Week Beginning: 8th September
Stop motion animation is mainly drawings, ergo we studied the art of caricatures: how to draw them and how many famous characters are formed. we also studied the psychology behind shapes. A circle is dynamic, curved, positive, friendly and safe. manily well known characters formed circles are Shrek, Mike for monsters inc. and the jolly Sultan from Alladin. However circles are seen more as a side kick, the main stage is taken by the square: static, immoveable, stead fast and stuck solid.such as sully from monsters inc and many comic super heros like Batman and Superman.
PIONEERS OF STOP MOTION OF ANIMATION:
http://prezi.com/danlwrl8skad/edit/#21_102156592
For homework, we were asked to research the important people of stop motion animation and create a prezi. This presentation has given me inspiration to carry on it this sector because i may not be privileged like most people here at boa, but many of the pioneers were at an disadvantage too, for example, Helena Smith-Dayton was a woman. This case study really caught me because i am a feminist and the power that she has is incredible consider the time she made her name.
12th November
Today, we researched sketchbooks of artist. This is beneficial for our course because sketchbooks gain the winning vote for universities and it also helps with our product research in helping design characters and scenery. My sketchbook at the moment is very uniform with a title and drawings in certain places, where as the sketchbooks I have looked at aren’t, they are very free and most designs are unfinished but have detail in certain areas like the face or certain features like the mouth and expressions; they also are in black and white, so just quick pencil sketches with the only colour being test samples.
Task 1: developers and techniques.
Like all aspects of life, stop motion has a vast array of techniques such as stopping, frame rates and stop frame. as well as many developers to further the detail of each feature. however, the first thing we as stop motion students need to know is the persistence of vision.
the persistence of vision is the theory that images shown at rapid speed give the illusion of movement. Although, these findings of persistance of vision is widely known, there is no scientific proof that we actually see in this way.
Beta movement is when the brain assumes movement between two still images when shown at a rapid pace. this optical illusion works because the human optic nerve responds to changes in light at about 10 cycles per seconds, so changes of double this are registered as movement.
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_movement
Beta and Phi can be explained using frame rates, stopping and stop frame. Thomas Edison used stopping for the first stop motion short film in 1895 which was ‘the execution of Mary Queen of Scotts.’ old cameras used to jump frames, Edison exploited this to swap the live actress to a model. Furthermore, Frame rates are how many frames are shown within a second, for example, in stop motion blockbusters there are 24 pictures per second, creating a fluid illusion of movement.
Many people have captured this and used it to their advntage much like Joseph Plateau with his inventions of the phenakitoscope. This was just simply a spinning disk with images that have chaned slightly, so when they were spun at a fast speed it created the illusion that the image had moved.
A modern day developer of stop motion animation is Tim Burton, with his mst famous work being the nightmare before christmas. However, even though he has defined his characterization as dark and mysterious figures with the main colour palate being black, black and dark grey, He still managed to bring back stop motion with a certain feature that made it more desirable. For example, in the nightmare before Christmas, Burton and Selick collaborated on this movie and used 2d animation techniques such as rotoscoping, which is when the animator traces of the actual footage, frame by frame to add in 2d animation, in this case they added ghosts carrying 3d presents that they flew into shot with invisible strings.
Selick then went on the direct Coraline. a film adaptaion of a russain childrens book. In this film, Selick wanted the puppets to be realistic so much like how pixar animated single strands of meridas hair from brave, selick put wire in strands of Coralines hair so it would appear on camera thatis was moving in the wind.
Willis O’Brien used puppets as well in his 1930’s thriller ‘King Kong’. O’Brien used a puppet of king kong and the female actress during shooting. This was so advanced for the time, people were scared and thought King Kong was real, much like Thomas Edisons Mary queen of scots.
O’Brien influenced Harryhaussen in the making of his most famous work ‘Jason and the Argonauts.’ You see, Harryhaussen used claymation to create the skeletons, but in his most amos scene were the skeletons are fighting live action actors, he filmed a film. he filmed the actors fighting before hand and then played it back on a scren behind, frame by frame. O’Brien did this first with King Kong. However, this pined the way and made many peoples dreams come true, because now aything was possible.
