Stop Motion

“A zoetrope is a device that produces the illusion of motion from a rapid succession of static pictures. The term zoetrope is from the Greek words ζωή (zoē), meaning

"alive, active", and τροπή (tropē), meaning "turn", with "zoetrope" taken to mean "active turn" or "wheel of life".

The earliest known zoetrope was created in China around 180 AD by the inventor Ting Huan.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoetrope

A modern replica of a Victorian zoetrope

“These devices produced the appearance of movement from sequential drawings using technological means, but animation did not really develop much further until the advent of cinematography. The cinématographe was a projector,printer,and camera in one machine that allowed moving pictures to be shown successfully on a screen which was invented by history's earliest film makers Auguste and Louis Lumière in 1894.”

Eadweard Muybridge

Galloping Horse 1878

http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0309/lm20.html

Zoopraxiscope disc by Eadweard Muybridge

To see it in action:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoopraxiscope

“The zoopraxiscope is an early device for displaying motion pictures. Created by photographic pioneer Eadweard Muybridge in 1879, it may be considered the first movie projector. “

A thaumatrope is a toy that was popular in Victorian times. A disk or card with a picture on each side is attached to two pieces of string. When the strings are twirled quickly between the fingers the two pictures appear to combine into a single image due to persistence of vision.To see one in action: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thaumatrope

http://intelligentheritage.wordpress.com/2010/09/18/interesting-optical-device-thaumatrope/

“Your eye and brain retain a visual impression for about 1/30th of a second. (The exact time depends on the brightness of the image.) This ability to retain an image is known as persistence of vision. As you swing the tube from side to side, the eye is presented with a succession of narrow, slit-shaped images. When you move the tube fast enough, your brain retains the images long enough to build up a complete image of your surroundings.

Persistence of vision accounts for our failure to notice that a motion picture screen is dark about half the time, and that a television image is just one bright, fast, little dot sweeping the screen. Motion pictures show one new frame every 1/24th of a second. Each frame is shown three times during this period. The eye retains the image of each frame long enough to give us the illusion of smooth motion.”http://www.exploratorium.edu/snacks/persistence_of_vision/index.html

“Georges Méliès was a creator of special-effect films; he was generally one of the first people to use animation with his technique. He discovered a technique by accident which was to stop the camera rolling to change something in the scene, and then continue rolling the film. This idea was later known as stop-motion animation. Méliès discovered this technique accidentally when his camera broke down while shooting a bus driving by. When he had fixed the camera, a hearse happened to be passing by just as Méliès restarted rolling the film, his end result was that he had managed to make a bus transform into a hearse. This was just one of the great contributors to animation in the early years.”

“J. Stuart Blackton was possibly the first American film-maker to use the techniques of stop-motion and hand-drawn animation.”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animation

Humorous Phases of Funny Faces by J. Stuart Blackton in 1906: http://youtube.com/watch?v=8dRe85cNXwg

Ray Harryhausen: Inspired by King Kong from 1933, he set out to create his own stop

motion technique in the late 1930s.

Clip of his work:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9kmjW73-v4&feature=related

Types of Animation and Stop Motion

•Traditional Animation (cel animation or hand-drawn animation)

•Puppet Animation

•Clay Animation (claymation) using plasticine which is an oil-based clay,

sometime with wire armatures

•Cutout animation (using 2d materials like paper)

•Model animation (using animated objects along with real people)

•Object animation (using inanimate objects)

•Graphic animation (using photos, newspaper clippings, non-drawn things)

•Pixilation (using real people)

•Computer Animation

More contemporary artists

Brothers Quay: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNOfsJz4TjA

Nick Park:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eMaqDQLoe4&feature=related

Tim Burton: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hD8uQzu0IL0

William Kentridge:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHLCiB3xzC8&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3YM8MWoxkY

Music videosMichel Gondry’s White Stripes video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=XRDi67G0Siw and making of: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzebYFxuB-A

Her Morning Elegance / Oren Lavie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_HXUhShhmY

Cold Play: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lb9X5jMofEo

Other Creative Uses of Objects or Ideas

done with legos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDe4v318f64

done with post-it notes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpWM0FNPZSs

http://www.ringling.edu/ (go to student work and view animation videos)

student, Brain Panebianco, done with play dough: http://www.youtube.com/user/sfkd8r#p/u/29/FgLVLsJhZoU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CWOebTREVUhttp://www.eatpes.com/western_spaghetti.html (if pes site doesn’t work, try: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBjLW5_dGAM)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfBlUQguvyw (not animated, but creative idea)

Time Lapse Stop motion is often confused with the time lapse technique, where still

photographs of a live surrounding are taken at regular intervals and combined into a continuous film.

time lapse of glaciers: http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=102041024&m=102053429

time lapse (project rebirth): http://www.projectrebirth.org/

time lapse of moon: http://www.astrosurf.com/cidadao/animations.htm