George Pal

George Pal was born in 1908 in Hungary. He was an animator and film produced in the genre of science fiction and fantasy. He created the Puppetoons series in the 1940s which were a huge success. He won an Academy Award for the "Development of a novel methods and techniques in the production of short subjects known as Puppetoons".

Pal created a series of animated puppet films called Puppetoons  in the 1940s. He created different puppets which consisted of various limbs and heads that were carved using wood. This created the illusion that the puppets had expression and movement within the structures. George Pal's technique of creating various heads with expressions has inspired  many film makers today such as Aardman where they used different expression and faces to create some of their characters for their films.

In 1940, Pal emigrated and worked for Paramount Pictures. He was mostly influences by films as well as film directors in the 1920s that worked with science fiction and/or fantasy. The audiences for his films are mostly children and maybe adults, depending on the film and what rating it had. I don't think George Pal's technique could be improved as there wasn't much wrong with it apart from the fact that it was quite time consuming to make several different heads with different expressions on it. His technique has inspired film makers today who use the same technique such as Tim Burton and Aardman.

Flip Book

This is a short animation I created by drawing a picture on a piece of paper, each time changing the movement of the character slightly to be a bit different to the previous one. After I finished drawing, I took pictures of each of the pieces of paper, put them together to create a gif to show the animation.

The animation shows a ball bouncing then a person walking to the middle of the page where he gets hit by the ball. The animation relies on persistence of vision to give the illusion of movement.

I could have improved my flip book by thinking of something more creative to draw for the animation. Also, I could have slowed the duration of each frame down to be 0.17 instead of 0.15 as I feel this is a bit too fast. I think this animation is effective in showing what a flip book does and how persistence of vision acts in stop motion animation.

Aardman Animations (Present)

Aardman Animations is an animation company founded by Peter Lord in 1972. The company created a short film called Morph, produced for BBC as a children's program which became highly popular. This later led to their big success. They have had many successful films such as Chicken Run, Flushed Away and Morph.

Aardman specialize in claymation and CGI(computer generated imagery) animation. Claymation includes creating clay models around armature to make it easier to create movement for the characters. A picture is taken each time the model is moved and later put together to create a short animation sequence. The pictures are at 24 frames per second which gives so that the animation sequence runs smoothly and look realistic. This technique relies on persistence of vision to create the illusion of movement in an animation.

For the film Chicken Run, it took a week in the studio to create just one minute of film as it takes a long time to get pictures of the models after every movement. The film has a 24fps frame rate and was created using clay for the models and armature to make it easier for the models to move.

Tim Burton (Present)

Tim Burton is a stop motion animator born in August 1958 in California. He worked at Disney as an animator before he set off to do his own work. He's known for creating visually striking films that blend in the themes of horror and fantasy. These films include Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas and Batman.

Tim Burton uses many different heads and bodies for his characters so they look a bit mis-matching. The characters he makes captures the most human expressions and emotions which creates a very realistic feeling within the animation. The sets that he creates are very detailed where Burton uses dark and gloomy colour schemes to produce a frightening and eerie  atmosphere. He uses armatures, which were devised by Willis O'Brien, to create his characters so that the movements are more realistic. Burton uses a 24fps frame rate so this creates a smooth movement within the characters as it's not too fast to miss the movement and not too slow to look jerky.

Source(s): http://animatedtv.about.com/od/showsaz/ss/animation101.htm

The Quay Brothers (Present)

The Quay Brothers, Steven and Timothy are identical twins born in Pennsylvania in 1947. They are best known for the puppetry and animation along with theatre and opera in many of their productions. They're main inspiration is Jan Svankmajer  and use his surrealist style for their feature-length films.




So far the Quay Brothers have only made two feature-length live action films and almost all of their films have no spoken content in them. They brothers tend to focus more on intense engagement within theatre and opera and working on stage designs, sets and projections for their films.

Most of their films mainly feature puppets made out of doll parts and other materials, either organic or not. The puppets tend to be partially assembled in a dark atmosphere. The brothers used armatures to create movement in these puppets which created realistic movement within the characters. An example of this is in 'Street of Crocodiles'.

Jan Svankmajer (Developer)

Jan Svankmajer is a surrealist animator born in 1934 and has inspired many of todays stop motion animators. He has gained a reputation over the years for his surreal and very creepy films that he creates where he combines pixilation and Claymation. Svankmajer tried to demonstrate a moral within many of his films. People may not understand his films much but when watching closely, there's a deeper meaning to the film, which is what surrealism tends to do.

The films he creates are quite gory and horrifying and some may be funny. He uses a lot exaggerated sounds to create some strange effects to create a surreal atmosphere for the audience. Svankmajer tends to use the technique of speed change in his films to increase tension for the audience and create a terrifying atmosphere. Through stop-motion animation, Svankmajer makes inanimate objects come to life in his films.

His films are very disturbing to watch but interesting at the same time. The different techniques he uses keep the audience glued to watching the film as they want to know what might happen next. His work is very imaginative.

Ray Harryhausen (Developer)

 

Ray Harryhausen was born in California in 1920. He is best known as a visual effects creator and for creating his own stop motion model animation technique known as 'dynamation'. Harryhausen was inspired by Willis O'Brien's work in King Kong, this sparked his interest in stop motion animation.

Harryhausen combined animation with real-life action using puppets. This way, the animation would look more 'real'. He was one of the first to use model armature for his models. As not many people has used armature before it was hard to make the motion smooth.  the special effects of animation along with the live action as well as animated movies. For the film The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953) he used a special technique where he would split up the foreground and the background of live action footage into two different images. After, he would integrate his animated models into the sequence and once again take a picture of it which resulted in smooth stop-animation and live-action animation.



Harryhausen also started playing with colour film when creating The Animal World, a documentary, He experimented with many colour sticks to overcome colour-balance and light-shift problems that he came across.

 

Ray Harryhausen's films were for all ages as he used humans and armature models so people could enjoy the film both ways. His work and technique inspired many such as Aardman and Tim Burton and other film makers. The only downside of using armature is the movement can be a bit restricted.