Present Stop Motion Animations

Present Stop Motion Animations

Some people think that Stop Motion Animation is an out dated technique, but the reality is that this could not be further from the truth. In this topic we will be focusing on present examples of where Stop Motion is used, whether in music videos, films, television or in games.

Stop Motion in television:

You will be amazed at how often stop motion is used in television and yet you just haven't realised.

A majority of television shows that Stop Motion is used in are children's shows, examples of these are given below:

Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends:

Thomas and friends is a children's television series  that ran on the ITV network and debuted on the 4th of september 1984. When originally produced in Shepperton Studios stop motion animation using models was used, at the time this seemed like the most effective method of animating the stories. During this time animals and humans were static figures whilst vehicles  and locomotives were operated by radio. Stop motion would then be implemented if a animal or human character would have to move, occasionally hand drawn animation would have to be used, this can be seen in series 3 where in a scene involving bees, the bees had to be hand drawn.  



Bob the Builder:

Bob the Builder is yet another British children's television series which utilises stop motion
animation. The show is created by Keith Chapman, and in the original broadcasts which  origin from the United Kingdom, Bob is voiced by English actor Neil Morrissey. This particular show uses the technique of claymation, this means the majority of on screen action tacking place will involve objects being made out of clay, these objects will then be moved slightly and a picture will then be taken, once a sufficient number of pictures are built up it will seem as if the character is moving.



Postman Pat

Postman Pat is a children's television series based in the United Kingdom and is aimed at pre-school children. The series was produced by Woodland Animations, and it debuted it's first 13 episode series on the BBC1 in 1981. The show stars Pat Clifton a postman in the fictional village of Greendale, throughout the series we follow Pat's adventures along with his fateful black and white cat named Jess. This show is also stop motion and would of been set up and filmed in the same way as Thomas and Friends, using different materials to form different models and people.



Pingu

Pingu is a BAFTA award winning stop motion children's television show, created by Otmar Gutmann. The story involves a young penguin named Pingu who lives in an igloo in Antarctica, in the show we follow the adventures and mischief he gets up to with his friend Robby the seal and his little sister Pinga. This show official debuted on the 28th of may 1986 and became an instant hit due to the simplicity and effectiveness of the programme. The stop motion technique used in this show is Claymation which is the same technique used for Bob the Builder and it would of been set up and filmed in the exact same way.

Stop motion in music:

When thinking of Stop Motion people often suspect that this type of animation and technique is only used in film and television, when in actual fact, Stop Motion covers a much broader media, making it's way into music videos. Below I have listed some notable music videos from the past few years which utilise stop motion to good effect:                                                                     

We Have Band – “You Came Out” (2009) 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtGJ1lD23-U

To create this one of a kind music video 4,816 still images were used, and shot over a period of two days, the animated mouth action in the video can be related to other stop motion television shows, a prime example of one of these shows would be South Park. 

This Flickr page has got all the shots that were taken in the production of this video:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/39167181@N06

Of Montreal – “An Eluardian Instance” (2009)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpYQioEnfDQ

A good thing about stop motion is that it enables you to take a seemingly normal sequence of photos and add in a bit of wonderment with animations. In this case, a perfectly normal picnic turns into either a very good, bad or weird experience. If you’re following the vibe of the song,your experience is likely to be good. Yet if you happen to have an unsubsiding fear of kites, the experience can be very, very, very bad.

Oren Lavie – “Her Morning Elegance” (2010)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_HXUhShhmY

When an idea like this comes to live, it has no choice but to become a viral video, I mean we've all imagined this haven't we? You’re lying in bed half asleep and you picture your bodily poses against the 2D screen that is your bed as you pretend to be walking or floating around the screen with a variety of backdrops, wether it's walking up a mountain, swimming in an ocean or running a race, no only me! Well obviously i'm not the only one, Lavie who directed this video shares some of my madness, but in order to turn fantasy into reality it took  a month of computer-assisted storyboarding, which was then followed by two days of shooting 3,225 stills!

Delta Heavy- Get by (2012)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cOt9UcYGOU

My personal favourite of all stop motion music videos, why? The videos ability to put a modern twist on classic techniques, but in such a sleek, stylish and cool way, makes this video hart to fault. The intricacy and time that has gone in to making this video has earnt this video a place in my personal top 10 greatest music videos of all time!

Stop motion Ident:

E4 have started to use Stop Motion in a variety of there TV ident's nowadays, this technique has been used to take what was once a very familiar surrounding and turning it into something completely different, with furniture flying everywhere and a purple ooze leaking out of a chest of draws. All I can say is, I feel sorry for the poor person who has to clean all this up!

Some of E4's stop motion ident's can be found here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeJp-KHFP0Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOw4i-UB8Lw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBYn8uzTa4A

  

 Stop motion Films:

Along with television stop motion also gets frequently used in film, an exapmle of this is   Chicken Run the 2000's stop motion hit produced by Aardman animations, and another is  Wallace and Gromit curse of the Ware Rabbit.

Along with feature length films, short films have also been shot in stop motion, an example of these are               

                                    
A close shave:       http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy9QeosTh7w&list=ELTcM5pyogLoY&index=3

A grand day out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zw78po4J-HQ

The Wrong Trousers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKZdsPvJq60




Stop motion games:

This is where shop motion get's a whole lot more interactive!  Stop motion now enters the world of gaming and it's managed to stand it's ground.

Voyager the game

Voyager the game which is a game available for iPod touch, iPad and iPhone, in this game you zoom through space! Avoid planes, satellites, asteroids, planets and unexpected creatures lurking in the darkest depths of this galaxy and beyond. The objective of the game is to get as high as you can without crashing into any of the obstacles mentioned above.

The creator of this game was Ken Amarit and Me Studios who opted to create this game out of needle-pointed wool and stop-motion animation technique. 

Cletus clay

Cletus clay is a game available on the XBOX 360 and is designed by Anthony Flack

So how is this game made? Well everything starts out as preliminary sketches that were drawn at the start of designing the game, the pictures will then be assessed and the models will be built individually according to the picture that goes with them. Once the models are built they are then photographed cut out, cleaned up and photoshopped. The image is then taken and extruded into 3D by mapping onto a mischief triangle and parts of the shape are pulled out in order to create a relief structure.

This is the website for the game, on here you can find videos of how this game was created, you can find gameplay examples and much more!

http://www.cletusclay.com/