One of my favorite animated movies has always been The Nightmare Before Christmas which is a stop motion Disney film. In typical Tim Burton fashion, it is a creepy, cynical, and humorous film that has it's quirky songs and lines throughout the film. The film is extremely impressive because it was filmed in 24 frames per second which means every character was moved 24 times per second in every scene, which made just one minute of the film take a whole week to make. The three years that went into creating The Nightmare Before Christmas was well worth it. The beautiful animation has created for some iconic still photos and characters that people still rave about to this day.
There are probably over 60 characters in this movie, which makes it more impressive that the animators had to use the technique of stop motion with them for three years straight (and there was only 4 of them!!! what!!!!!) Overall, this movie is amazing watch, but even more fun to research and look into. Stop motion is something that has always intrigued me, and I believe that this movie might be what started that interest.
I have been a fan of animation for as long as I can remember. My parents were the first to notice my passion in it and suggest I look further into animating. This is when I took a drawing class where one of the projects was to create a charcoal animation; ie destructive animation where you erase and redrawn your frame every time. So far I haven't been able to devote a great deal of time to actual animating, but in my spare time all I do is watch and analyze animated films.
Animation has been around as long as film has been around. With early innovators like Méliès in 1896 already attempting stop - motion, the animation industry has evolved along with traditional narrative films.
While animation has gone through many phases, many pioneered by Walt Disney and his company, the type of animation that interests me the most is stop - motion animation. Many beloved films are produced through stop - motion including The Nightmare Before Christmas, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, and Coraline.
Stop - motion animation is the process where an animator will move the figure by a small amount, take a picture, and repeat. When all of the photos are put together the figure now has the appearance of fluid motion. One of the best examples of this is The Nightmare Before Christmas with dance numbers and multiple characters in each scene. Even though most of the scenes were shot at 12fps, there are two exceptions.
My favorite studio, and a studio that only does stop - motion productions, is studio Laika. Laika is responsible for the stop - motion films of Coraline, ParaNorman, and their upcoming project Kubo and the Two Strings, just to name a few. Studio Laika has 10 years of experience producing stop - motion films, with several Academy Award nominations. Laika has put out stop - motion films that never cease to amaze me. From color dynamics in Coraline to the incredibly accurate representation of bullying in ParaNorman, Laika has been using stop - motion animation to create incredible pieces of art for 10 years, and I can't wait to see what their next 10 hold.
Many of my friends claim that stop - motion animation is weird or disturbing for them but that's almost the reason why I like it. It's physical objects that are manipulated into giving the appearance of smooth motion, and I think that's fascinating. Hopefully with Kubo coming out in August and Anomalisa already out in theaters, people will be more open to stop - motion animation come to understand and respect the incredible amount of work that goes into these beautiful films.
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!
