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Stop motion
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Not to be confused with time lapse, the combination of still photographs into a fast-moving video.

Stop motion is an animated filmmaking technique in which objects are physically manipulated in small
increments between individually photographed frames so that they will appear to exhibit independent
motion or change when the series of frames is played back. Any kind of object can thus be animated, but
puppets with movable joints (puppet animation) or plasticine figures (clay animation or claymation) are
most commonly used. Puppets, models or clay figures built around an armature are used in model
animation. Stop motion with live actors is often referred to as pixilation. Stop motion of flat materials such
as paper, fabrics or photographs is usually called cutout animation.

Contents

Terminology

History
1849 to 1895: Before film

1895–1928: The silent film era

Segundo de Chomón

Edwin S. Porter and Wallace McCutcheon Sr.

A clay model of a chicken, designed to
J. Stuart Blackton be used in a clay stop motion
animation[1]
Émile Cohl

Arthur Melbourne-Cooper

Alexander Shiryaev

Ladislas Starevich (Russian period)

Willis O'Brien's early films

Helena Smith Dayton

Starewicz in Paris

Other silent stop motion

1930s and 1940s

1950s

1960s and 1970s

1980s

1990s

21st century

Variations of stop motion

Stereoscopic stop motion

Go motion

Comparison to computer-generated imagery

Stop motion in other media

See also

References

Further reading

External links

Terminology

The term "stop motion", relating to the animation technique, is often spelled with a hyphen as "stop-
motion"—either standalone or as a compound modifier. Both orthographical variants, with and without the
hyphen, are correct, but the hyphenated one has a second meaning that is unrelated to animation or
cinema: "a device for automatically stopping a machine or engine when something has gone wrong".[2]

History

1849 to 1895: Before film

Main article: Early history of animation

Before the advent of chronophotography in 1878, a small number of picture sequences were photographed
with subjects in separate poses. These can now be regarded as a form of stop motion or pixilation, but very
few results were meant to be animated. Until celluloid film base was established in 1888 and set the
standard for moving image, animation could only be presented via mechanisms such as the zoetrope.

In 1849, Joseph Plateau published a note about improvements for his Fantascope (a.k.a. phénakisticope). A
new translucent variation had improved picture quality and could be viewed with both eyes, by several
people at the same time. Plateau stated that the illusion could be advanced even further with an idea
communicated to him by Charles Wheatstone: a combination of the fantascope and Wheatstone's
stereoscope. Plateau thought the construction of a sequential set of stereoscopic image pairs would be the
more difficult part of the plan than adapting two copies of his improved fantascope to be fitted with a
stereoscope. Wheatstone had suggested using photographs on paper of a solid object, for instance a
statuette. Plateau concluded that for this purpose 16 plaster models could be made with 16 regular
modifications. He believed such a project would take much time and careful effort, but would be well worth
it because of the expected marvelous results.[3] The plan was never executed, possibly because Plateau
was almost completely blind by this time.

In 1852, Jules Duboscq patented a "Stéréoscope-fantascope ou Bïoscope" (or abbreviated as

stéréofantascope) stroboscopic disc. The only known extant disc contains stereoscopic photograph pairs of
different phases of the motion of a machine. Due to the long exposure times necessary to capture an image
with the photographic emulsions of the period, the sequence could not be recorded live and must have
been assembled from separate photographs of the various positions of the machinery.

In 1855, Johann Nepomuk Czermak's published an article about his Stereophoroskop and other
experiments aimed at stereoscopic moving images. He mentioned a method of sticking needles in a
stroboscopic disc so that it looked like one needle was being pushed in and out of the cardboard when
animated. He realized that this method provided basically endless possibilities to make different 3D
animations. He then introduced two methods to animate stereoscopic pairs of images, one was basically a
stereo viewer using two stroboscopic discs and the other was more or less similar to the later zoetrope.
Czermak explained how suitable stereoscopic photographs could be made by recording a series of models,
for instance to animate a growing pyramid.[4]

On 27 February 1860, Peter Hubert Desvignes received British patent no. 537 for 28 monocular and
stereoscopic variations of cylindrical stroboscopic devices (much like the later zoetrope).[5] Desvignes'
Mimoscope, received an Honourable Mention "for ingenuity of construction" at the 1862 International
Exhibition in London.[6] Desvignes "employed models, insects and other objects, instead of pictures, with
perfect success".[7]

In 1874, Jules Janssen made several practice discs for the recording of the passage of Venus with his series
Passage de Vénus with his photographic revolver. He used a model of the planet and a light source standing
in for the sun.[8] While actual recordings of the passage of Venus have not been located, some practice
discs survived and the images of one were turned into a short animated film decades after the development
of cinematography.