People think Stop motion animation is a relatively new film genre, when in fact the first stop motion film was made by Thomas Edison in 1895, with the exucution of mary queen of scotts. This is where Edison saw that if you film with camera is jumps a shot, this is now called stopping. ergo what Edison did was swap a live actor for a dumbie when the frame jumped to create the illusion that it was still mary. However, this type of technology was too advanced for its time because it scared people, No one had ever seen anything like this before so naturally feared change. Edison didn’t just stop there, he also invented the kinetoscope. Coming from the word kinetic meaning movement, this was an early form of a projector. The film was spun around the knobs with a eye piece at the top, with a small light bulb just under the eyepiece, reflecting under the film showing the pictures as a moving image.
Another person that brought change was the developer of Joseph plateau’s phenakitoscope: William Horner. He created the zoetrope which is a more advanced version of the phenakiscooe. The main problem an audience had with the phenakiscope was that only one person person could view at one time, where as with the zoetrope more that one person could view it. As it was a 3d shape now. That is the only enhancement Horner made, because they both use a range of picture that have changed slightly to create the illusion of movement.
Edward Muybridge used a similar technique to create his short animation: a horse in motion in 1878. Muybridge studied how a horse moved to make a realistic animation as all picture were hand drawn. This made it more realistic because he truly understood how a horse moved and how it ran.
Muybridge was mainly a photographer, taking pictures in succession of animals running such as a bison cantering, which was animated in 2006 but using pictures that he took many years earlier, although he took a sequence of pictures of a gymnast in 1886.
Along with Burton, all animators have a certain style in which we can associate characters with. An example of this would be Jan Svankmajer. His designs are often called nightmarish but also humorous. Svankmajer was the director of the 1980’s Alice in wonderland, although he had been a puppeteer for most of his life and started a charity for masks.
Stop motion has many different formats, for example, feature film, adverts, tv shows, indents and music videos. The most famous format is feature film, however, due to the time it takes to produce 1 minute (1 week) it’s easier to just short 3 minutes such a childrens tv show, such as mio and Mao. These cute little kittens went on short adventures. They moved by the characters merging into a ball. Another example would be Shaun the sheep by aardman.
Aardman, hosting an array of awards, boosts imaginative and adorable animal characters but, personify them by adding emotions and cute personalities for example, Wallace and Gromit. Gromit doesn’t speak as he is an animal, but he saves the day and seems to be the smart one, proving at ht end of each hilarious episode that dog is truly mans best friend. However, the reason Aardman is so influential because of the animation technique. Like I have previously mentioned each character has an in depth personality with a wide range of emotions, before nick parks, animals were just animals with no feelings and couldn’t think. But now with the time Aardman took on their character development it has changed the world of animation.
The time it takes to make a minute isn’t just because it takes 24 images per second but also the animator or director has to plan out each photo that has to be taken. Not only does this mean the film is exactly what the director and writer saw in their minds but it also looks more realistic. Many years ago shows didn’t plan, which makes them very jumpy and sketchy. But now they’re are very fluid.
the magic of stop motion is that it makes magic actually happen. An example of this is pes. In his award winning short animated video ‘western spaghetti’ he uses surreal objects such as pick up sticks for the spaghetti. Pes has been commissioned to do many adverts such as the orange advert, where he used socks plying hide and seek.
John Lewis has also used stop motion is their christmas adverts. Last years Bas the bear and the hare. The creators used 2d animated animals printed off in different positions but made every other prop.
Music videos don’t tend to use many stop motion techniques unless they’re an unsigned band with just a camera. Such as from the sticks, their debut song DMT was stop motion. But it isn’t very professional and very jumpy, this is what happens when you don’t have the right soft wear or haven’t planned out the scene to the very last detail.
To conclude, stop motion has come forward over the years, coming in and out of fashion, but with developing technologies I believe stop motion is still very beautiful but is a dying art form and will become endangered as the years go by, even though many influential names such Thomas Edison and Tim burton have developed it.
*all information was given via lecture with mr.l.skinner, prior knowledge or YouTube.*
theodorabailey 