Stop motion animation

I am fascinated with stop motion animation. It is a very tedious but a rewarding form of animation. Recently I watched the Corpse Bride and although my sister said the story is not interesting but I love it for its stop motion factor.

What is stop motion?

See here for definition wikipedia's stop motion.

You move a coin on a table for a milimetre and take a picture using a still camera, another milimetre and another picture and so on. Then you arrange the pictures in a sequence. These pictures if viewed quickly like in a slide show will make the coin appear as if it traveled across the table - walla animation. I think to make a decent animation with smooth actions I would need to take 24 pictures for each second. So a 30 second animation requires 720 pictures.

Stop motion animation takes a long time to produce. IMDB reported that Corpse Bride was shot in 55 weeks which is a week shy of a year and Nightmare before Christmas in three years. Whew that is longer than producing a baby but certainly easier.

On the third day of Raya I watched Corpse Bride to its final credits. It was a triumph considering that I had watched it half way before that. But since it was raya and people were coming by I watched it withing two days. My sister said the story isn't that good. But I love it purely because it is stop motion.



Long before I was mesmerized with Corpse Bride I was romancing Nighmare Before Christmas. Hey I even had a handbag with Jack Skellington's face on it. I read on IMDB's trivia that Disney wanted to do a sequel of Nightmare but the Tim Burton persuaded them to drop the plan. I agree with Burton since some sequels are stupider and dims the shine of its predecessor, moreover nightmare does not need a sequel.

Jack Skellington and Sally

Nightmare was also rereleased as a 3D movie but I missed this one.

Anyway prior to these Tim Burton's products I was taken away by Gumby and friends. I hardly understood English at that time but watching these colourful characters turning into other objects was fascinating. They are made from clay with wire for internal structure I think.

Gumby is the green one I don't remember the red horse's name.

Before people made animation using computers they also used clays and some clay puppets are ugly as they can contort their faces which I deem scary. But now the clay puppets have smoother skin and some are not even made from clay at all.

Now stop motion animation can be seen in Fifi and the Flowertots and Pingu.

Fifi and the Flowertots

Pingu

In the yesteryears stop motions are the darlings of monster movie makers. The dinasours were laughable and the movement jerky. Believe it or not I never really watched King Kong nor Godzilla.

Oh yeah, there is also the other famous stop motion character.

Wallace and Gromit.

Nowadays I get to watch stop motion animation when I am on the RapidKL bus. There's this short animation on three tailed clay creatures in three colours which can make all kinds of things from their body. One is a good character while the other two likes to sabotage him and steal the things he makes.

For example the good one will make a boat and go sailing and when the two evildoers saw this they will create a boat and wear pirate costumes and steal the boat. I wonder why the evil pair do not create their own stuff but resort to stealing. However the story has a moral point after all because after stealing they will always end up with disaster and in the end the good one will save them. Interestingly though they speak like Mr Bean and so all the stories are told in actions.

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