What Are the Possibilities? - Frame-by-Frame Stop Motion: The Guide to Non-Traditional Animation Techniques - page 2

Single-frame filmmaking has been around as long as film itself. The idea of
fooling or tricking the eye has always been fascinating to people, and the
manipulation of live-action filming was the origin of this technique. Imagine
the early days of filmmaking, when audiences were seeing projected images on
a screen, images that appeared to be alive and real, for the first time. That was
magic in itself. When filmmakers became a bit more sophisticated, stopping the
camera in mid-shoot and removing an object from in front of the camera then
continuing to film, the results were genuinely magic. As film started to mature,
artists and practitioners began to see the endless possibilities that this new
medium offered. This stopping the motion of filming and adjusting images,
cameras, and events is the predecessor to special effects and animation.
We are talking about stop-motion photography, which has evolved into many
variations. The most common form of stop motion recognized today is model or
puppet stop motion. In this, figurative models are made and animated frame by
frame to create a narrative or experimental approach. Examples of this form are
seen in films and on television. Feature films like Jiri Trnka's A Midsummer Night's
Dream , Nick Park and Peter Lord's Chicken Run , and Coraline directed by Henry
Selick all exemplify this popular approach to figurative puppet stop motion.
Television has also laid claim to this form of animation with popular programs
like Pingu , Gumby , and the Rankin Bass Christmas special, Rudolph the Red Nosed
Reindeer . These, among other titles in this genre, are well loved and considered
more in the realm of traditional stop-motion puppet animation.
The nontraditional or alternative use of stop motion utilizes people; objects;
various materials like sand, clay, paper; and often a mixture of these and
other elements as the objects to be animated. The most common of the
nontraditional alternative stop-motion techniques is known as pixilation .
This term is attributed to the Canadian animator, Grant Munro, who worked
at the National Film Board of Canada with Norman McLaren in the 1940s,
1950s, and 1960s. Both McLaren and Munro were major contributors to this
art form. In pixilation, usually, a person is animated like a puppet or model.
There is a limited amount of registration in this approach to stop motion,
so the result is a rather kinetic, bewitched, fragmentary movement that
appears pixilated or broken up. It has nothing to do with the modern day
term related to low-resolution digital images. Time-lapse photography and
downshooting (animation on a custom animation stand, also known as
multiplane animation ) are two other forms of nontraditional alternative stop-
motion animation. We explore each of these approaches and more in the
following chapters.
Silent Films and Beyond
This interest in the manipulation of filming and single-frame adjustment
started as soon as film arrived on the scene in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth century. The Lumiere Brothers are considered the first to
successfully shoot and project films for audiences.