Willis Harold O'Brien was an Irish American Born in 1886 and he lived until November 8 1962. He was a motion picture special effects and stop motion animations pioneer, he 'was responsible for some of the best-known images in cinema history'. His most renowned work was on The Lost World, King Kong and Mighty Joe Young.
He had a unique style in which he combined the filming of live actors and stop motion models to come up with a very different style to what was shown at the time. With this method, he was able to create scenes where men fought great monsters; much like King Kong, by combining the two method of traditional film and stop motion. He was the main pioneer of this kind of model animation. Ray Harryhausen -
Ray Harryhausen was born in 1920 and is still alive, aged 92 years old. He is an American visual effects creator, writer and producer. He created a brand of stop motion animation which is known as 'Dynamation'. Some of his best work is in Mighty Joe Young (in collaboration with Willis O'Brien) and Jason and the Argonauts, in which is the famous scene where Jason s in a sword fight against 7 skeleton warriors.
and his more famous piece Jason and the Argonauts:
Ray Harryhausen uses similar techniques to Willis O'Brien. The main technique used by Harryhausen is Dynamation, which is a type of model stop-motion animation which he created. He was one of the only animators to work in the field and he kept the technique alive with his inspiration from Willis O'Brien. With his work, Harryhausen tries to make it seem as if the models are not animated at all, as if they are real. He does this by making them interact with objects and the scene in the real world. Jan Svankmajer -
Jan Svankmajer was born in 1934 and is still alive, aged 78. He is a Czech film maker and artist whose work spans several media. He is a self-labelled surrealist and he is now for his surreal animations and feature films, these have greatly influenced other artists such as Terry Gilliam, The Brothers Quay and many others. His best know works consist of the feature films Alice, Faust and Lunacy.
Jan Svankmajer has a very surreal style in his animation. His work has had great influence n other well known animators, like the Brother Quay, Terry Gilliam and many others. He uses claymation in a lot of his work. He likes creating clay masks of the face for his work, it helps to create his surreal style with faces being able to be squished and stretched unlike a normal face.
Joseph Plateau was born in 1801 and he lived until 15 September 1883. He was a Belgian physicist and he was the first person to demonstrate the illusion of a moving image. To do this he used counter rotating disks with repeating drawn images in small increment of motion on one and regularly placed slits in the other. He called this device, created in 1832, 'the Phenakistoscope'. He also researched into the effect of colours on the retina (duration, intensity and colour), his mathematical research into the intersections of revolving curves (locus), the observation of the distortion of moving images, and the reconstruction of distorted images through counter revolving discs (he dubbed these anorthoscopic discs).(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Plateau)
The Phenakistoscope -
'The Phenakistoscope' was an updated version of a device called 'The Stroboscope', both devices gave the illusion of a moving image. The Phenakistoscope consisted of two disks, one with small equidistant radial windows, through which the viewer could look, and another containing a sequence of images. When the two disks rotated at the correct speed, the windows would match up with other windows to create the illusion of moving images, and the images created an animated effect. The projection of stroboscopic photographs, creating the illusion of motion, eventually led to the development of cinema. This was the first device to give the illusion of movement to stationary images. It can be classed as stop motion as it consists of multiple pictures that are played one after the other in a loop. It is very similar to modern day flip-books.
William Horner -
William George Horner was born in 1786 and he lived until 22 September 1837. He was a British mathematician, a schoolmaster and headmaster. The modern invention of the 'Zoetrope', under the name Daedaleum in 1834, has been attributed to him. He called it the 'Daedalum', most likely a reference to the Greek myth of Daedalus, though it was popularly referred to as 'the wheel of the devil'. The Daedalum failed to become popular until the 1860s, when it was patented by both English and American makers, including Milton Bradley. The American developer William F. Lincoln named his toy the 'Zoetrope', meaning 'wheel of life'.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_George_Horner) He also created a device call the Camera Lucida, this device creates an overlying image of the image/subject being viewed on a surface which the artist is drawing on. The artist can see the scene and the drawing at the same time as the scene is projected onto the surface. This can enable the artist to trace the
outline of objects in the scene.
There are currently versions of this device being sold today.
