History of Animation
Stop-motion animation is a time honored technique of cinematic visual effects. Stop-motion has a very special look compared to computer graphics and animation. It also has a very rich history dating back to the beginning of filmmaking. The medium has given rise to such films as “Jason and The Argonauts”, “Wallace & Gromit”, and “Chicken Run”. These films were all very successful due to stop-motion animation.

It all started in 1889, when Thomas Edison invented a 35mm cine camera. The film it used was developed by a man named George Eastman (note the name as the founder of Eastman Kodak). The film was celluloid coated with photographic emulsion used in still cameras. This sturdy, flexible medium could produce a rapid succession of numerous images ( Mertz, Weis, Handzo “Motion Picture Technology”). Many years later in 1923, a man named De Frost made the first rolls of films capable of recording a synchronized sound track. The last big advance in film was the advent of the Technicolor process in 1932. Before film was invented animation was limited to flipbooks, the Praxinoscope, and Zoetropes. The first time stop-motion effects were used was in a film called “Voyage to the Moon” (1902), and subsequently became the standard technique for cinema visual effects until computer graphics came into use in 1993 with “Jurassic Park” (Lord/Sibley 21).

Every type of filmmaking has it’s pioneers and stop-motion animation is no emption. Ray Harryhausen first started out as an assistant to Willis O’Brien. O’Brien was considered the best stop-motion Animator ever, but would later be surpassed by Harryhausen, his own assistant. Harryhausen worked in mostly fantasy films, in which he created many creatures including sirens, dragon, centaurs, griffins, a two headed roc and a one eyed Cyclopes. Ray Harryhausen’s most famous film was “Jason and the Argonauts” (1963) ,which featured a fight scene with skeletons. Harryhausen would inspire a new generation of animators such as Peter Lord and Nick Park (who created “Morph” and “Chicken Run”). George Pal is considered the master of replacement animation. Pal’s early work was doing commercials for a cigarette company in Cologne, Germany. In 1933 he moved to Holland to escape from the Nazi Government. He would later in 1939 move to America where he created the famous series “Puppetoon” (Lord/Sibley 29). George Pal’s most famous character was Jasper who appeared in almost twenty films. His most advanced animation work was in “The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm” (1963). The art of clay animation wasn’t revised until 1955, when Art Clokey created Gumby. Art Clokey created a character who has been described as “almost irritating in his utter cuteness”, but became an American Institution-Gumby (Lord/Sibley 47). Art Clokey produced 127 six-minute films featuring Gumby and Pokey (his little horse). Gumby was a simple figure with tubular arms ending in mitten-shaped hands. his facial features are limited to those of simple circles and semi-circles. Gumby however, has a very sophisticated “bump” on the left side of his head, intended to suggest (though is not entirely obvious ) a guiff of combed back hair.

There are several different techniques of stop-motion animation. The two most commonly used techniques by animators are clay and object. Clay animation was first made popular by Art Clokey, who was the creature of Gumby. In fact, when clay animation is mentioned to most people in America they think of Gumby. Clay animation is usually done with plasticine, a type of synthetic clay that never hardens. This clay enables animators to have a wide range of ways to animate characters. Clay animation is relatively new compared with other techniques like object animation. The reason for this is because clay, back in the early days of film clay would dry-up , simply because they didn’t have the ability to make it
non-hardening. One of the oldest forms of stop-motion is object animation. The first known object animated film was “The Humpty Dumpty Circus”. In that first film they used jointed wood toys, like armatures used in clay animation. Object animation was used heavily in live action movies as visual effects. Ray Harryhausen was a master of object animation and at the height of his career created the visual effects for a film called “Jason and the Argonauts”. This film is thought of as the best example of stop-motion visual effects. Since the film “Jurassic Park” was released in 1993, it showed the world what computers could do for films and the industry hasn’t been the same since.
In recent years stop-motion animation has been used in a number of very successful short and feature animated films. “Chicken Run”, a clay animated feature film which was released in the summer of 2000. It was about chickens trying to escape from a chicken farm in England, during the early 1950’s. The film had a modest budget at forty-two million dollars and did well compared to Disney’s “Atlantis” which cost eighty-million dollars which flopped “Chicken Run” was made by Aardman Animations who created such works as Morph, “Creature Comforts”, and Wallace & Gromit. The studio has given life back into an old art form that will never be fully forgotten again thanks to them. Wallace and Gromit made their first appearance in 1989, in “A Grand Day Out”. In it a man and his dog go to the moon in search of the perfect cheese. The film was nominated for an Oscar (best short animated film), but lost to another film also made by Nick Park, called “Creature Comforts”. In Wallace and Gromit’s second film an evil penguin tries to steal a diamond with Gromit’s techo-trousers, it is called “The Wrong Trousers“. It too was nominated for an Oscar and won giving Nick Park his second Oscar. “ A Close Shave”, the third Wallace and Gromit movie too won a Oscar for best short animated film, the third for Nick Park. Tim Burtan’s “The Nightmare Before Christmas”, was the first feature length stop-motion film to be distributed world wide. Henry Selick directed the film along with over one-hundred artists and technicians. They spent three years making it . It is one of only four stop-motion animated features including “Chicken Run”.

Computer graphics have made stop-motion visual effects obsolete, but it is still being employed to day in short and feature animated films. People now look at stop-motion as shoty and old, not realizing that until nine years ago it was all there was for visual effects