Magazine Article
Stop motion is an animation technique in which multiple images are chained together in quick
succession. The frame rate determines how many images are in one second, animators should try to
keep a consistent frame rate throughout their productions otherwise their productions could look
choppy. The point of stop motion is that the production should flow like a moving image but it is
done differently, however you are able to animate objects that normally would not be able to move
such as clay figures and drawings.
Stop motion began at the start of the 20th century, however as technology was less advanced
productions would take longer to produce. The first stop
motion production ever was ‘The Humpty Dumpty Circus’
(1898) by Albert E. Smith and J. Stuart Blackton. The art was
the adopted by multiple different people who then shot
animation into mainstream, such as George Meleis, who
would create interesting effects through stop motion which
you can see in his production ‘Le Magicien’ where he uses
stop motion in order to try to create ‘magical’ effects.
Persistence of Vision is a tool where an animator is able to blend two subtle images together into
one image. Animators such as Edward Muybridge who would use persistence of vision in order to
show how animals move before it was easier to film wildlife.
He would take multiple images of the animals and then chain
them together so that they then move in rapid succession so
that it creates the impression that the animals are actually
moving. It gave the people at the time an insight into what
was before unable to be seen by the everyday person.
Obviously this shocked the audience at the time, which then
caused persistence of vision to start being used in mainstream
animation. Some other creators which used persistence of
vision would be Emile Reynaud who invented the tool known
as the Praxinoscope. This was the first tool to be able to
project moving images and by moving the images so fast it
means that through persistence of vision you could see a movement when the frames change.
Over the years, frame rates have changed stop motion as it has caused the productions to become
more clear, an example of a developer would be Willis H.O’ Brien who was responsible for films such
as King Kong, as we can see in King Kong the stop motion was at a lower frame rate because old
technology would not allow them to go to higher frame rates. However nowadays frame rates are
extremely high thanks to newer technology which allows stop motion to be much more crisp. When
watching Willis H.O’ Brien’s King Kong you can see how the production isn’t smooth due to the lower
frame rate, you are also able to view these low frame rates in the works of Ray Harryhausen, who
produced short films inspired by Willis H.O’ Brien. When Harryhausen was beginning to experiment