Stop-Motion Animation!

Stop-Motion animation is a technique used to create the illusion that an object is moving, by physically manipulating it, and photographing it at each stage. Once you have a string of images, all with a slight change in each one, you can put them together to create a short clip. This can be done with actual objects, models (eg. clay), cut outs, puppets and silhouettes. Productions such as South Park, Wallace and Gromit, and the Corpse Bride all use varaints of stop-motion animation. The animation used to create the Wallace and Gromit productions is also known as 'claymation', as it created using the manipulation of clay figures and models.

Many of the first stop-motion films were produced in the early 1900's, using sketched drawings or actual objects to create a moving scene. At this time, stop-motion animation was a big idea, and became extremely popular with film directors, however, it is a time consuming process, especially when its used to make a feature length films such as Wallace and Gromit, which took around five years to complete.



The video above is one of the earliest stop-motion animated films, called 'Fun in a Bakery Shop'. It has been made from a series of frames which have been put together to create the illusion of a moving image. Stop-motion animation is not as commonly used in film today, due to the development of computerized animation as it is a much more cost and time effective.