In 1887, Étienne-Jules Marey created a large zoetrope with a series of plaster models based on his
chronophotographs of birds in flight.[9]

1895–1928: The silent film era

It is estimated that 80 to 90 percent of all silent film are lost.[10] Extant contemporary movie catalogs,
reviews and other documentation can provide some details on lost films, but this kind of written
documentation is also incomplete and often insufficient to properly date all extant films or even identify
them if original titles are missing. Possible stop motion in lost films is even harder to trace. The principles of
animation and other special effects were mostly kept a secret, not only to prevent use of such techniques
by competitors, but also to keep audiences interested in the mystery of the magic tricks.[11]

Stop motion is closely related to the stop trick, in which the camera is temporarily stopped during the
recording of a scene to create a change before filming is continued (or for which the cause of the change is
edited out of the film). In the resulting film the change will be sudden and a logical cause of the change will
be mysteriously absent or replaced with a fake cause that is suggested in the scene. The oldest known
example is used for the beheading in Edison Manufacturing Company's 1895 film The Execution of Mary
Stuart. The technique of stop motion can be interpreted as repeatedly applying the stop trick. In 1917 clay
animation pioneer Helena Smith-Dayton referred to the principle behind her work as "stop action",[12] a
synonym of "stop motion".

French trick film pioneer Georges Méliès claimed to have invented the stop-trick and popularized it by using
it in many of his short films. He reportedly used stop-motion animation in 1899 to produce moving
letterforms.[13]

Segundo de Chomón

Spanish filmmaker Segundo de Chomón (1871–1929) made many

trick films in France for Pathé. He has often been compared to
Georges Méliès as he also made many fantasy films with stop tricks
and other illusions (helped by his wife, Julienne Mathieu). By 1906
Chomón was using stop motion animation. Le théâtre de Bob (April
1906) features over three minutes of stop motion animation with
dolls and objects to represent a fictional automated theatre owned
by Bob, played by a live-action child actor. It is the oldest extant film
with proper stop motion and a definite release date. Julienne Mathieu in a stop
motion/pixilation scene from Hôtel
Segundo de Chomón's Sculpteur moderne was released on 31 électrique (1908)
January 1908[14] and features heaps of clay molding itself into
detailed sculptures that are capable of minor movements. The final
sculpture depicts an old woman and walks around before it's picked
up, squashed and molded back into a sitting old lady.[15]

Edwin S. Porter and Wallace McCutcheon Sr.

American film pioneer Edwin S. Porter filmed a single-shot "lightning

sculpting" film with a baker molding faces from a patch of dough in
Fun in a Bakery Shop (1902), considered as foreshadowing of clay
The Sculptor's Nightmare (1908)
animation.

In 1905, Porter showed animated letters and very simple cutout animation of two hands in the intertitles in
How Jones lost his roll.[16]

Porter experimented with a small bit of crude stop-motion animation in his trick film Dream of a Rarebit
Fiend (1906).

The "Teddy" Bears (2 March 1907), made in collaboration with Wallace McCutcheon Sr.,[17] mainly shows
people in bear costumes, but the short film also features a short stop-motion segment with small teddy
bears.[18]

On 15 February 1908, Porter released the trick film A Sculptor's Welsh Rabbit Dream that featured clay
molding itself into three complete busts.[19] No copy of the film has yet been located. It was soon followed
by the similar extant film The Sculptor's Nightmare (6 May 1908) by Wallace McCutcheon Sr.[20]

J. Stuart Blackton

J. Stuart Blackton's The Haunted Hotel (23 February 1907)[21] featured a combination of live-action with
practical special effects and stop motion animation of several objects, a puppet and a model of the haunted
hotel. It was the first stop motion film to receive wide scale appreciation. Especially a large close-up view of
a table being set by itself baffled viewers; there were no visible wires or other noticeable well-known
tricks.[22] This inspired other filmmakers, including French animator Émile Cohl[23] and Segundo de
Chomón. De Chomón would release the similar The House of Ghosts (La maison ensorcelée) and Hôtel
électrique in 1908, with the latter also containing some very early pixelation.

The Humpty Dumpty Circus (1908, considered lost) by Blackton and his British-American Vitagraph partner
Albert E. Smith showed an animated performance of the figures from a popular wooden toy set.[24] Smith
would later claim that this was "the first stop-motion picture in America". The inspiration would have come
from seeing how puffs of smoke behaved in the interrupted recordings for a stop trick film they were
making. Smith would have suggested to get a patent for the technique, but Blackton thought it wasn't that
important.[25] Smith's recollections are not considered to be very reliable.[26][27]

Émile Cohl

Blackton's The Haunted Hotel made a big impression in Paris, where

it was released as L'hôtel hanté: fantasmagorie épouvantable. When
Gaumont bought a copy to further distribute the film, it was carefully
studied by some of their filmmakers to find out how it was made.
Reportedly it was newcomer Émile Cohl who unraveled the
mystery.[28] Not long after, Cohl released his first film, Japon de
fantaisie (June 1907),[29] featuring his own imaginative use of the
stop-motion technique. It was followed by the revolutionary hand-
drawn Fantasmagorie (17 August 1908) and many more animated
Émile Cohl's Japon de fantaisie (1907)
films by Cohl.

Other notable stop-motion films by Cohl include Les allumettes animées (Animated Matches) (1908),[30]
and Mobilier fidèle (1910, in collaboration with Romeo Bosetti).[31] Mobilier fidèle is often confused with
Bosetti's object animation tour de force Le garde-meubles automatique (The Automatic Moving Company)
(1912).[32][33] Both films feature furniture moving by itself.

