Inspiring, Key and Successful Stop-Motion films

There has been a wealth of films created since the invention of Stop motion, however some have been more ground breaking, revolutionary or simply spectacular entertainment. As such i thought i would highlight some of the key films that have inspired the use of stop motion in film and made box office successes in doing so. As such there are three main films i would like to mention.

• King Kong (created in 1933 by Willis O'Brien)
• Jason & the Argonauts (Created in 1963 by Ray Harryhausen)
• Star Wars Trilogy (Created in 1970-80s by George Lucas)

Not only are these three films iconic, revolutionary and have achieved fame like almost no other, they are also known world wide by a huge amount of people. These films are legends amongst stop motion films and have all shown the ability and use of stop motion in their own way.

King Kong
One of the first globally recognised stop motion feature length films, King Kong was partically realm filming with a mixture of stop motion. The stop motion aspects were used on scenes which were unable to be recreated due to budgetting, safety or other methods being unrealistic. Such examples are King Kong himself, and the famous climb of the empire state. Models and toys were used in order to do this. A camera rig is set up in several locations depending on the angle needed and then scale models are used in order to renact the scene. Frame by frame the models must be repositioned and another image taken, this is a very long process and generally conditions need to be kept the same such as lighting and time of day the images are taken, this is vital for this form of stop motion as failing to use the correct lighting shows dramatically in the images and consistency is affected dramatically (resulting in poor quality). In addition time of day unless using artifical lights and other such stuff needs to be kept the same as conditions throught the day change, such as light, air pressure (wind), etc.

King Kong when it hit the cinema was a massive success and began revolution in stop motion picture, making it a popular trend to make stop motion films that were not cartoons. This lead to the creation of a large number of other iconic films such as the two below and helped develop animation more which was vital to get animation to where it is now.

Below is the scene where Kong is on the empire state, as you can see it doesnt look very realistic and it is clearly stop motion by the jumping camera and poor consistency but for the time it was revolutionary, and if you compare this to the star wars video the development of stop motion is astounding!

Jason & the Argonauts
Another incredibly ground breaking stop motion film (and a personal favourite) is Jason & the Argonauts, created by Ray Harryhausen an incredibly resourceful and inventive director and stop motion enthusiast. Jason & the Argonauts used the stop motion varient (technique) known as claymation. Claymation is the use of clay, or other such modelling putties in order to create visual effects. This was not very influential by this time, however Ray took this method and invented his own technique called Dynamation, this was in effect still claymation, however the rig used to capture still images was modified. This was done by creating a window which the models were infront of, the entire point of this was to make the models able to be put into a realistic film, by overlaying this onto the original images. This was a very early form of what is still used in digital animation packages to date, enabling transparent layers which show the layers below them, allowing for animation components to remain seperate and so not interfere with others.

Using Dynamation allowed the claymation models to be animated, captured and then overlayed on the film, this then meant using good choreography it looked like the models were infact real and interacting with the actors, as well as being to the correct scale and give the illusion of motion. The use of mixing stop motion animation and real film in this way was brand new and became a very popular move standard, resulting in a large amount of films by many different creators in a short space of time. This film was such a success that Ray Harryhausen went on to create several others similar to this (such as clash of the titans) and from their success modern day remakes of these have been composed using state of the art digital animation techniques.

Below is one of the more popular and technically brilliant scenes of the movie, note the extremely good transition from full stop motion to a combination.

Star Wars Trilogy
One of the most successful films of all time star wars broke the record for most money made in the box office and through merchandising. It combined the use of normal filming with stop motion animation, using several different stop motion techniques in order to produce an inspiring film which took the cinemas and world by storm. The benefit to using stop motion in this way meant that scenes that were impossible to do or too costly were very easy to produce, and with the right props looked very high quality and believable (at the time of release). As such Star wars used two main Stop Motion Animation techniques, the use of puppetry, and the use of models. These two different methods act completely different and allow very different things to have been created. Puppetry was used in order to create the character 'Yoda' after problems meant the initial concept could not be done, this immediately shows there is a stigma associated with the use of stop motion and it is generally not a first choice if possible, however from the use of this stop motion came one of the worlds most iconic characters which has risen to a cult figure. The use of a puppet was very simple having a puppet master control a puppet meant images could be taken with greater control, but more importantly realistic positioning and motion could be created through the much more enhanced control over the 'model'. As such this highlights another Key advantage to the use of stop motion, it is broad, and highly adaptable.

The next use of stop motion within Star Wars was the use of models for scenes relating to futuristic machines, for example the scenes in space (for the vehicles and scenes relating to them such as space fights) and more iconically the attack on 'Hoth' (for the AT-AT & AT-ST vehicles). These futuristic designs were far beyond the ability of computer animation to replicate at this time, let alone replicate to a level which could be viewed as realistic or atleast believable. As such this helped not only in being cost effective and so budgetting but also meant they could have more enthralling, immersive and visually pleasing scenes in the film which would captivate the audience.

The use of stop motion in this sense was key to the film and in doing so the film reflected the usefulness and ability of stop motion. The time this film was created also helps to show the fact stop motion was also still very much thriving as a main animation format.

Below is a small clip showing one of the most popular scenes in the star wars films, pay close attention to the vehicles when they are flying past the AT, can you tell they are stop motion? a very good piece of stop motion and camera trickery!