Stop motion animation is a technique to make animation by physically altering objects in the frame in small movements for each individual photo creating the illusion that it is moving when the frames are put together and played in a continuous sequence. In stop motion animation you can use 3D objects or flat materials such as drawings. The amount of frames used per second and how much you were to move it changes how smooth the animation would appear for example if you were to move a toy car to smaller the movement and faster the frame the more realistic and smooth it will be.
There are many different types of stop motion animation such as claymation, pixillation, object animation and puppet animation. these can all be used for more than just small animation clips, they have been used to make adverts, idents, music videos and information videos which have seemed to be very successful.
Stop motion animation has been around since the dawn of cinema. the first known stop motion film documented was created by Albert E Smith and J Stuart Blackton in 1897 called "The Humpty Dumpty Circus" which they used toy animals and circus toys to create the illusion of them coming to life. Sadly the film itself is now lost.
The earliest existing film was made by Thomas Edison and Edwin Porter called "Fun in a Bakery" in 1902. They created the stop motion element by using actors sculpting a piece of dough into a face shown on screen they then stopped filming and sculpted a different face out of the dough out of shot then they started filming again and repeated this several times.
The first direct manipulation animation was produced also by Thomas Edison called "Humorous Phases of funny faces" in 1906 he made this by sampling drawing on a blackboard using chalk.
A French film made in 1908 called "Fantasmagorie" was the first known stop motion film that was fully animated. Of which it used 700 photographs of separate drawings.
King Kong was the most well known stop motion animation from the early days of Hollywood which used 24 frames per second. It was created by Ray Harryhausen in 1933 where it was a puppet used for the main character of the gorilla and to create various special effects which he also tried out for his movie called "The Lost World" in 1925.
In the 1950s an new technique called "Dynamation" which mixed stop motion animation and live action was used to create the fight scene in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.
Stop motion techniques didn't change a lot until the 1980s when the invention of Go-motion which mixed stop motion with computer aided animation. Computer based animation (CGI) is increasingly popular due to its ease and speed but stop motion is still popular with children and people experimenting making their own videos for blogs and youtube thanks to Ardman's claymation work maintaining interest. The most successful stop motion animation movie to this day was Ardman's movie Chicken Run.
The first all stop motion 3D feature came out in 2009
Object animation
Object animation was the very first type of stop motion animation and by far one of the easiest. Its made by the movement of objects instead of clay, puppets and drawings. They do this by taking a photograph of the object then move it and photograph again which they would repeat until satisfied with the movement.
It is one of the easiest forms of stop motion but it is also one of the most time consuming as it becomes extremely complex when you are using multiple objects in which you try link together and to create different events for. A good example of object animation is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhe9T3Eitkg
Claymation
Claymation is a technique of which you use clay or plasticine to create the background and characters. This is a more effective way of making more fluent movements because of the way its easy to move every part of clay or plasticine but the problem with claymation is that when sculpting or moving the characters and objects its easy to leave marks such as fingerprints and the material can get dirty not giving it the smoothest finish.
In the production of claymation 12 frames would equal one second which means if you were to create a movement such as a character waving you would move its arm slightly that on the 12th frame the movement would be complete. A great example of claymation would be Wallace and Gromit "The Wrong Trousers"
(http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1szu1a_wallace-and-gromit-in-the-wrong-trousers_shortfilms) and pingu (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2V7Hjqis1Y)
Puppet animation
Puppet animation was made through the use of object animation but instead with puppets or figures this is to introduce human aspects such as features and movement. The use of puppets makes the movement of sections much easier per frame creating a more life like animation.
Great example of puppet animation would be the films The Cameraman's Revenge in 1912 and L'Le Roman de Renard by the Russian animator Ladislas Starewitch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIC0Sb6pLvI
Puppet animation is used a lot in children cartoons as the characters used are more interesting and humorous to them.
Pixellation is another type of stop motion animation which uses photographic images of actors or models posing instead of puppet animation and claymation characters for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4dx42YzQCE
Pixellation is much harder to make into a film because the actors have to make sure they only move to smallest bit and hold still to ensure that the frames link together properly and smoothly so there is not much noticeable difference between each still frame. Pixellation images are more realistic and film like but it still ables you to play around with the background and props to create a more surreal feeling to the animation.
in 1905, one of the first examples of pixellation was in animation called "El Hotel Electrico" this also uses object animation.
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