with the use of CGI. It was very expensive technique but the look it created had
been way slicker then the slight jumpiness of stop motion. Jurassic Park still to this day is the
most evolutionary cinematic films of all time.
The 90’s were full of up and downs since the hand
animated films like The Nightmare Before Christmas,
and James and the Giant Peach which were very
successful and fan favourites, but because of PIXAR’s
success with their first feature CGI animated film Toy
Story which was the revolutionary animated film ever.
The whole stop motion industry from music video,
commercials, television shows and feature films
starting to become less popular and wasn't a common
medium for high profiled brands as CGI was a much easier and quicker process. Television
kept the flame of stop motion alive creating shows like Pingu, Bump in the Night, the Pj’s.
Wallace and Gromit also kept the stop motion scene going in the 90s by bringing out hit
films such as "The Wrong Trousers" and "A Close Shave" which were also very successful.
The 2000s were a good time for the stop motion industry,
since stop motion hit films came out such as Chicken Run,
The curse of the Were Rabbit, Coraline, Fantastic Mr. Fox
and The Pirates. By the late 1990’s the first digital
cameras would be affordable enough for those that could
afford it. In the mid 2000’s this would change and digital
cameras would be everywhere. In 2005 a television series
called Robot Chicken was produced using these digital
cameras to produce a 100% stop motion animated series for Cartoon network. The
technology had finally caught up and this would mark the beginning of a whole new era.
Because of the advancement of technology and computers and the speed they work at in
the late 90s to early 2000s. Filming techniques would originally work from dark rooms which
were a very long process as it often took hours to see any outcome of their hard work.
Now because of these technology advancements
animators could now use computers to edit,
composite, and even produce music and sound
effects. This would speed up the process of
animation a lot meaning animators can produce
more and better quality of stop motion
productions. The very first affordable system
was called the Video Toaster which allowed
television production to edit and produce
content video using the Amiga2000 computer. The speed that shows and films could be
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produced had made the stop motion industry jump light years forward. The overall cost of
producing a stop motion film once again became cheaper than CGI. Computers required a
lot of power to produce one CGI frame, but stop motion required a fraction of that to
produce a 1 minute clip.
Once frame grabbing software was brought into the
mix and animators could instantly see their
animation. The very first software framegrabber is
Adobe’s Premier as it would allow you to framegrab
from a camera and play back the animation. Next
would come Stop Motion Pro which was used by
Aardman for many years as their framgrabber, But
the software that became the industry standard
would become DragonFrame, Dragonframe would for
the first time be an affordable software that was available on the Mac OS and Windows
operating systems. DragonFrame literally changed the game for everyone in the field of
animation and made all its competitors stand up and take notice.

In today's stop motion, making an animated film is as easy as

turning on a computer or phone camera and snapping a few
photographs of your toys on a desktop or table. This ease of
use and quick accessibility paired with the nature of object or
puppet animation allows for anyone with the right technology
to be an animator. YouTube revolutionised the stop motion
industry because YouTube allows users to upload anything
that their minds can create and this has now replaced many of
the past distribution models of film making. Popular stop
motion animators on YouTube such as Lee Hardcastle who is a British animator who
specialises in stop motion techniques, he is mostly famous for his independent handmade
animations.