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.

The Nightmare Before Christmas

This weekend I finally watched "The Nightmare Before Christmas". I know, I'm late to the game, but now I can see what all the hype is about. What a intricate and fantastic display of animation. As most of you know, this movie was released in 1993 and it was directed by Henry Selick and produced/co-written by Tim Burton. It tells the tale of Jack Skellington, a resident of Halloweentown, a town that is perpetually Halloween, who wants to experience more of the world. After wandering around, he finds himself in Christmastown, which, as you would expect, is a town that is always Christmas. Excited by the change in scenery, he works to get the Christmas spirit into Halloweentown. This film was entirely stop-motion animation. A crew of over 120 workers worked with 227 puppets representing the characters seen in the movie. They worked on 20 sound stages (sometimes used simultaneously during filming). The movie amounted to 109,440 frames, which is truly incredible for a stop-motion film. Each main character had multiple heads in order to express a broad range of emotion. Jack Skellington had about 400 heads! I am so glad that I watched this movie and if you haven't seen it yet, I would highly recommend it!

The Motion Graphics & Animation Before Christmas

Hi everyone! For my first post I decided I'd start out with a classic. I've always loved Tim Burton and the weird/creepy stuff that comes from him. The Nightmare Before Christmas was one of my favorite movies as a kid, especially because I love Halloween!

The animation in this film is fantastic. It really makes you feel as though this place, Halloweentown, is a real world. The lighting is great, especially in the scene with the moon in the background. The textures of the ground and the stitches on Sally's face are so carefully detailed!

Not to brag or anything, but I did carve a sweet pumpkin 3 years ago that sums up my appreciation for this movie.

Nightmare Before Christmas

A.K.A My childhood. Every Christmas and every Halloween me and my family would gather to watch this movie together. Even back then I knew how stop motion films where made but I couldn't even begin to imagine the time and the amount of people it took to put it all together. I know I should have posted this yesterday because it was Halloween, but too bad. Below is a behind the scenes look at Nightmare Before Christmas.




Coraline is a much more recent film by Tim Burton and even years later, both of these films where made the same way. As they say in the clip below, everything you see on the screen was made by someone. They painted trees, executed ideas, worked on every single hair on Coraline's head. It took and amazing amount of time and an amazing amount of people. The end result is a beautiful film with a unique look and feel because it's not your typical animation film like Toy Story or Cars.

The creation of Jack Skellington

Sarah posted about claymation earlier in October, and the video she put up about the making of Wallace and Gromit intrigued me. Everyone is familiar with the concept of stop-motion, but I don't think anyone that hasn't been involved with a claymation project realizes how much work goes into the creation of each and every frame, or more specifically, how a single character alone is created, brought to life, and then moves and changes within each frame. Because of this I decided to look into the making of one character in particular, Jack Skellington from Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Below is Tim Burton's original sketch of the character:

After creating the look of a character, a story has to then be developed before the creation project can even start. This link goes to a picture of one of the many storyboards created for each scene of the movie.


Then comes the true creation process, the molding and making of Jack:


The intricate detail that goes into each and every one of Jack's limbs to give his character the perfect shape isn't lost on me, nor is the incredible amount of both facial and body expressions that have to created or positioned just so to bring Jack to life and make him smile, frown, stand, walk, or sing. Below is a video about the Facial expressions of both Sally & Jack.


The final product of the beginning of the song 'What's This?' is below. All that work, just for one quick scene!