The Zoetrope -
A zoetrope is a device that produces the illusion of motion from a rapid succession of static pictures. The zoetrope consists of a cylinder with slits cut vertically in the sides. On the inner surface of the cylinder is a band with images from a set of sequenced pictures. As the cylinder spins, the user looks through the slits at the pictures across. The scanning of the slits keeps the pictures from simply blurring together, and the user sees a rapid succession of images, producing the illusion of motion.
Present Examples -
This is the 'Cyclotrope', created and animated by
Tim Wheatley.
This is Disney's modern-day take on a Zoetrope.
Charles-Émile Reynaud -
Charles-Émile Reynaud was born in 1844 and lived until 9 January 1918. He was a French science teacher, responsible for the first projected animated cartoon films. Reynaud created the Praxinoscope in 1877, it used a strip of pictures placed around the inner surface of a spinning cylinder.
The praxinoscope improved on the zoetrope by replacing its narrow viewing slits with an inner circle of mirrors, placed so that the reflections of the pictures appeared more or less stationary in position as the wheel turned. Someone looking in the mirrors would therefore see a rapid succession of images producing the illusion of motion, with a brighter and less distorted picture than the zoetrope offered.
The praxinoscope was later developed so the image could be projected onto a screen so an audience could view the images. This was called the Théâtre Optique. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praxinoscope)
Eadweard James Muybridge -
Eadweard James Muybridge was born in 1830 and he lived until 8 may 1904. Hewas an English photographer important for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion and in motion-picture projection. He adopted the name Eadweard Muybridge, believing it to be the original Anglo-Saxon form of his name. He immigrated to the United States as a young man but remained obscure until 1868, when his large photographs of Yosemite Valley, California, made him world famous. Muybridge is known for his pioneering work on animal locomotion in 1877 and 1878, which used multiple cameras to capture motion in stop-action photographs, and his zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting motion pictures that pre-dated the flexible perforated film strip used in cinematography.
The zoopraxiscope is an early device for displaying motion pictures. It was created in 1879, it may be considered the first movie projector. The zoopraxiscope projected images from rotating glass disks in rapid succession to give the impression of motion. The stop-motion images were initially painted onto the glass, as silhouettes. A second series of discs, made in 1892–94, used outline drawings printed onto the discs photographically, then colored by hand. Some of the animated images are very complex, featuring multiple combinations of sequences of animal and human movement.
One of his most famous pieces of work was 'the horse in motion', it was an investigation into whether all four feet of a horse were off the ground at the same time during a gallop. His method of finding this out was very similar to the Zoopraxiscope.
The Lumière brothers - The Lumière brothers were born in Besançon, France, in 1862 and 1864, and moved to Lyon in 1870, where both attended La Martiniere, the largest technical school in Lyon. Their father, Claude-Antoine Lumière (1840–1911), ran a photographic firm and both brothers worked for him: Louis as a physicist and Auguste as a manager. Louis had made some improvements to the still-photograph process, the most notable being the dry-plate process, which was a major step towards moving images.
Production of films - It was not until their father retired in 1892 that the brothers began to create moving pictures. They patented a number of significant processes leading up to their film camera, most notably film perforationsas a means of advancing the film through the camera and projector. The cinématographe itself was patented on 13 February 1895 and the first footage ever to be recorded using it was recorded on March 19, 1895. This first film shows workers leaving the Lumière factory.The Lumieres held their first private screening of projected motion pictures in 1895. Their first public screening of films at which admission was charged was held on December 28, 1895, at Salon Indien du Grand Café in Paris.This history-making presentation featured ten short films, including their first film, Sortie des Usines Lumière à Lyon (Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory). Each film is 17 meters long, which, when hand cranked through a projector, runs approximately 50 seconds.Their actuality films, or actualites, are often cited as the first, primitive documentaries. They also made the first steps towards comedy film with the slapstick of L'Arroseur Arrose.
George Pal was born in 1908 and he lived until May 2 1980. He was a Hungarian-born Americananimator and film producer, principally associated with the science fiction genre. He became an American citizen after emigrating from Europe. He was nominated for Academy Awards no less than seven consecutive years (1942–1948) and received an honorary award in 1944. This makes him the second most nominated Hungarian exile (together with William S. Darling and Ernest Laszlo) after Miklós Rózsa.
'The War of the Worlds' was a very popular film produced
by George Pal.
