Stop-Motion
Stop - Motion is a film technique in which an illusion of movement is created by individual images (frames) are taken up by steady images. It comes in animated films, as well as special effects in real films are used. The starting point is the stop trick.
History
In the stop-motion technique objects are animated by being changed only slightly for each frame of the film. This technique was already at the end of the 19th century known and has been applied for the first time by Georges Méliès in 1896. With the advent of the animated cartoon and puppet animated film in 1910, the first film genres which are based exclusively on this technique emerged.
Stop-motion was increasingly perfected over the years and applied, among others, from the pioneer Willis O'Brien in The Lost World (The Lost World, 1925) and King Kong (1933 ). Especially Ray Harryhausen developed and refined from the 1950s technology. Movies like Sinbad seventh trip or Jason and the Argonauts are classics of the fantasy genre.
Up until the 1980s stop-motion was used in some famous movies like Terminator, Star Wars Episode IV to VI or Clash of the Titans.
In feature films are now replacing most computer animations using stop-motion in normal use areas, such as the representation of monsters, dinosaurs, or UFOs. The technique is occasionally still used to achieve a deliberately nostalgic effect (for example, in The Science of Sleep, 2006, or The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, 2004). Furthermore finds stop-motion also regularly used in music videos, such as the band Tool.
Although stop-motion movies, and the craftsmanship associated are regularly praised in the literary supplements as a welcome counterbalance to today's flood of computer animations, modern productions of the massive use of computers is essential. On the one corresponding computer animations are prefabricated and blinded in setting up the actual film footage on the camera signal. This allows a pose - to- pose -called technique can be used, which was practically not used in traditional stop -motion - ie the modeling of extreme positions, while the intermediate poses are either retroactively or inserted automatically by the computer. This smoother motion are possible, and the timing of body language can be modeled more precisely with this method. Further figures in the scene can be taken, for example, to exchange for an animated facial expressions face several variants against each other. The custom-fit reinsertion of such figures in the scene has only become possible with the availability of appropriate digital positioning. On the other hand certain effects such as rain, fire, air jumps, etc. without compositing several video sources difficult to achieve.
Low-cost digital cameras and computers today also allow the hobby even creating stop -motion movies. This simple and fairly cheap technology has created a fan base because you can tell in simple stories and bring creativity. The Internet is an ideal platform to showcase the films to a wider audience. Not infrequently, also school projects operate in the arts or media of the stop-motion technique. As material and Lego is making as a hobby often plasticine ( see claymation, also called Claymation ) used (see Brick film).
Embodiments and examples
- Cut - out animation: Cut out objects, usually made of paper or fabric will be moved for the individual images. Examples: Émile Cohls En route from 1910, the works of Yuri Norstein and the animations of Terry Gilliam in Monty Python works. Note: Nowadays, this style is also available with computers imitated as South Park.
- Silhouette animation ( related to the cut- out animation ): The cut objects are lit from behind, so that only their silhouettes can be seen. Example: Lotte Reiniger's The Adventures of Prince Achmed by 1926.
- (Also called object trick) collage movie: Here any materials under the camera are put together to moving images. Examples: the movies January Švankmajer.
- Brickfilm: All figures and scenes are assembled from Lego bricks.
- Pixilation: Actors are just one frame filmed as objects. Example: Norman McLaren's A Tale Chairy.
- Clay animation: The figures are made of modeling clay or clay, in recent times partly with interchangeable plastic parts (eg for mouth movements ). Examples: Nick Park's Chicken Run - Hennen run and Pingu.
- Puppet film: Here dolls are changed within a stage set from image to image in small steps, so that they move smoothly in the finished film. Usually, the dolls have a skeleton with stiff joints, so that they also maintained the pose, in which the animator it bends. Examples: The Sandman or Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993). Do not belong to this genre marionettes and hand puppets films (like the Muppets ), as they and their movements are filmed in real time.
- 3D Stop Motion: To date, there are two films that have used this technique: Coraline from the years 2009 and Para Norman in 2012.
Other examples
Well-known stop-motion films of recent years, for example, Tim Burton's Corpse Bride - Corpse Bride (2005), the short films from Aardman Animations to Wallace & Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, as well as Suzie Templeton's Peter and the Wolf (2006). Recent films that are produced in this technique are, for example Coraline by Henry Selick Fantastic Mr. Fox or by Wes Anderson. Less well known are The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb (1993) and the grotesque experimental films of the Czech Jan Svankmajer. Several German short films in stop-motion have come to fame in the mid- 1990s: the the Oscar-winning Quest ( 1996) and Balance (1989 ) and nominated The Wheel ( 2003).