Joseph Pateau

 

 

 

Joseph Antoine Ferdinand was born 14th October 1801 and died 15th September 1883. He was a Belgian physicist and was the first person to demonstate the illusion of a moving image in 1832 by creating the Phenakistoscope.

 

The phenakistoscope worked by using counter rotating disks with repeatedly drawn images drawn on one side of them with small differences between them to create the effect of motion. On the other side it featured regularly placed slits to make the device work.

 

Here is a phenakistoscope working in action:



Aardman Animations

 

Aardman Animations LTD. Is a British animation studio which is also known as Aardman Animations or just Aardman. It is based in Bristol, in the United Kingdom.

Aardman's is well known for it's films made using stop motion animation, it specialises in the use of the stop motion clay animation techniques. Aardman is mostly famous for their Plasticine characters Wallace and Gromit, who are used in many stop motion animation films.

Here is the famous Wallace and Gromit created by Aardman:

 

 

In 2006 Aardman Animations entered the computer animation market when they created the film Flushed Away.

 

Here is Aardman's Flushed Away, created by computer animation means:



Tim Burton

 

Timothy Walter Burton was born 25th August 1958 and is still alive today. He is an American film director, producer, artist, poet, writer and stop motion artist.

Burton is well known for his dark yet quirky style of work, especially in horror and fantasy films.
Some of the films he created that he became most famous for were Beetlejuice, Ed Wood, Edward Scissorhands, Sleepy Hollow, Dark Shadows and Sweeny Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

Burton also created some stop motion films. The ones he became most famous for were The Nightmare Before Christmas, Frankenweenie and Corpse Bride.

Here are a few examples of Burton's stop motion work:

The Nightmare Before Christmas:

Frankenweenie:

 

 

Corpse Bride:

 

 



 Burton also created some blockbuster films, these included Alice in Wonderland, Batman and it's firat sequel Batman Returns, Pee-wee's Big Adventure, Planet of the Apes and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Tim Burton was also very famous for working alongside the actors Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter (Burton's wife). He also tends to work with musician Danny Elfman, Burton has worked alongside him in all but two of his films.

As of 2012 Tim Burton created 16 films and has produced 12.

Brothers Quay

 

Brothers Quay were two brothers called Stephen and Timothy Quay. Both were born June 17th 1947 and are still alive today. The two men are American identical twins who are better known as the Brothers Quay or the Quay Brothers.

 

The two brothers were both very influencial in the world of stop motion animation, they did a lot of work as animators themselves.

 

They also won the 1998 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Set Design. They won this due to their work featured in the play ' The Chairs'.

Jan Svankmajer

Jan Svankmajer was born 4th September 1934 and is still alive today. He is a Czech film maker and artist and his work is used throughout the media. He is a self labelled surrealist who is famous for his animations and features.

Svankmajer's work has had a lot of influence over other artists such as Terry Gilliam, The Brothers Quay and a variety of others.

Ray Harryhausen

Ray Harryhausen was born 29th June 1920 and died 7th May 2013. He was visual effects creator, writer and producer who made a form of stop motion animation which was called 'Dynamation'.

He was well known for his animation on a film Mighty Joe Young which he created with his mentor Willis O'Brien in 194. This won an Academy Award for Special Effects.

Here is some of Harryhausen's work from Mighty Joe Young 1949:



Harryhausen was also famous for his first ever coloured film The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958). Here is an example of some of his work from this film:



Another film he was well remembered for would be Jason and the Argonauts (1963). Here is a clip from the most famous scene in the film where skeleton warriors fight:



Harryhausen's last film was Clash of the Titans (1981), after he made this film he retired. Here is a clip from Clash of the Titans:



Harryhausen's style in his special effects work inspired many celebrities, including famous directors such as Tim Burton and John Lasseter.

Stop Motion Animation Terminology

Persistence of Vision:

This is a theory where an afterimage is believed to last for approximately about a twenty fifth of a second in your retina. This helps with creating stop motion movies, especially whilst using devices such as the thaumatrope because your persistence of vision will create the moving effect of the pictures being used.
When stop motion is used with devices such as the thaumatrope, persistence of vision is used. This is when the two pictures on each side of a piece of card or paper are being spun at a rate faster than one twenty fifth of a second and so the picture of one side of the thaumatrope and the picture of the other side will almost be fitted together in your mind to create one image. This is one of the main devices which rely on persistence of vision to work.

Here is an example of a thaumatrope working:

Frame Rates:

This is how many frames per second which are used in a film/video. An example of this would be, if you had a frame rate of 25 fps (frames per second) this would mean within every single second of the film there would be 25 frames used.

Stop Frame:

A stop frame is each frame which is used during stop animation. This is each of the pictures used while creating a stop motion film/video.