Post 11: Types of Stop-Motion Animation

Claymation: Is a form of stop-motion animation where the characters as well as the background used are made of Plasticine or some other type of malleable substance like clay. Characters are molded from pieces of clay often around a wire armature frame for extra stability, the characters are then positioned and photographed, then moved slightly and photographed again this process is continued until around 12 frames are captured for each second of footage these frames are then brought together in editing to be played as though the character was moving. (Matlin, J. 2018.) This is one of the most difficult types of animation, as a clay characters mouth and body is difficult to manipulate especially in time with audio and voice-overs. Creating these characters from scratch is also a challenge as Plasticine is hard to mold into professional looking designs however, if done to a high enough standard this stop-motion technique can look the best out of all the options this is why "Wallace and Gromit" is so successful.

Found Objects: This is a form of stop-motion that involves using non-drawn objects that can be found around the house such as dolls and other toys, they aren't designed to look specifically human and are not fully malleable, this is different from animating puppets due to them having more complicated movement patterns and being purpose built to move in these ways. (Musser, C (1994) An example of this is the video "Object Animation" by "Tim Lempicki".





This form of animation is useful because lots of time and money does not need to be spent on an articulated model or realistic set, a desk is used as a backdrop and everyday items are used as characters this makes it extremely accessible and easy to create for even an inexperienced creator.

Time-Lapse: In animation, time-lapse mode on cameras can be used to create an illusion of motion, a tripod needs to be set up and the camera will take pictures at certain time intervals for example every 5 seconds the object that the individual wants to animate needs to be moved ever so slightly between each shot, then by the end the images can be put together and the object will look like it was continuously moving. (Peachpitcom. 2019)


Cut-Out: This is a form of stop-motion that uses 2D paper cut-outs as characters and the set, these models can have pins or rivets in their joints to make movement more straight forward. However, many cut-out animations are now done using computer software instead of  pieces of material or paper. (Bendazzi, G. 1996.) An example of where cut-out animation is used is the music video "Fleet Foxes" by Mykonos.  https://youtu.be/DT-dxG4WWf4


Brick Animation: This is a form of stop-motion that is made of Lego bricks or a similar substitute, often this technique is used in conjunction with CGI to avoid the tedious process to stop-motion animating. (Rowoldt, J. 2001.) An example of this is "The Lego Movie" the production team decided to use brick animation to create the end titles for the film, they made small sets with moving parts such as fire-breathing dragons, search lights and police chases.


Puppet Animation: Is stop-motion using puppets as the characters, this is an improvement from object animation as puppets have a more human like appearance and can also be made to look like anything. This allows for a more engaging way of storytelling, this method works the same as other stop-motion methods except that some puppets require wires to stand so they may need to edit these out in post-production with computer software such as Adobe Photoshop (Blogspotcom. 2019). An example of puppet animation is "The Humpty Dumpty Circus" (1908).


Pixilation: An aspect of stop-motion that for its characters uses live actors/actresses instead of artificially made models, this has been used to blend live actors that are filmed with animated ones like in El Hotel Eléctrico"