Arthur Melbourne-Cooper

Of the more than 300 short films produced between 1896 and 1915 by British film pioneer Arthur
Melbourne-Cooper, an estimated 36 contained forms of animation. Based on later reports by Melbourne-
Cooper and by his daughter Audrey Wadowska, some believe that Cooper's Matches: an Appeal was
produced in 1899 and therefore the very first stop-motion animation. The extant black-and-white film
shows a matchstick figure writing an appeal to donate a Guinea for which Bryant & May would supply
soldiers with sufficient matches. No archival records are known that could proof that the film was indeed
created in 1899 during the beginning of the Second Boer War. Others place it at 1914, during the beginning
of World War I.[34][35] Cooper created more Animated Matches scenes in the same setting. These are
believed to also have been produced in 1899,[36] while a release date of 1908 has also been given.[37] The
1908 Animated Matches film by Émile Cohl may have caused more confusion about the release dates of
Cooper's matchstick animations. It also raises the question whether Cohl may have been inspired by
Melbourne-Cooper or vice versa.

Melbourne-Cooper's lost films Dolly's Toys (1901) and The Enchanted Toymaker (1904) may have included
stop-motion animation.[23] Dreams of Toyland (1908) features a scene with many animated toys that lasts
approximately three and a half minutes.

Alexander Shiryaev

As a means to plan his performances, ballet dancer and choreographer Alexander Shiryaev started making
approximately 20- to 25-centimeter-tall puppets out of papier-mâché on poseable wire frames. He then
sketched all the sequential movements on paper. When he arranged these vertically on a long strip, it was
possible to give a presentation of the complete dance with a home cinema projector. Later on, he bought a
movie camera and between 1906 and 1909 he made many short films, including puppet animations. As a
dancer and choreographer, Shiryaev had a special talent to create motion in his animated films. According
to animator Peter Lord his work was decades ahead of its time. Part of Shiryaev's animation work is featured
in Viktor Bocharov's documentary Alexander Shiryaev: A Belated Premiere (2003).[38][39]

Ladislas Starevich (Russian period)

Polish-Russian Ladislas Starevich (1882–1965), started his film career around 1909 in Kaunas filming live
insects. He wanted to document rutting stag beetles, but the creatures wouldn't cooperate or would even
die under the bright lamps needed for filming. He solved the problem by using wire for the limbs of dried
beetles and then animating them in stop motion. The resulting short film, presumably 1 minute long,[40] was
probably titled by the Latin name for the species: Lucanus Cervus (Жуĸ-олень, 1910, considered lost).

After moving to Moscow, Starewicz continued animating dead

insects, but now as characters in imaginative stories with much
dramatic complexity. He garnered much attention and international
acclaim with these short films, including the 10-minute The Beautiful
Leukanida (Преĸрасная Люĸанида, или Война усачей с рогачами)
(March 1912), the two-minute Happy Scenes from Animal Life
(Веселые сценĸи из жизни животных), the 12-minute The
Cameraman's Revenge (Преĸрасная Люĸанида, или Война усачей
с рогачами, October 1912) and the 5-minute The Grasshopper and
Starewicz' The Beautiful Leukanida
the Ant (Стреĸоза и муравей, 1913). Reportedly many viewers were
(1912)
impressed with how much could be achieved with trained insects, or
at least wondered what tricks could have been used, since few people were familiar with the secrets of stop
motion animation. The Insects' Christmas (Рождество обитателей леса, 1913) featured other animated
puppets, including Father Christmas and a frog. Starewicz made several other stop motion films in the next
two years, but mainly went on to direct live-action short and feature films before he fled from Russia in
1918.

Willis O'Brien's early films

Willis O' Brien's first stop motion film was The Dinosaur and the
Missing Link: A Prehistoric Tragedy (1915). Apart from the titular
dinosaur and "missing link" ape, it featured several cavemen and an
ostrich-like "desert quail", all relatively lifelike models made with
clay.[41] This led to a series of short animated comedies with a
prehistoric theme for Edison Company, including Prehistoric Poultry
(1916), R.F.D. 10,000 B.C. (1917), The Birth of a Flivver (1917) and
Curious Pets of Our Ancestors (1917). O'Brien was then hired by
producer Herbert M. Dawley to direct, create effects, co-write and
The Dinosaur and the Missing Link
co-star with him for The Ghost of Slumber Mountain (1918). The (1915)
collaborative film combined live-action with animated dinosaur
models in a 45-minute film, but after the premiere it was cut down to
approximately 12 minutes. Dawley did not give O'Brien credits for the
visual effects, and instead claimed the animation process as his own
invention and even applied for patents.[42] O'Brien's stop motion
work was recognized as a technique to create lifelike creatures for
adventure films. O' Brien further pioneered the technique with
animated dinosaur sequences for the live-action feature The Lost
World (1925).
Excerpt from The Lost World (1925);
Helena Smith Dayton animation by Willis O'Brien

