How has stop motion animation techniques have developed

over time?
Throughout this written investigation I will be exploring how throughout time we can see a
series of gradual adaptations which lead to what we now see today in animation. I wanted
to view the transformation from the first stop motion animations to be made to today’s stop
motion animations. I think it’s important to look at the various techniques and who came up
with them to see how they brought us to what we see on our TV screens today.

Stop motion animation is such a niche genre which needs to stick around. It has gained
popular over time for its power to tell a story, stop motion has limitless possibilities for. its
character design, material choice, location options, it's easy to see why viewers fall in love
with it. I really like the handmade aspect of it as I feel that every single frame is unique if the
film is created patiently.

We start by going back to the early 20th century to look at some of the very first stop
motion animations. As suspected, these are shot in black and white and don’t feature any
camera movements. One of the very first traditional stop motion animations is called ‘Fun in
a Bakery Shop’, this was produced back in 1902. It features a baker in a bakery who spots a
rat climbing up the side of a barrel, he chucks some dough at the rat. He then begins to
manipulate the dough to create different facial expressions. It’s interesting how the baker’s
back is to the camera when he is manipulating the dough because it means we can’t see him
changing the dough but only the aftermath, I think that the director is quite clever with this
technique as it doesn’t seem unnatural to the audience.

In 1915 Willis O’Brien created ‘Thee Dinosaur and the Missing Link: A Prehistoric Tragedy’.
Although this production is only 5 minutes long I think that it is quite well made for its time.
There is a variety of characters and on top of this O’Brien uses a few changes of scenery. He
also has regular moments in which text is shown on screen which helps explain the
storyline, I think this is a good idea because it compensates for their being no audio.
Sometimes with stop motion animation the storyline can be easily lost, especially back when
it’s in black and white and can sometimes be difficult to make out.

A very important part of this stop motion timeline was led by George Pal, he is credited
with creating the technique ‘replacement animation’. This is where instead of needing a
head in which you can adapt Pal made multiple heads with different expressions for one
character. This meant that the face could easily be replaced to convey any emotion or
anything that Pal would want the puppet to say. He named this technique Pat-Doll used it in
his films from 1932. The reason I think George Pal is so significant is due to the fact that this
technique was still used so long after being discovered and in fact is still used today, we see
it in the 2022 film ‘Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio’.

Another big name in stop motion animation is Ray Harryhausen, I think it’s fascinating to
see what Harryhausen produced with the equipment he had available. Mixing animation
with live action is something that producers have been struggling with for a long time and
even today there is no set-in stone way to create it. This is why I think that his technique for
creating this effect was very impressive, this form of animation was named ‘Dynamation’. In
1958 he animated ‘The 7th Voyage of Sinbad’ using this technique. It begins with the live
action footage being projected onto a back-projection screen. There is then a camera
positioned at the front of the screen to capture the stop motion animation. This technique is
effective however comes with its flaws, Harryhausen was unable to have live action
characters be seen in front of the stop motion animation as they could only go behind them.

I thought it would be interesting to look at the highest ever budget for a stop motion
animation, this record was set back in 2019 by Laika studios with their movie ‘Missing Link’.
They had a budget of $100 million yet unfortunately to this day only made an international
box office of $26.2 million. This is a big step for the stop motion community as it shows that
these big studios and investors will be comfortable to put money into these future and
upcoming films, although of course ‘Missing Link’s’ economic state may be a reason against
investing. I am unsure why Laika Studios decided to budget $100 million for a stop motion
as they would have had to of been at least the eighth most successful stop motion of all
time just to break even. The highest international box office stop motion animation is
‘Chicken Run’ with an international box office of $227,793,915 back in 2000. What I find
interesting about this is that the 3 highest box offices are all produced by Aardman
Animations, this really shows how significant Aardman are. Aardman animations were
founded back in 1972 in Bristol, in 1976 they produced their first professional production
creating Morph for the children’s programme 'Take Hart'. Since then Aardman have had 6
successful feature-length stop motion movies. With stop motion animations receiving larger
budgets for films it gives animators a chance to experiment more and we as an audience will
see better animations. If we inspect further into 'Chicken Run' we learn that they had a
budget of £22.38 million that means they had a box office of ten times their budget which is
why it’s considered so successful. For it being Aardman's very first feature film and for them
to be on a tight schedule at the time it really showed what this studio was capable of.

When we look at a stop motion animation made more recently in 2022 it really shows how
far the animation style has come. For me Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio production is a
must watch, he brings modern day cinematography into stop motion animation. The film is
two hours long and there are several factors which lead to it being such a beautiful
animation. I enjoyed how they toyed with the weather and climate conditions, having the
rain affect the characters which is something you don’t regularly see filmmakers do with
stop motion animation. I personally liked how we see a variety of characters: people, bugs,
spirits, and puppets. It shows us that the team who created this film were creative and
inventive with the generation of characters. The one negative I personally have for this
production is that it feels quite morbid, the idea of death is regularly brought up. The reason
I find this as an issue is because stop motion animations are regularly considered as
children’s movies and it’s quite creepy. However, this could opposingly be seen as a turning
point and we could possibly see feature-length stop motion animations which are aimed at
an older audience.

This is not the first time we’ve seen a stop motion which feels as if its shot like a movie, for
example if we look at Fantastic Mr. Fox he brings his eccentric and unique visual and
narrative styles into the stop motion animation. Fantastic Mr. Fox was created by Wes
Anderson but it was based on a book by Roald Dahl. The character design has a lot of detail,
they’re handmade, the colours are warm, the costumes are stylish, and they have realistic
facial expressions. I think that the handmade aspect of this film is so important because it
makes each character different and unique. More recently we see 3D printed characters but
I think that it doesn't give the same effect as handmade, Wes Anderson decided to use real
animal hairs for his characters which gave this beautiful look when they become affected by
the weather/climate.
I feel as if stop motion animations in recent terms are becoming visually more and more as
if it were your everyday movie, we’re seeing stop motion animations feature a lot of more
complex camera movements as well as a larger range in shot types.

From this research I have begun to unveil how we have come from black and white and
very simple short films all the way to the stop motions we see today which are cinematic
and can be difficult to differentiate from the 3D animations we see on screen. The
development has been truly dramatic and fast-paced, these are thanks to the techniques
I’ve stated, such as ‘Dynamation’ and ‘replacement animation’ to think that these were just
animators experimenting is amazing on how it affected this community. It’s important that
we appreciate the studios which have brought us a numerous number of creations over the
years. For the past 30 years of feature length stop motion animations we need to give credit
to ‘Laika Studios’, ‘Aardman Animations’, and ‘Disney’.