Replacement Animation -
George Pal created 'replacement animation' in which multiple puppets were used to represent each action desired. The character would have numerous different heads with lots of different expressions for each for each syllable and facial movement. This took a large amount of time to do but once the heads were made, they would be re-used and would make production time much faster. '. George Pal also created armatures which allows the puppet to move. Using different heads for the puppets means that Pal could create more realistic facial gestures. This technique is used even now in 'The Nightmare Before Christmas
Nick Park and Tim Burton are both renowned famous animators, they have created some incredible pieces. Although they are both in the same line of work, they couldn't be more different.
Nick Park and Aardman
Nick park is one of the lead animators working at Aardman animations, he has helped to produce films such as 'Wallace and Gromit' and small programs like 'Creature Comforts'.
How it started -
Aardman animations is a British animation studio based in Bristol. The studios were founded in 1972 by Peter Lord and David Sproxton with their dream of producing an animated motion picture. One of their first major animations was a collaboration with director Stephen Johnson and the Brother Quay for Peter Gabriel's multi award winning music video 'Sledgehammer'.
Types of Animation -
Claymation:
Aardman is renowned for it's claymation and it is their most popular method for making films, their most well know series of claymation films are the Wallace and Gromit films. Claymation is made using clay puppets. There are usually multiple versions of each puppet in case anything goes wrong with one of them. Also, each puppet has hundreds of hand sculpted replacement heads for each syllable or movement of the mouth for when the puppet is speaking.
Pixilation:
Recently, Aardman has created a pixilation short in collaboration with Nokia called 'Gulp'. It is a short clip of a fisherman's tale, all shot using Nokia N8 phones.
Aardman have had many successes over the years, one of their most successful; Chicken Run, grossed over 10 million on its opening weekend alone.
It was so successful that it was nominated for a BAFTA, a Golden Globe and a Kids Choice award. The film was their first feature length claymation film.
Another very popular series by Aardman Animations is the Wallace and Gromit series. These films include 'A Grand Day Out', 'The Wrong Trousers' and 'A Close Shave', the latter winning two Academy Awards.
Currently -
Currently Aardman have moved on to more Computer Animated films, such as: 'Flushed Away'and 'Arthur Christmas'. Also, they have started to produce 3D stop-motion films, their first being 'The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists'.
They are now working in a three year contract with Sony Pictures Entertainment to finance, co-produce and distribute feature films.
Tim Burton
Tim Burton is a film director, film producer, writer and an artist. He is famous for his dark themed films like Edward Scissorhands, A Nightmare Before Christmas and Beetlejuice.
How it started -
Tim Burton graduated from CalArts, a specialist visual and performing arts institute, in 1979. He was offered an apprenticeship at Walt Disney Productions' animation studio after the success of his shot film 'Stalk of the Celery Monster'. Once he started working for Disney he made the short 'Vincent' and his first live action, 'Hansel and Gretel'. His next short, released in 1984, Frankenweenie, got him fired from Disney as he wasted the company's resources on a film that was too scary and dark for children. After this, he decided he would make a full-length film.
Types of animation -
Claymation:
One of Tim Burton's most well known films 'The Nightmare Before Christmas' uses claymation. It is made using clay puppets that have an individual armature inside so as they are easy to pose. There are usually multiple versions of each puppet in case anything goes wrong with one of them. Also, each puppet has hundreds of hand sculpted replacement heads for each syllable or movement of the mouth for when the puppet is speaking.
Pixilation:
Another of his well know films is Beetlejuice, this is a live action film about two people who survive a car crash and after many subtle hints find out they are dead. The reason this is relevant is that it has many aspects of the film that are filmed using stop motion.
Beetlejuice was a very popular film, it was awarded an Emmy for Outstanding animated programme.Corpse Bride was also very successful as it was nominated twice, once for the 'best animated feature' BAFTA and once for the 'animated motion picture' from the Producer Guild of America Awards.
Currently -
Currently, Tim Burton is still producing films, such as; Charlie and the Chocolate factory, planet of the apes and Alice in wonderland.
Also, he is about to release the re-make of his original film that got him fired from Disney, Frankenweenie.
The Brothers Quay
The Brothers Quay, Stephen and Timothy are American identical twin brothers. They are influential stop motion animators, their well know for 'street of crocodiles' and 'In Absentia'.