New York artist Helena Smith Dayton, possibly the first female
animator, had much success with her "Caricatypes" clay statuettes
before she began experimenting with clay animation. Some of her
first resulting short films were screened on 25 March 1917. She
released an adaptation of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet
approximately half a year later. Although the films and her technique
received much attention of the press, it seems she did not continue Stills from Battle of the Suds and other
Helena Smith-Dayton films (1917)
making films after she returned to New York from managing a YMCA
in Paris around 1918. None of her films have yet surfaced, but the extant magazine articles have provided
several stills and approximately 20 poorly printed frames from two film strips.[43]

Starewicz in Paris

By 1920 Starewicz had settled in Paris, and started making new stop motion films. Dans les Griffes de
L'araignée (finished 1920, released 1924) featured detailed hand-made insect puppets that could convey
facial expressions with moving lips and eyelids.

Other silent stop motion

One of the earliest clay animation films was Modelling Extraordinary, which impressed audiences in
1912.[citation needed]

The early Italian feature film Cabiria (1914) featured some stop motion techniques.[citation needed]

1930s and 1940s

Starewicz finished the first feature stop motion film Le Roman de Renard (The Tale of the Fox) in 1930, but
problems with its soundtrack delayed its release. In 1937 it was released with a German soundtrack and in
1941 with its French soundtrack.

Hungarian-American filmmaker George Pal developed his own stop motion technique of replacing wooden
dolls (or parts of them) with similar figures displaying changed poses and/or expressions. He called it Pal-
Doll and used it for his Puppetoons films since 1932. The particular replacement animation method itself
also became better known as puppetoon. In Europe he mainly worked on promotional films for companies
such as Philips. Later Pal gained much success in Hollywood with a string of Academy Award for Best
Animated Short Films, including Rhythm in the Ranks (1941), Tulips Shall Grow (1942), Jasper and the
Haunted House (1942), the Dr. Seuss penned The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins (1943) and And to
Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street (1944), Jasper and the Beanstalk (1945), John Henry and the Inky-
Poo (1946), Jasper in a Jam (1946), and Tubby the Tuba (1947). Many of his puppetoon films were selected
for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

Willis O' Brien's expressive and emotionally convincing animation of the big ape in King Kong (1933) is
widely regarded as a milestone in stop-motion animation and a highlight of Hollywood cinema in general.

A 1940 promotional film for Autolite, an automotive parts supplier, featured stop-motion animation of its
products marching past Autolite factories to the tune of Franz Schubert's Military March. An abbreviated
version of this sequence was later used in television ads for Autolite, especially those on the 1950s CBS
program Suspense, which Autolite sponsored.

The first British animated feature was the stop motion instruction film Handling Ships (1945) by Halas and
Batchelor for the British Admiralty. It was not meant for general cinemas, but did become part of the official
selection of the 1946 Cannes Film Festival.

The first Belgian animated feature was an adaptation of the Tintin comic The Crab with the Golden Claws
(1947) with animated puppets.

The first Czech animated feature was the package film The Czech Year (1947) with animated puppets by Jiří
Trnka. The film won several awards at the Venice Film Festival and other international festivals. Trnka would
make several more award-winning stop motion features including The Emperor's Nightingale (1949), Prince
Bayaya (1950), Old Czech Legends (1953) or A Midsummer Night's Dream (1959). He also directed many
short films and experimented with other forms of animation.

1950s

Ray Harryhausen learned under O'Brien on the film Mighty Joe

Young (1949). Harryhausen would go on to create many memorable
stop motion effects for a string of successful fantasy films over the
next three decades. These included The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms
(1953), It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955), Jason and the
Argonauts (1963), The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973) and Clash of
the Titans (1981).

It wasn't until 1954 before a feature animated film with a technique

Gumbasia (1955) by Art Clokey
other than cel animation was produced in the US. The first was the
stop motion adaptation of 19th century composer Engelbert Humperdinck's opera Hänsel und Gretel as
Hansel and Gretel: An Opera Fantasy.

In 1955, Karel Zeman made his first feature film Journey to the Beginning of Time inspired by Jules Verne,
featuring stop motion animation of dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures.

Art Clokey started his adventures in clay with a freeform clay short film called Gumbasia (1955), which
shortly thereafter propelled him into the production of his more structured TV series Gumby (1955–1989),
with the iconic titular character. In partnership with the United Lutheran Church in America, he also
produced Davey and Goliath (1960–2004). The theatrical feature Gumby: The Movie (1992, released in
1995) was a box-office bomb.

On 22 November 1959, the first episode of Unser Sandmänchen (Our Little Sandman) was broadcast on
DFF (East German television). The 10-minute daily bedtime show for young children features the title
character as an animated puppet, and other puppets in different segments. A very similar Sandmänchen
series, possibly conceived earlier, ran on West German television from 1 December 1959 until the German
reunification in 1989. The East German show was continued on other German networks when DFF ended in
1991, and is one of the longest running animated series in the world.[citation needed] The theatrical feature Das
Sandmännchen – Abenteuer im Traumland (2010) was fully animated with stop motion puppets.

