Stop Motion Movies

[JackandSally4Ever]

as extremely hard as they are to produce, stop motion movies just never get enough love..... why is that?! these animators work twice as hard as cartoonists, and they dont get squat fame!!! that makes me so mad

anyway, whats ur favorite stop motion movie? Nightmare Before Christmas? King Kong? Wallace and Gromit, or perhaps the oldies? Post ur favs here XD

[Red_Quatre]

You're right, Stop motion doesn't get enough lovins. It is a very difficult breed of animation. There aren't very many people out there that specialize in it. It's also a dying breed since fully computer animated films gained popularity. For each week of work the animators only finish about 90 seconds of film. And sometimes if one of the lights or something gets shifted during a shot, the whole shot is ruined and the have to do the whole shot over. So Stop-mo animation needs more lovins. My favorite would also have to be The Nightmare Before Christmas. The very first full-length stop motion film. ^_^ I also like Tim Burton's first stop-mo film Vincent

[KeheiZero]

Look up Angry Kid. Little short clips only though, nothing big. It's a cool mix of stop motion and live action.

[Squidman]

Twice as hard as cartoonists? Have you ever actually tried hand-drawn animation? The real, smooth kind, I mean, not that three-frame anime style crap. Keep in mind that you're making every frame from scratch, so where you just have to make a small movement with a stop-motion movie, you have to redraw the whole character in hand-drawn animation.

Not saying that stop motion is always easier that hand drawn stuff, because it has it's challenges too... Just don't sell traditional animators short.




If you're interested in stop-motion, though, you may want to look up Norman McLeran, with the NFB. He was a real pioneer in the field of stop-motion. His short "Neighbours" is great.
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[Red_Quatre]

Well in stop-motion animation they also have to make all the characters from scratch. They go through tons of concept sketches then those sketches have to be made into the puppets. Then all the sets and props have to be made from scratch. So I'd say stop-motion animation is quite a bit harder to produce than other froms of animation. I'm not trying to sell short any other animation styles or anything. I'm just saying what I'm thinking.

[meteorsummoner88]

I made a stop movie based on the book Treasure Island in sixth grade with clay characters and paper/clay background. I'll just say the action was...jumpy! XD

I'd like to see the five minute episodes of the Magic Roundabout...which came about a movie called Doogal... =)

[KeheiZero]

[quote="Red_Quatre"]Well in stop-motion animation they also have to make all the characters from scratch. They go through tons of concept sketches then those sketches have to be made into the puppets. Then all the sets and props have to be made from scratch. [/quote]

Then you have a Wallace & Gromit incident where your storage factory burns down.

[Squidman]

Well you obviously need to draw traditionally animated characters and their backgrounds from scratch. My point is you need to REdraw the characters from scratch in EVERY frame, stop motion characters only need to be made as many times as you beak the models. Plus you need to make up the volume of the characters in your own head... try doing a smooth hand-drawn head rotation of a character. It will most likely drive you crazy. Trying to figure how how far to make features protrude from every angle so that the face doesn't flatten out as it turns with no guides to help you... It gets really tough. With stop motion you just move-snap-move-snape-move-snap 16 times and the character rotates.

And don't even get me started on having two characters interacting with each other on different layers of animation... it's a nightmare. As opposed to stop motion, where you just have to move the two models together.

Backgrounds still need to be drawn from nothing, and broken up into layers so that they not only move at the right points to create the illusion of depth, but they also move at the right speed to maintain the composition you want. You have no way to test if pans work other than draw the whole thing and test it, really. And if it's not moving at the right speed or composition doesn't work you have to go and fix it. Which is a lot more difficult than simply moving props around on a stage.


I maintain that if Stop motion really were "twice as hard as cartoons", Every public school student and their dog wouldn't be making claymation animated shorts. Even my little brother has made decent-looking claymation movies that last seveal minutes in a couple days of spare time- It took me more well over two full days of straight working to animate 11 seconds of a flour sack being thrown around by a tentacle.



I suppose it really all comes down to how comlex the movie you're making is, though. I have no idea What it's like making a feature with either medium, because I haven't. But as far as ameture animated shorts go (which I HAVE done with both), stop motion was just easier.
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