Persistence of vision

Persistence of vision is an optical illusion whereby multiple discrete images blend into a
single image in the mind, it provides the illusion of motion that creates motion pictures
which have been enjoyed for years. In stop motion animation it means that each individual
photo when played together quickly in a sequence it can make the object photographed
come alive. How smoothly the images run is dependent on the frame rate, which is
measured in the term frames per second which simply means how many pictures are being
strung together per second. The persistence of vison effect works better if there are more
frames per second as the persistence of vison effect works better, for example in this
video below, look at this video at 30 frames per second, it moves smoothly and the red
man seems alive, but look at it again at 5 frames a second and the individual photographs
can be seen moving along.
The kind of animation we will be focusing on is stop frame animation when a model or
object is photographed then moved slightly the photographed again and so on and the
when the pictures are sped up it creates the illusion of life. In order for this animation
process to work properly the movements of characters and object must be down
accurately and with a great attention to detail, when working with modelling clay like the
UK Based animation studio Aardman does, they build their models around an armature
which is a small simple skeleton which holds the model tense and holds their bodies still
when theyre not being touched, the fact the modelling clay doesnt reset to its loose
position means a more realistic representation of movement can be created.
Pioneers
Horner and the ZoeTrope
Records of early zoetrope have been dated back to 100BC however the dreamlike shape of
the zoetrope was first introduced by William George Horner in 1883. The original Zoetrope
set up was called the wheel of life. However the original device never rose to popularity
as the American invent William F Lincoln developed a version which had viewing slits
above the pictures and could use easily replaceable paper animation strips to produce a
variety of shows.
MuyBridge
Eadweard James Muybridge 9 April 1830 8 May 1904, was an English photographer
important for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion, and early work in
motion projection.
He mainly photographed animals in motion capturing was is usually un perceivable by the
human eye. using small productions of the individual frames they would be placed in a
spinning cylinder so when someone looked through they would see the animal move. The
contraption that was used to view these simple animations was called a phenakistoscope.
Reynaud
The praxinoscope was an animation device,It was invented in France in 1877 by CharlesEmile Reyanud. it used a strip of pictures placed around the inner surface of a spinning
cylinder. it contained an inner circle of mirrors, placed so that the reflections of the
pictures appeared more or less stationary in position as the wheel turned. Someone
looking in the mirrors would therefore see a rapid succession of images producing the
illusion of motion.
In 1889 Reynaud developed the Theater Optique, an improved version capable of
projecting images on a screen from a longer roll of pictures. This allowed him to show

hand-drawn animated cartoons to larger audiences, but it was soon eclipsed in popularity
by the photographic film projector of the Lumiere Brothers.

Willis O Brien
One of the most revolutionary people in the stop motion animation scene was Willis O
Brien. He is most famously remembered for his work in animating king Kong, this film was
at the time the most revolutionary display of special effects with king Kong being filmed
on miniature sets and then the real size live action footage being spliced together, the
real model of king Kong was only 18 inches tall but by use black matted projection they
were able to splice the footage together. The original armatures used by Willis O Brien
were made of wood before being made of metal covered in latex with foam muscle. A
scene in particular that best used this ground breaking animation was in the scene where
native tribes were battling king Kong from a high wall, in production they placed the
actors on a high wall and placed the small model set on the ground and shooting from a
low angle were able to make the model appear to tower up against the wall. The realistic
but comical animation style of Willis O Brien and his work on animating monsters quickly
caught in pop culture but over time became more diluted in works such as king Kong vs
Godzilla with an animated king Kong vs a human in a dinosaur costume.
Ray HaurryHausen
Ray HaurryHausen, revolutionized the animation world and as his dynamation trailer
boasted anything the mind can conceive can now be seen on screen!. HaurryHausen
mentor was in fact Willis O Brien, and he observed the traditional animation technique of
merging the actors by painting foreground and background on two separate glass slides
and filming the model in between them so the forgeroudn and background would mirror
that of the live action sequences when mixed together. He realised how time consuming
this is and as he was working on a small budget for a movie developed his own technique
which e had been experimenting with since 1938. His technique used a process called
Matting, this is when the live action would be shot first and a forground matte which was
completely black was produced and placed on one glass slide, as the matte was black it
meant it could be filmed on again, he then placed the model inbetween this matte and a
background projector this meant that essentially the animation sequence and the live
action sequence were two pieces each piece interlinking with one another as the black
matte fitted with the other this meant that when the film was finally put together both
pieces would interlink and the animation and live action sequence would seamlessly
combine.