1960s and 1970s

Japanese puppet animator Tadahito Mochinaga started out as

assistant animator in short anime (propaganda) films Arichan (1941)
and Momotarō no Umiwashi (1943). He fled to Manchukuo during
the war and stayed in China afterwards. Due to the scarcity of paint
and film stock shortly after the war, Mochinaga decided to work with
puppets and stop motion. His work helped popularize puppet
animation in China, before he returned to Japan around 1953 where
he continued working as animation director. In the 1960s, Mochinaga Pat & Mat, two inventive but clumsy
supervised the "Animagic" puppet animation for productions by neighbors, was introduced in 1976,[44]
while the first made-for-TV episode
Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass' Videocraft International, Ltd. (later
Tapety (translated Wallpaper) was
called Rankin/Bass Productions, Inc.) and Dentsu, starting with the produced in 1979 for ČST Bratislava.
syndicated television series The New Adventures of Pinocchio
(1960-1961). The Christmas TV special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer has been telecasted annually
since 1964 and has become one of the most beloved holiday specials in the United States. They made three
theatrical feature films Willy McBean and His Magic Machine (1965), The Daydreamer (1966, stop motion /
live-action) and Mad Monster Party? (1966, released in 1967), and the television special Ballad of Smokey
the Bear (1966) before the collaboration ended. Rankin/Bass worked with other animators for more TV
specials, with titles such as The Little Drummer Boy (1968), Santa Claus is Comin' to Town (1970) and Here
Comes Peter Cottontail (1971).

British television has shown many stop motion series for young children since the 1960s. An early example
is Snip and Snap (1960-1961) by John Halas in collaboration with Danish paper sculptor Thok Søndergaard
(Thoki Yenn), featuring dog Snap, cut from a sheet of paper by pair of scissors Snip.

Apart from their cutout animation series, British studio Smallfilms (Peter Firmin and Oliver Postgate)
produced several stop motion series with puppets, beginning with Pingwings (1961-1965) featuring
penguin-like birds knitted by Peter's wife Joan and filmed on their farm (where most of their productions
were filmed in an unused barn). It was followed by Pogles' Wood (1965-1967), Clangers (1969-1972, 1974,
revived in 2015), Bagpuss (1974) and Tottie: The Story of a Doll's House (1984).

Czech surrealist filmmaker Jan Švankmajer's released his short artistic films since 1964, which usually
contain much experimental stop motion. He started to gain much international recognition in the 1980s.
Since 1988 he has mostly been directing feature films which feature much more live action than stop
motion. These include Alice, an adaptation of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and Faust, a
rendition of the legend of the German scholar. Švankmajer's work has been highly influential on other
artists, such as Terry Gilliam and the Quay brothers (although the latter claim to have only discovered
Švankmajer's films after having developed their own similar style).

French animator Serge Danot created The Magic Roundabout (1965) which played for many years on the
BBC.

Polish studio Se-ma-for produced popular TV series with animated puppets in adaptations of Colargol
(Barnaby the Bear in the UK, Jeremy in Canada) (1967-1974) and The Moomins (1977-1982).

In the 1960s and 1970s, independent clay animator Eliot Noyes Jr. refined the technique of "free-form" clay
animation with his Oscar-nominated 1965 film Clay (or the Origin of Species). Noyes also used stop motion
to animate sand lying on glass for his musical animated film Sandman (1975).

Italian director Francesco Misseri created the clay animation TV series Mio Mao (1970-1976, 2002–2007),
The Red and the Blue (Il Rosso e il Blu, 1976), and a TV series with an animated origami duck Quaq Quao
(1978-1979).

The British artists Brian Cosgrove and Mark Hall (Cosgrove Hall Films) produced two stop-motion animated
adaptions of Enid Blyton's Noddy book series, including the original series of the same name (1975–1982)
and Noddy's Toyland Adventures (1992–2001), a full-length film The Wind in the Willows (1983) and later a
multi-season TV series, both based on Kenneth Grahame's classic children's book of the same title. They
also produced a documentary of their production techniques, Making Frog and Toad.

In 1975, filmmaker and clay animation experimenter Will Vinton joined with sculptor Bob Gardiner to create
an experimental film called Closed Mondays which became the first stop-motion film to win an Oscar. Will
Vinton followed with several other successful short film experiments including The Great Cognito, The
Creation, and Rip Van Winkle which were each nominated for Academy Awards. In 1977, Vinton made a
documentary about this process and his style of animation which he dubbed "claymation"; he titled the
documentary Claymation. Soon after this documentary, the term was trademarked by Vinton to differentiate
his team's work from others who had been, or were beginning to do, "clay animation". While the word has
stuck and is often used to describe clay animation and stop motion, it remains a trademark owned currently
by Laika Entertainment, Inc. Twenty clay-animation episodes featuring the clown Mr. Bill were a feature of
Saturday Night Live, starting from a first appearance in February 1976.

