Stop motion

• 1. Optical Illusions Before Film

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  In 1849, Joseph Plateau published a note about improvements for his Fantascope. This device could be viewed with both eyes by several people at the same time. Plateau believed that combining this with Charles Wheatstone's stereoscope would create marvelous results. He planned to make 16 plaster models with 16 regular modifications. The plan was never executed because Plateau was almost completely blind by that time. In 1852, Jules Duboscq patented a stroboscopic disc called the Stereoscope-fantascope. The only known extant disc contains stereoscopic photograph pairs of different phases of the motion of a machine. Due to long exposure times necessary to capture an image, the sequence had to be assembled from separate photographs. In 1855, Johann Nepomuk Czermak published an article about his Stereophoroskop. He mentioned a method of sticking needles in a stroboscopic disc so it looked like one needle was being pushed in and out when animated. Czermak realized this provided endless possibilities to make different three-dimensional animations.

• 2. Silent Era Trick Masters

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  Segundo de Chomón made many trick films in France for Pathé between 1871 and 1929. His film La maison ensorcelée released in December 1907 features stop-motion-animated cutlery and food. De Chomón's Sculpteur moderne came out on the 31st of January 1908. It shows heaps of clay molding itself into detailed sculptures capable of minor movements. The final sculpture depicts an old woman who walks around before getting picked up and squashed back into a sitting lady. J. Stuart Blackton's The Haunted Hotel appeared on the 23rd of February 1907. This film featured a combination of live-action with practical special effects and stop-motion animation of several objects. A large close-up view of a table being set by itself baffled viewers because there were no visible wires. Edwin S. Porter filmed Fun in a Bakery Shop in 1902. It showed a baker molding faces from a patch of dough using a single-shot technique. In 1905, Porter showed animated letters and very simple cutout animation of two hands in How Jones Lost His Roll. Alexander Shiryaev started making approximately 20- to 25-centimeter-tall puppets out of papier-mâché on poseable wire frames between 1906 and 1909.

• 3. Giants On The Silver Screen

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  Willis O'Brien's first stop-motion film was The Dinosaur and the Missing Link released in 1915. It featured several cavemen and an ostrich-like desert quail alongside lifelike models made with clay. O'Brien collaborated with producer Herbert M. Dawley on The Ghost of Slumber Mountain in 1918. The collaborative film combined live-action with animated dinosaur models in a 45-minute production. After the premiere it was cut down to approximately 12 minutes. Dawley did not give O'Brien credits for the visual effects. He claimed the animation process as his own invention. O'Brien further pioneered the technique with animated dinosaur sequences for The Lost World in 1925. King Kong arrived in 1933 with Willis O'Brien's expressive and emotionally convincing animation of the big ape. This performance is widely regarded as a milestone in stop-motion animation. Ray Harryhausen learned under O'Brien on the film Mighty Joe Young in 1949. Harryhausen went on to create many memorable stop motion effects for films like Jason and the Argonauts in 1963. He also worked on Clash of the Titans which came out in 1981.

• 4. Clay And Television Fame

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  Art Clokey started his adventures in clay with a freeform clay short film called Gumbasia released in 1955. It propelled him into producing his more structured TV series Gumby from 1955 to 1989. In partnership with the United Lutheran Church in America, he produced Davey and Goliath between 1960 and 2004. On the 22nd of November 1959, the first episode of Unser Sandmänchen was broadcast on DFF East German television. The 10-minute daily bedtime show features the title character as an animated puppet. Peter Lord and David Sproxton formed Aardman Animations at very much the same time in the UK. They created the character Morph who appeared as an animated side-kick to Tony Hart on BBC TV programme Take Hart in 1976. The five-inch-high presenter was made from traditional British modeling clay called Plasticine. Nick Park became very successful with his short claymation Creature Comforts in 1989. It had talking animals voicing vox pop interviews. Park then used the same format to produce commercials between 1990 and 1992.

• 5. Modern Studios And Digital Age

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  Since 2009, Laika has released six feature films which have collectively grossed over $400 million. Their titles include Coraline in 2009, ParaNorman in 2012, The Boxtrolls in 2014, Kubo and the Two Strings in 2016, Missing Link in 2019, and Wildwood scheduled for 2026. In November 2024, Disney released Mickey & Minnie's Christmas Carols. This series of five stop motion shorts features Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Daisy, Goofy and Pluto. Guillermo del Toro aimed to praise the benefits of stop motion in his movie Pinocchio released in 2022. He wanted the expressiveness and material nature of a handmade piece of animation. Travis Knight directed Kubo and the Two Strings at Laika. Jeffrey Gardner won back-to-back Daytime Creative Arts Emmy Awards in 2019 and 2020 for Outstanding Cinematography on Tumble Leaf. These awards underscore the vital role of lighting and lenses in creating distinctive visual storytelling.

• 6. Special Techniques And Variations

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  Go motion involved programming a computer to move parts of a model slightly during each exposure of each frame. Phil Tippett co-developed this technique first used on The Empire Strikes Back in 1980. It combined traditional hand manipulation with computer movement to produce realistic motion blurring. Tippett also used the process extensively in his 1984 short film Prehistoric Beast. That sequence depicted a herbivorous dinosaur being chased by a carnivore one. With new footage Prehistoric Beast became Dinosaur! in 1985. A low-tech manual version of this blurring technique was originally pioneered by Władysław Starewicz in The Tale of the Fox from 1931. Stop motion has very rarely been shot in stereoscopic three-dimensional throughout film history. The first all stop-motion three-dimensional feature is Coraline released in 2009. Another recent example is ParaNorman which is also in 3D stop motion. Scientists at IBM used a scanning tunneling microscope to single out individual atoms. They moved them to make characters in A Boy and His Atom video.