Monday, 18 March 2013

The History Of Animation Part 4 - Stop Motion models

Stop motion is intensive process the body is moved in very small increments. absolute concentration, normally means animating for hours on end without brakes. 1909 princess nicotine was made thus inspiraing minds into the field of stop motion


Willis O'brain made is first film in 1915 called he dinosaur and the missing link, he was one of the pioneers of stop motion animation. He made somthing spectacular. He astounded audiences. His animation was made with puppets and steel frames inside them to create joints. In1930 O'brian began to  work on CREATION which braught together live action and spot motion, he used this for he rest of his ceer using this system of layers of different media, for exaple the back layer would have live action projected onto it and then a layer of a still 2D dimension and then the puppet in the foreground. O'brain designed Kong's 18 inch steel skeleton, he was known for his precised animation that infused king kong with charcter. His greatest stregnths was attention to detail. It took O'brain over a year to animate King Kong, it broke box office records and inspired a new generation of artist. His hard work paid off.


 Ray Harryhausen found out about the glories of animation after watching King Kong. A young harryhousen made the cavebear, and made several short dinosuar films. After meet Obrain his idol, O'brain asked him to work with him on a sequel to King Kong called All Mighty Joe in1946 they worked on the film for almost 2 years.This fram had 150 moving parts on the steel frram and they spent spent many days studying gorrila behaviour. Although never equalling King Kong in popularity, many people see it as superior. Might joe young was just the begnning.



Jason and his argonaughts, Harryhausen animated 7 skeletons and was only able to make 13 frames a day taking 4 and a half months to do the scene. Today ray Harrygausen is reconised as a grand master of stop motion animation. He packed theaters, and the his basic process is still practiced in much the same way. Computers are now used to make reference points and to ensure smooth movement within the character.



Phill tippit designs heros and villans for popular hollywood films. He fell in love with the surreality with the objects moveing themselves. Tippit was put in charge for the stop motion in the Empire Strikes Back. His first project was to design the snowy machine walkers. The snow was created by baking soda. "we made little trap doors underneath each walker so every time we mad a fram we would pop our heads from the trap door nearest to the specific machine move it very slightly and then close the door" The tom toms we made with motion blur. dragon slayer was completly made this way, this process began the idea of refining the movment, getting it perfect. Tippit was dinosuar supervisor on jurassic park.

Whatever tool you use your learning how to work with limitations, trying to keep all this stuff move towards your minds eye.

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