At very much the same time in the UK, Peter Lord and David Sproxton formed Aardman Animations that
would produce many commercials, TV series, short films and eventually also feature films. In 1976 they
created the character Morph who appeared as an animated side-kick to the TV presenter Tony Hart on his
BBC TV programme Take Hart. The five-inch-high presenter was made from a traditional British modelling
clay called Plasticine. In 1977 they started on a series of animated films, again using modelling clay, but this
time made for a more adult audience. The soundtrack for Down and Out was recorded in a Salvation Army
Hostel and Plasticine puppets were animated to dramatise the dialogue. A second film, also for the BBC
followed in 1978. A TV series The Amazing Adventures of Morph was aired in 1980.

Sand-coated puppet animation was used in the Oscar-winning 1977 film The Sand Castle, produced by
Dutch-Canadian animator Co Hoedeman. Hoedeman was one of dozens of animators sheltered by the
National Film Board of Canada, a Canadian government film arts agency that had supported animators for
decades. A pioneer of refined multiple stop-motion films under the NFB banner was Norman McLaren, who
brought in many other animators to create their own creatively controlled films. Notable among these are
the pinscreen animation films of Jacques Drouin, made with the original pinscreen donated by Alexandre
Alexeieff and Claire Parker.

Czech filmmakers Lubomír Beneš and Vladimír Jiránek debuted their animated puppet characters Pat &
Mat, two inventive but clumsy neighbors, in the 7-minute short Kuťáci in 1976. Since 1979, over 100
episodes have been broadcast irregularly.[45] Since 2014, new episodes were presented in theatrically
released package films. The series became very popular in several countries, especially in The Netherlands,
the only country where the characters are voiced.

One of the main British animation teams, John Hardwick and Bob Bura, were the main animators in many
early British TV shows, and are famous for their work on the Trumptonshire trilogy.

Disney experimented with several stop-motion techniques by hiring independent animator-director Mike
Jittlov to make the first stop-motion animation of Mickey Mouse toys ever produced, in a short sequence
called Mouse Mania, part of a TV special, Mickey's 50, which commemorated Mickey's 50th anniversary in
1978. Jittlov again produced some impressive multi-technique stop-motion animation a year later for a 1979
Disney special promoting their release of the feature film The Black Hole. Titled Major Effects, Jittlov's work
stood out as the best part of the special. Jittlov released his footage the following year to 16mm film
collectors as a short film titled The Wizard of Speed and Time, along with four of his other short multi-
technique animated films, most of which eventually evolved into his own feature-length film of the same
title. Effectively demonstrating almost all animation techniques, as well as how he produced them, the film
was released to theaters in 1987 and to video in 1989.

1980s

In the 1970s and 1980s, Industrial Light & Magic often used stop-motion model animation in such films as
the original Star Wars trilogy: the holochess sequence in Star Wars, the Tauntauns and AT-AT walkers in The
Empire Strikes Back, and the AT-ST walkers in Return of the Jedi were all filmed using stop-motion
animation, with the latter two films utilising go motion: an invention from renowned visual effects veteran
Phil Tippett. The many shots including the ghosts in Raiders of the Lost Ark and the first two feature films in
the RoboCop series use Tippett's go motion.

In the UK, Aardman Animations continued to grow. Channel 4 funded a new series of clay animated films,
Conversation Pieces, using recorded soundtracks of real people talking. A further series in 1986, called Lip
Sync, premiered the work of Richard Goleszowski (Ident), Barry Purves (Next), and Nick Park (Creature
Comforts), as well as further films by Sproxton and Lord. Creature Comforts won the Oscar for Best
Animated Short in 1990. In 1986, they also produced a notable music video for "Sledgehammer", a song by
Peter Gabriel.

In 1980, Marc Paul Chinoy directed the 1st feature-length clay animated film, based on the famous Pogo
comic strip. Titled I go Pogo. It was aired a few times on American cable channels but has yet to be
commercially released. Primarily clay, some characters required armatures, and walk cycles used pre-
sculpted hard bases legs.[46]

Stop motion was also used for some shots of the final sequence of the first Terminator movie, also for the
scenes of the small alien ships in Spielberg's Batteries Not Included in 1987, animated by David W. Allen.
Allen's stop-motion work can also be seen in such feature films as The Crater Lake Monster (1977), Q - The
Winged Serpent (1982), The Gate (1987) and Freaked (1993). Allen's King Kong Volkswagen commercial
from the 1970s is now legendary among model animation enthusiasts.

In 1985, Will Vinton and his team released an ambitious feature film in stop motion called "The Adventures
Of Mark Twain" based on the life and works of the famous American author. While the film may have been a
little sophisticated for young audiences at the time, it got rave reviews from critics and adults in
general.[citation needed] Vinton's team also created the Nomes and the Nome King for Disney's "Return to Oz"
feature, for which they received an Academy Award Nomination for Special Visual Effects. In the late 1980s
and early 1990s, Will Vinton became very well known for his commercial work as well with stop-motion
campaigns including The California Raisins and The Noid.

Jiří Barta released his award-winning fantasy film The Pied Piper (1986).

