Stop Motion in Robot Chicken

As we become more familiar with animation software like After Effects, it seems like computers have made animation ten times easier. With the class's limited understanding of basic functions of After Effects, we can create a ball that bounces for ever in a matter of minutes. Imagine what we would be able to do with deeper understanding of the software. Because the software seems to make animation so easy, one may assume that all big studios would utilize those programs rather than rely on older animation techniques. Of course, there are a number of shows that make use of older and much more difficult animation techniques, like stop motion. One such show is Cartoon Network's Robot Chicken.

Robot Chicken is a sketch comedy show that airs during Cartoon Network's "Adult Swim" segment nightly segment. The show makes use of stop motion animation, where they move the figures in tiny increments, recording each new placement one frame at a time. The do make use of some computer generated graphics for explosions or mouth movements, but a majority of the show is done stop motion, a technique that can take hours to just get a couple of seconds of video, and that's not counting the time it takes to make each figure and setting. You may not like the crude humor that the show has, but you can appreciate the amount of work that the creators put into each ten second sketch.