His process became incredibly popular and was used in a variety of fantasy and science
fiction films until 1981 when he retired. This was a step forward for animation as it took
the realistic movement processing of Willis O Brien and made it easier less time consuming
and more realistic to the eye.

Jan vankmajer
Jan vankmajer is a Czech surrealist filmmaker. In his earlier work such as food (1992) he
used stop motion to create a surrealist effect, treating people as inanimate objects. He is
also well known for using exaggerated sound sequences and Claymation. He built upon the
stop motion techniques cemented by Willis O Brien and Ray HarryHausen and used them
to create a less mainstream more art based effect commented on the political and social
climates and the time to the point where the communist government banned him from
making films with many of his later films being supressed. He helped move animation
further by using pre-existing techniques in a less cute way, he used animation to help
comment on social and political events and helped push the boundaries of animation
further.
Lotte Reigner
Lotte reigner was an abstract animator who developed her own unique style. The history
of silhouette cinema starts and ends with her. She began at a young age having a talent in
cutting detailed silhouette figures, which she used to perform her own shadow theatre for
friends and family. She was inspired by the writer and director Paul Wegener and in 1915
attended a lecture run by him the focused on the possibility of new and fantastic

animation. Reigner later joined the theatre group that Wegener belonged to, and began
making silhouettes of the actors around her, she was then asked to make elaborate title
cards for Wegeners films. Out of this she was asked to join an experimental animation
group called the institute for cultural research. She is well known for her silhouette
animation film adaption of fairy tales such as Cinderella and Hansel and Gretel. She also
anticipated Walt Disney for over ten years and some of her techniques were sued by him.
She is important to animation as she brought skill and dedication to animation and her use
of music narration and detailed character silhouettes helped to bring animation the early
cinema masses.
Finally we are moving on to contemporary work from the more modern era nad we start
with one of the key modern mainstream stop motion studios Aardman.
Aardman studios is an animation studio set up by peter lord and David sproxton in 1972
They have become world rewomned for their stop motion animation with every piece they
have worked being nominated for A BAFTA and the Wallace and Gromit series winning four
Oscars. They went on to achieve great commercial success with Every Feature theyve
made earning at least 192 million at box office. They began by producing animated
sequeunces for the bbc catering towards deaf children, this project was called Vision on
they then made a sequence called the Greeblies which would later become morph. They
began to make ground by contributing animated work into the BBCs Animated
Conversations series in which animated sequences are sound tracked by normal unscripted
conversations recorded by the public.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwcS9kzf5pg
Nick Park began working for the company to direct a short film for a similar public
animated conversation piece for channel four, Park would then develop his creature
comforts short film for this channel 4 series which was the first Aardman work to win an
Oscar, he then began developing the adventures of Wallace and Gromit short films, the
first one a grand day out being made entirely by him for a student project and the wrong
trousers and a close shave being made with Aardman and both winning an Oscar. Aardman
represents years of development and taking elements like the armatures of Willis O Brien
the Claymation process and the creation of lush background and vibrant atmospheres as
well as the use of music possibly from Lotte Reigner. Aardman is keeping the art of stop
motion alive in an era where computer animation is becoming the norm due to it being
less time consuming and more value for money, however it is clear that sop motion is still
valued with every short film Aardman making gaining an academy award.
Tim Burton is an American Writer and Director who has developed his own distinctive
animation style. He used modern film making techniques and stop motion and CGI
combined to make incredibly detailed sets and worlds, his most famous example the
nightmare before Christmas uses handcrafted models with joints a lot like a more complex
Barbie and interchangeable heads and limbs. His visually creative and distinctive style
turned his film character into universally known and highly successful icons, merchandising
for the nightmare before Christmas can be found everywhere. Tim burton has moved
animation further along by using modern techniques whist using the stop motion
techniques to give his films a more abstract and homemade feel, he uses the flexibility of
stop motion to create diverse and varied universes.
Stop motion has become more of an abstract art tool than a mainstream animation process
with the rise of cost effective and easily made CGI owning animation in the mainstream
film industry (there hasnt been a Wallace and Gromit film since 2010). An example of
someing using stop motion for an art effect is Mikey Please in short films such as the Eagle
Mans Stag, Pleases visual style appears to make everything look like paper, possibly to

represent how fragile we as humans are or due to its colour being washed out and
monochrome. In this film he discusses the issues of time passing and how your life can be
blinked away, he discusses existentialism and how a grudge can be held until death, this is
helped by the use of stop motion as the boundary less aspects of animation enabled him
to communicate his messages more clearly through more abstract sequences, and the use
of models as opposed to actors also helps us to focus more on the message he is trying to
convey as opposed to how good the actors performance was for example.