From 1986 to 1991, Churchill Films produced The Mouse and the Motorcycle, Runaway Ralph, and Ralph S.
Mouse for ABC television. The shows featured stop-motion characters combined with live action, based on
the books of Beverly Cleary. John Clark Matthews was the animation director, with Justin Kohn, Joel
Fletcher, and Gail Van Der Merwe providing character animation.[47] The company also produced other films
based on children's books.

From 1986 to 2000, over 150 five-minute episodes of Pingu, a Swiss children's comedy, were produced by
Trickfilmstudio.

Aardman Animations' Nick Park became very successful with his short claymation Creature Comforts in
1989, which had talking animals voicing vox pop interviews. Park then used the same format to produce a
series of commercials between 1990 and 1992. The commercials have been credited as having introduced a
more "caring" way of advertising in the UK. Richard Goleszowski later directed two 13-episode Creature
Comforts TV series (2003, 2005–2006) and a Christmas special (2005). Also in 1989, Park introduced his
very popular clay characters Wallace and Gromit in A Grand Day Out. Three more short films and one
feature film and many TV adaptions and spin-offs would follow. Among many other awards, Park won the
Academy Award for Best Animated Feature for the feature-length outing Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the
Were-Rabbit. Park also worked on the Chicken Run movie, which was another film from Aardman
Animations.

1990s

In 1992, Trey Parker and Matt Stone made The Spirit of Christmas, a short cutout animated student film
made with construction paper. In 1995 they made a second short with the same titled, commissioned as a
Christmas greeting by Fox Broadcasting Company executive Brian Graden. The concepts and characters
were further developed into the TV hit series South Park (since 1997). Except for the pilot, all animation has
been created on computers in the same style.

The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), directed by Henry Selick and produced by Tim Burton, was one of
the more widely released stop-motion features and became the highest grossing stop-motion animated
movie of its time, grossing over $50 million domestic. Henry Selick also went on to direct James and the
Giant Peach and Coraline, and Tim Burton went on to direct Corpse Bride and Frankenweenie.

The stop-motion feature The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb was released in 1993.

In November 1998, the first episode of Bob the Builder released on BBC. Bob the Builder was a popular
British stop-motion television series created by Keith Chapman & produced and owned by HIT
Entertainment.

In 1999, Will Vinton launched the first US prime-time stop-motion television series called The PJs, co-
created by actor-comedian Eddie Murphy. The Emmy-winning sitcom aired on Fox for two seasons, then
moved to the WB for an additional season. Vinton launched another series, Gary & Mike, for UPN in 2001.

In 1999, Tsuneo Gōda directed 30-second sketches of the character Domo. The shorts, animated by stop-
motion studio Dwarf, are currently still produced in Japan and have received universal critical acclaim from
fans and critics. Gōda also directed the stop-motion movie series Komaneko in 2004.

21st century

The BBC commissioned thirteen episodes of stop frame animated

Summerton Mill in 2004 as inserts into their flagship pre-school
program, Tikkabilla. Created and produced by Pete Bryden and Ed
Cookson, the series was then given its own slot on BBC1 and BBC2
and has been broadcast extensively around the world.
The music video to "Green" (2018) by
Other notable stop-motion feature films released since 2000 include Cavetown, a modern example of stop
motion animation
Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) $9.99 (2009), Anomalisa (2015) and
Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio (2022).

In 2003, the pilot film for the series Curucuru and Friends, produced by Korean studio Ffango Entertoyment
is greenlighted into a children's animated series in 2004 after an approval with the Gyeonggi Digital
Contents Agency. It was aired in KBS1 on November 24, 2006, and won the 13th Korean Animation Awards
in 2007 for Best Animation. Ffango Entertoyment also worked with Frontier Works in Japan to produce the
2010 film remake of Cheburashka.[48]

Since 2005, Robot Chicken has mostly utilized stop-motion animation, using custom made action figures
and other toys as principal characters.

Since 2009, Laika, the stop-motion successor to Will Vinton Studios, has released five feature films, which
have collectively grossed over $400 million: Coraline (2009), ParaNorman (2012), The Boxtrolls (2014),
Kubo and the Two Strings (2016) and Missing Link (2019).

Variations of stop motion

Stereoscopic stop motion

Stop motion has very rarely been shot in stereoscopic 3D throughout film history. The first 3D stop-motion
short was In Tune With Tomorrow (also known as Motor Rhythm), made in 1939 by John Norling. The
second stereoscopic stop-motion release was The Adventures of Sam Space in 1955 by Paul Sprunck. The
third and latest stop motion short in stereo 3D was The Incredible Invasion of the 20,000 Giant Robots from
Outer Space in 2000 by Elmer Kaan[49] and Alexander Lentjes.[50][51] This is also the first ever 3D
stereoscopic stop motion and CGI short in the history of film. The first all stop-motion 3D feature is Coraline
(2009), based on Neil Gaiman's best-selling novel and directed by Henry Selick. Another recent example is
the Nintendo 3DS video software which comes with the option for Stop Motion videos. This has been
released December 8, 2011 as a 3DS system update. Also, the film ParaNorman is in 3D stop motion.

