Thursday, February 25, 2016

Can't stop Stop-motion

After seeing such a wondrous stop-motion film like Anomalisa a few weeks ago it got me thinking about some of the other stop-motion and claymation films I know and love.  I grew up with Wallace and Gromit, Chicken Run, and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, all of which are definitely geared towards kids, and even as a young adult I still find so much charm in the style of animation (even though I would never have the patience for it). Some of the stuff I've seen in recent years is absolutely wonderful.  My favorites include Wallace and Gromit's the Wrong Trousers, Community's Christmas special called Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas, and Coraline, Corpse Bride, and Nightmare Before Christmas.  (Why is that creepy directors decide to do stop-motion animated pieces?) That thought right there made me want to venture onto the other side (for some unknown reason) and see just how creepy stop-motion can be. One of the films that Mike suggested I see was called The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb, something that I can't entirely process even after seeing it.  I'm not sure what to think of it...  But I'll let you form an opinion on it by posting it here, the video upload option wasn't working.


What was intriguing about this film was that it was made by using a combination of model stop motion, and a technique called pixilation, which is essentially animating the human actors frame by frame.  At first when I saw that option I wondered why they didn't just shoot the humans in full video and just drop every x number of frames, but after thinking about it the pixilation technique would allow the humans to appear consistent with the animation style of the models.


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