Evolving into Stop Motion - Stop Motion: Passion, Process and Performance - page 9

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Evolving into Stop
Motion

'Stop motion' …. That's a daft couple of words, and an oxymoron. I wonder where this
expression came from, as animators are not stopping motion. We are not creating any tangible
motion either, but creating an illusion of movement, and with it, life. We are dealing with
objects that have 'stopped, giving them an illusion of 'motion. Are we creating motion through
stopping and starting? We are sometimes called 'stop-go' animators, which may be accurate,
but is an ugly expression. The right word is not 'cartoons, although I like the idea that a cartoon
is a sketch representing something bigger, the essence of something. Cartoons didn't always
have comedy connotations, as there are not many laughs about Leonardo da Vinci's cartoons.
We were called '3D' animators, as we animated objects around in three dimensions, but the
computer guys took that name. People remain confused as to what we should be called. 'Film-
makers' is easier, but if we have to be labelled in animation terms, I prefer 'model animator' or
'puppet animator, as that is pretty obvious. We work with models and puppets and we animate
them. Simple.

'Stop motion' could apply to any animation, as the process is basically the same. Something is
manipulated, moved incrementally by hand, and the image captured, whether it's a puppet,
a pencil drawing, a pile of sand, some clay, a computer image or paper cut-outs. Another
increment and another image. When the images are strung together at an appropriate speed,
the eye is fooled into thinking something has moved in a continual manner. It has not.

'Stop frame' is nearer to what happens, as when we work the frame has dei nitely stopped
moving through the camera (or the digital frame is not being recorded). The movement that is
perceived to have happened in a piece of stop motion i lm happens between the frames, when
we cannot see it, and in fact it simply doesn't happen at all. What the audience sees is what
happens, or doesn't, when we stop working briel y. A movement is created by nothing
moving. Time carries on in a moment where time stops. They are topsy-turvy paradoxes that
Mr W.S. Gilbert would have enjoyed.

With so much happening between frames, unseen by the audience, this is another reason why I
warm to backstage stories. The skill of the animator and the amazing work done by the eye and
the brain i lling in the gaps, constructs the impression that something has actually moved. An
animator's job is to convince the viewer that there is a l uid continual performance happening,
when the reality is a clumsy and disjointed af air. It's such a con. When an animator manipulates
the puppet, he may not necessarily immediately move the puppet a consequential increment
forward. A model eye may accidentally fall out of a puppet onto the l oor. It can be replaced in