Stop Motion Animation

So in class Arturo was talking about how not all of our animation has to be computer generated, and he mentioned stop motion animation. This wasn't the first time I had ever heard of stop motion or anything, however it did get me thinking about it.

First, my mind immediately went to the TV show Parks and Recreation. In the show, when a character named Ben gets fired from his job and decides to start up a stop motion film. After a few weeks of non-stop working on his film he finally shows it to his friends and this is the end result

As you can see, the show is kind of making fun of how hard stop motion animation can be if you do not have the help of a professional. I was thinking about the process of making them, and how now a days even with the quality of cameras that we have access to, it still takes roughly 10 shots for every one second of film.

So next I went online and found some other really cool stop motion videos, that while must have taken a lot of work, look really cool.

As you can see this video is made entirely with post it notes. Each variation of each of these images had to have been created, then photographs and then slightly changes, and then photographed again, and so on and so forth. This video is also cool because it shows that anyone with a camera and an idea can make a stop motion video or film. It also proves that not all stop motion, is made with clay

After some time spent watching videos like this online, I started to get more and more interested in stop motion, and then when I thought more about it, I remembered that one of my favorite movies is a stop motion film. Fantastic Mr. Fox came out in 2009 and is a film by Wes Anderson. It follows the life of Mr. Fox and his family and friends. As a Fox, Mr. Fox spent most of his life stealing things from the farmers that live above his borough, although he says that he has given that life up when he started a family, he soon returns to his life of crime.

This movie is absolutely beautiful in its use of stop motion to show the story of this crazy fox and his family. So while you can still make a pretty cool film with just your camera and some post its, the quality of stop motion animation can be absolutely astounding. I think that is pretty cool.