How it Started -
The Quay Brothers moved to England in 1969 to study at the Royal College of Art in London, this was after they had finished studying illustration at the Philadelphia College f Art. Once in England, they started to make some of their first short films, of which no longer exist as the only print was damaged beyond repair. Some time was spent in the Netherlands during the 1970s and late returned to England where they teamed up with another student for Royal College. This was Keith Griffiths, who was the producer of all their films. The trio formed a studio in 1980, Koninck Studios, which is based in Southwark in South London.
Types of Animation -
Puppet Animation:
The Brothers' work is not specifically set to one genre of stop motion animation. Most of their films are mainly consistent of puppet animation. One of their most well known films that uses puppet animation is 'Street of Crocodiles'. This method is similar to claymation in the fact that the puppets are moved shot by shot and multiple aspects of the puppets are used.
Claymation:
The Brothers Quay use some claymation in some of their work, they do not use it as often, but it is still one of their talents. The video that I am showing is the music video for Peter Gabriel's song 'Sledgehammer', the film also had work from Aardman Animations and was a collaboration between the two.
Successes -
The critical success of Street of Crocodiles gave the Quay Brothers artistic freedom to explore a shift in subject matter, in part originating in literary and poetic sources that led to exploration of new aesthetic forms, but also because they were able to make extensive experiments in technique, both with cameras and on large stage sets.
Currently -
Currently the Brothers Quay are creating more films, such as: Through the weeping Glass and have this year helped to create a major city-wide art instillation; OverWorlds and UnderWorlds.
Flip books are a kind of stop motion animation, paper animation to exact. My flip book shows a man jumping off a cliff then flying down out of view then back up right in front of the view point. It is 2.5 seconds long and it has 41 frames so the flip book will be seen as about 16.5 frames per second. I have learnt the the more frames there are a second, the smoother the animation will be. For instance, a video that has 10 frames per second will not be smooth at all, it will be very jumpy and it will not look like a normal video. However, if the frames are increased to 20 - 30 a second then the flip book will seem a lot smoother and more like a video. From this, I can say that my flip-book could be made to look smoother if I increased the number of frames to 20 or 30 a second and it could look much more like a video.
In doing this, I have learned the it can take a lot of time to make a smooth flip-book as you need draw more pages and have the scene moving less between each one. This in itself can create a problem, getting each page to line up with the last. It is difficult to do because drawing each page by hand is a lot less accurate because of shaking and other factors. An easy way to combat this is to use a computer program to create each page as it will be a lot easier to line up each picture.
1 Minute Animation
This is our 1 minute stop motion animation. The aim of the video was to make it seem as though the two people in the video were racing on invisible go-karts. This is a pixilation animation as it is a stop motion video with people in it. The playback is at about 5-10 frames a second so it is not very smooth, we could have improved this a lot if we took more pictures and it would vastly improve the overall viewing. From this task I have found out that in order to get smooth realistic movements, the camera needs to be moved slowly for each shot and more shots need to be taken overall. Also, I now know that a stop motion animation can not be rushed and it needs to be precise if it is to look good.
Surrealist Short
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Camera Shots and Angles
This is a short video that I made which shows of all the different camera angles and all the different types of shots. I filmed this so that I can refer to it when I need to find a suitable angle or shot for future videos or pictures. The shots show different distances from the action, for instance; close up, mid shot, extreme long shot. Also, the shots show different camera movements and positions like; panning, eye level, birds eye and two shot.
Focus Group
This is our focus group video, we filmed a group of people that fit into the target audience of our channel, E4, and asked them questions about the channel, what they liked about it, the idents and what they would want to see in an ident if they were designing one. From this video we found out that we should include the colour purple in our ident and that there should be other bright colours as well, we also found out that the ident needed to be random and interesting to keep the audience watching interested.
E4 Ident
This is a stop motion animation that my group made, it is for the channel E4 and it is meant to be surreal, random and funny. We filmed this using a combination of normal film and the animation technique stop motion. The playback is at about 15 frames a second so it looks good but it could be a bit smoother if we had taken more pictures. Also, we had a technical error where the lighting changes between scenes, this could be combated next time by using lights to keep the light levels the same of to make sure that the ident was filmed all in the same time slot and not split up into sections like we did.
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