Evolving into Stop Motion - Stop Motion: Passion, Process and Performance - page 16

interaction with light and shadow, and the resulting l atness might as well have been drawn. It
seems a waste to make puppets that do not celebrate existing in their solid and spatial world.
Seeing King Kong , I didn't connect his fur crawling with the animator's touch (I thought it was
probably large l eas!), but I did want to touch it.
Texture is one of the ways in that stop motion scores over other animation. It can be bettered
with a whole team of computer graphics (CG) artists, but it just happens naturally with us.
Texture was a late development with CG. The early i lms were all inherently shiny and plastic
looking, with cloth, fur and hair taking many years to develop, but I confess the i rst time I saw
the CG Martians from Mars Attacks , I did feel that i nally one could reach in and touch those
amazing characters. Perhaps Gollum and the new Kong have to be the benchmarks for such
texturing.
Jan Van Eyck's i fteenth-century masterpiece The Arnoli ni Marriage is now generally reckoned
not to be an enigmatic painting full of symbols witnessing a marriage, but an artist's calling
card, showing of a mastery of the new technique of oil painting. Into this picture he crams
every possible texture, shiny surface and lighting ef ect, all unseen until then. The history of
the early CG features similarly shows the artists mastering each new texture in turn.
The magnii cent stop motion i lms of Sjankmayer and the Brothers Quay are stuf ed full of
every conceivable texture. Sjankmayer mixes the seductive textures of clay with the organic
materials of real livers and wet of al. The Quays i ll their screens with the beautiful textures
of rust, sawdust, wood and feathers, making you feel every frame as though through your
i ngers.
It's a neat journey to watch Pixar go from the shiny simple shapes of the lamp and ball in Luxor
Jnr to the hugely complex shiny surfaces of Cars , having taken in absolutely every surface on
the way. The visuals, the colours and the lighting of Finding Nemo are hard to beat. The great
CG i lms managed to make the story come i rst and used the leaps in technology as a means
to realise that story. The less great i lms get it the other way round, with the story being the
means to realise the technology.
I have often animated two characters talking to each other, and one accidentally gets in the
other's light, causing the other to move to catch the light again. These little spontaneous
gestures surprise an audience, and give life to the performance, making it totally believable.
As with so many things in stop motion it's the l aws that make it credible and special. Other
techniques might have the scene lit with no danger of a shadow getting in the way, making
it a little sterile.
Approaching a new puppet, I try to think how the show might be lit. It would be as foolish to
light a character with heavy brows from directly above as it would to light a heavily sculpted
i gure from the front, losing all detail. Ignoring the worthier reasons for making
Achilles , I wanted it to be a celebration of male l esh, an idea not disagreeable to
the ancient Greeks. I encouraged Mackinnon and Saunders, the puppet makers,
to sculpt the puppets with appropriate bulges, curves and textures. I knew this
i lm was going to be lit dramatically with strong shadows; I didn't want to use the
lighting traditionally used on children's television, where i ll light and little shadow
give a comfortable softness. I wanted Achilles to glorify in every muscle and vein