Video essay, styled in a simple animation with a character who will describe the techniques and

history of stop motion. I will be using my digital tablet to draw my video

Script
Oh. Is the video not loading?
Character draws the words stop-motion in ink on a loading screen.
I guess Ill have to improvise then. Welcome to my video essay
regarding stop motion.
The History of film began in the 1890s, when motion picture cameras
were invented and film production companies started to be established.
Because of the limits of technology, films of the 1890s were under a
minute long and, until 1927, motion pictures were produced without
sound. The first decade of motion picture saw film moving from a
novelty to an established large-scale entertainment industry. The films
became several minutes long consisting of several shots.

Stop-motion is an animation technique that physically manipulates

objects of materials and makes them look as if they have moved on
their own. The object is moved at an average of 48-60 pictures or
frames which makes up one second of animation. The history of
stop-motion animation originates from a long history of film. It
was used often when film first started to show objects moving as if
by magic. The first ever motion captured on camera was stop motion,
by Eadweard Muybridge, a pioneer of stop-motion in the 1800s.
Eadweard Muybridge was an English photographer important for his
pioneering work in photographic studies of motion, and early work in
motion picture. His most important work depicts a series of separate
pictures of a horse running. When put together however, these
pictures transformed into a moving image.
This happened when Muybridge was hired by the former governor of
California for some photographic studies. He has taken a position on
a popularly debated question of the day, whether all four feet of a
horse were off the ground at the same time when racing. In 1872,
Muybridge began experimenting with an array of 12 cameras
photographing a galloping horse in a sequence of shots. A long line
of cameras were aligned up one side of the racetrack and when the
racehorse went by all cameras were set to capture an image when the
horse had travelled in front of it. To their astonishment the horse
appeared to be flying in several frames of the images and were
eventually compiled together to create a moving image.

The Lumiere brothers were also pioneers of this early film era, were
one of the first filmmakers in history. Their shot in 1895 is
considered the first true motion picture. They worked in the 1800s
and had created their own moving pictures all made up of separate
images, however, the images were grainy and jumpy. They did create a
moving image and one of the first movies in the world to be made.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HI63PUXnVMw

[ in the following piece of information the relevant clips will be

overlayed on screen]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wr6N_hZyBCk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3t8bPzfz4wc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLw-Fo8uhis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEOfT7hUcDs

Now the main developers of these techniques took what these pioneers
had created and shaped it to create entertainment. Willis OBrian
was an American motion picture special effects and stop motion
animation pioneer, and he used what Muybridge had created and
applied it to animate objects. He was, perhaps, responsible for some
of the best known images in cinema history such as The Lost World
and King Kong. He spent his spare time sculpting and illustrating
and his natural talent led to him being employed first as a
draftsman in an architects office and then as a sports cartoonist

for the San Francisco Daily News and was assistant to the head
architect of the 1915 San Francisco Fair , where some of his work
was displayed. During this time he made moveable models, including a
dinosaur and a caveman, which he animated with the assistance of a
local newsreel cameraman. San Francisco exhibitor Herman Wobber saw
this 90 second test footage and commissioned OBrian to make his
first film, The Dinosaur and the Missing Link : A Prehistoric
tragedy; his first real stop motion film.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLVt6bMJ8Ds
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2PjgxnyyQo

Ray Harryhausen was an American visual effects creator, and a

developer of the stop motion technique, writer, and producer who
created a form of stop motion model animation known as Dynamation.
His most memorable works include the animation on Mighty Joe Young
1949, alongside his mentor Willis H. Obrien, which won an academy
award for best visual effects. His first colour film was Jason and
the Argonauts. HarryHausens first film with full creative control
was The Beast from 20,000, allowing him to create the production all
on his own. With these new capabilities and working off the skills
he has learned from OBrian, Harryhausen was seen to use metal
structures inside the models known as skeletons, which were used to
keep the figures position in between shots and allowed him to
easily move the figure for the next frame. Since
OBrian had developed his skills from the first clips that came from
the likes of Muybridge, Harryhausen was able to develop his skills
under OBrians mentorship. They were also one of the first
animators to use metal frames and construct sets for their
characters, which branches into modern animation that we see today,
which in fact uses all of these techniques in new productions such
as Chicken Run.

Now lots of media companies out there have developed this technique
and use stop motion even in this day of modern technology to convey
a different and unique style as opposed to CGI animation. They have
taken the techniques from both Lumiere and Muybridge and have
developed their own style. For example, Aardman Animations and
Disney have used stop motion to create some of the most well-known
animations on the planet, such as Chicken Run, Wallace and Grommet,
from Aardman and the Nightmare before Christmas from Disney. These
companies have used several different techniques such as persistence
of vision, stop-frame, frame rates and movement of models.

Persistence of vision refers to the optical illusion whereby

multiple discrete images blend into a single image in the human mind
and believed to be the explanation for motion perception in cinema
and animated films. We can see this in films such as a Nightmare
before Christmas and Chicken Run, where the frames run so smoothly
and quickly, so our brain is able to ignore the fact they are
individual frames, and creates a single-flowing stream of images
creating a moving image. The more frames are used the quicker our
brains are able to perform this process, however, if there are fewer
frames, we may see the production as more jumpy and static-looking.

Sort of like me Im using many, many less frames as a professional

animation, so you can see Im a lot more still. However if my
animator put a few more frames into me, you start to see a lot
more!

Hm. Seems they cant be bothered to colour me in. Go back to how it

was before!

In any case, frame rate changes the quality of an animation

entirely, just like you have seen, the more frames that are involved
in a picture, the easier it is for our mind to see the flowing of
the film. This is down to something known as frame rate. Frame rate,
also known as frame frequency, is the frequency at which frames are
being seen. The term applies equally to film and video cameras,
computer graphics, and motion capture systems as it does for
animation. Frame rate is expressed in frames per second. F.P.S for
short.

The themes for stop motion have changed over a long period of time.
The narrative and genres have evolved and developed as pop culture
rose and the world started to take itself less seriously.
A good example of how this has changed would be to compare Chicken
Run, a colourful kids adventure, following the life of battery hens
and their plot to escape their prison, to the very first motion
pictures presented to us by the likes of Lumiere and Muybridge. As
you can see, first of all aside from the fact that Chicken Run is an

hour and a half in running time which is a large improvement since

the dawn of film,

The first films never had a character or plot. The Lumieres first
film was of people walking from factories, and doesnt contain any
lively character or tangible plot. Chicken Run has a character, a
goal, an enemy and a risk that could prevent the heroes from
reaching their goal. The first films weve looked through do not
contain any of these qualities because they were simply testing
their equipment and seeing if this kind of motion picture could be
possible to achieve. Narrative has changed over the years to use
this kind of technology to entertain, rather than to amaze, the
genre of the older films would have been educational and
informative, whereas these newer films will be to entertain.