Go motion
Main article: Go motion

Another more complicated variation on stop motion is go motion, co-developed by Phil Tippett and first
used on the films The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Dragonslayer (1981), and the RoboCop films. Go motion
involved programming a computer to move parts of a model slightly during each exposure of each frame of
film, combined with traditional hand manipulation of the model in between frames, to produce a more
realistic motion blurring effect. Tippett also used the process extensively in his 1984 short film Prehistoric
Beast, a 10 minutes long sequence depicting a herbivorous dinosaur (Monoclonius), being chased by a
carnivorous one (Tyrannosaurus). With new footage Prehistoric Beast became Dinosaur! in 1985, a full-
length dinosaurs documentary hosted by Christopher Reeve. Those Phil Tippett's go motion tests acted as
motion models for his first photo-realistic use of computers to depict dinosaurs in Jurassic Park in 1993. A
low-tech, manual version of this blurring technique was originally pioneered by Władysław Starewicz in the
silent era, and was used in his feature film The Tale of the Fox (1931).

Comparison to computer-generated imagery

Reasons for using stop motion instead of the more advanced computer-generated imagery (CGI) include
the low entry price and the appeal of its distinct look. Another merit of stop motion is that it accurately
displays real-life textures, while CGI texturing is more artificial and not quite as close to realism.[52][53] This
is appreciated by a number of animation directors, such as Guillermo del Toro,[54] Henry Selick,[55] Tim
Burton[56] and Travis Knight.[57]

Guillermo del Toro aimed to praise the benefits of stop motion in his movie Pinocchio, saying that he wanted
"the expressiveness and the material nature of a handmade piece of animation — an artisanal, beautiful
exercise in carving, painting, sculpting".[58]

Stop motion in other media

Many young people begin their experiments in movie making with stop motion, thanks to the ease of
modern stop-motion software and online video publishing.[59] Many new stop-motion shorts use clay
animation into a new form.[60]

Singer-songwriter Oren Lavie's music video for the song Her Morning Elegance was posted on YouTube on
January 19, 2009. The video, directed by Lavie and Yuval and Merav Nathan, uses stop motion and has
achieved great success with over 25.4 million views, also earning a 2010 Grammy Award nomination for
"Best Short Form Music Video".

Stop motion has occasionally been used to create the characters for computer games, as an alternative to
CGI. The Virgin Interactive Entertainment Mythos game Magic and Mayhem (1998) featured creatures built
by stop-motion specialist Alan Friswell, who made the miniature figures from modelling clay and latex
rubber, over armatures of wire and ball-and-socket joints. The models were then animated one frame at a
time, and incorporated into the CGI elements of the game through digital photography. "ClayFighter" for the
Super NES and The Neverhood for the PC are other examples.

Scientists at IBM used a scanning tunneling microscope to single out and move individual atoms which were
used to make characters in A Boy and His Atom. This was the tiniest scale stop-motion video made at that
time.[61]

Replicating the distinct tactile look of traditional stop motion has gained popularity in contemporary media
through the use of CGI. This approach can often provide a more cost-effective and accessible means of
achieving the stop motion aesthetic. Noteworthy among such endeavors is the work of Blender animator Ian
Worthington, exemplified by his 2021 short film "Captain Yajima".[62] Another prominent example of this
trend includes The LEGO Movie, which uses CGI to replicate the visual style and imperfections of stop
motion.[63]

See also

Brickfilm
Animation portal
List of stop motion artists

List of stop motion films

Still motion

Time-lapse photography

References

1. ^ "Case study: Chicken in Clay" (1997).

2. ^ 'stop', combinations section (Comb.), 'stop-motion' a device for automatically stopping a machine or engine
when something has gone wrong (The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, Clarendon Press, Oxford, Vol. 2
N–Z, 1993 edition, p. 3,074)

3. ^ Bulletins de l'Académie Royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique (in French). Hayez.
1849.

4. ^ Czermak (1855). "Das Stereophoroskop" (in German).

5. ^ Zone, Ray (3 February 2014). Stereoscopic Cinema and the Origins of 3-D Film, 1838-1952 . University
Press of Kentucky. ISBN 9780813145891 – via Google Books.

6. ^ "Medals and Honourable Mentions Awarded by the International Juries: With a ..." Her Majesty's
Commissioners. 10 April 1862 – via Internet Archive.

7. ^ "Chambers's Encyclopaedia: A Dictionary of Universal Knowledge for the People" . W. and R. Chambers.
10 April 1868 – via Google Books.

8. ^ 1874 Pierre Jules César Janssen - Passage artificiel de Venus sur le Soleil . magical media museum. 2012-
05-05. Archived from the original on 2021-07-17. Retrieved 2021-08-10 – via YouTube.

9. ^ Herbert, Stephen. (n.d.) From Daedaleum to Zoetrope, Part 2. Retrieved 2014-05-31.

10. ^ "Lost Films" . www.lost-films.eu. Retrieved 2020-01-31.

11. ^ Carou, Alain (2007-12-01). "Les inventions animées, Émile Cohl au prisme d'une histoire culturelle des
techniques" . 1895. Mille Huit Cent Quatre-vingt-quinze (in French) (53): 140–153. doi:10.4000/1895.2423 .
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