Stop motion is a technique which makes static objects appear to be moving. This can be used on anything from clay to post-it notes. The static objects are made to move by filming one shot at a time and then moving the static object very slightly. When put together because the frames are so short it makes it looks as though the objects are moving very smoothly. There are a few main different types of stop motion, these are clay animation, toy-'mation, 2-D clay animation and paper animation.
Clay animation: The clip above is from one of the most well-known stop motion films ever, 'Wallace and Gromit'. In this clip we see Wallace getting out of bed using a contraption which gets him dressed and makes his breakfast all automatically. The whole of this film is made out of clay using stop-motion. They make the characters by firstly giving them a simple structure made out of wire, from here they then cover this in clay to make them look like this. In order to actually film this they took one frame shots and then moved the clay, they done this over and over again until they had enough shots to finish the film. Making a film with this method can take a very long time, altogether to create 'Wallace and Gromit: the curse of the wererabbit' it took a total of five years to make. This is a staggering amount of time which shows the amount of work and dedication that has to be put in to make this work.
Toy-'mation: The clip above is an example of 'Toy-'mation'. This type of stop motion is doing using toys, from this they then take thousands of single frame shots in order to create a smooth moving film. This example of toy-'mation is called 'GO MINIMAN GO - 30 Years: The Story of the Minifigure'. This tells the story of how minifigures started off in the prehistoric times and then advanced through time until the present state, including lots of historical things which happened such as Isaac Newtons discovery of gravity. This type of stop motion is very effective and it looks very good, this is less time consuming than clay animation as you do not have to make the characters or setting however it still takes a long time.
2D claymation: The clip above it a 2D claymation called 'The plum crazies'. This sort of stop motion is done using clay, the same as in normal claymation, however this time it is placed onto a flat surface, such as a table. In the clip above they used glass to put everything on top of. By using a flat surface to put the clay and background on it makes the claymation come out 2D and give a different effect to 3D claymation. This is still very smooth and hard to tell it is done using static objects. My personal preference between the two claymations is the 3D one, however i still like this.
Paper animation: Paper animation is done very similarly to 2D claymation, however this is done using paper or cardboard cut outs and then placing these on a flat surface such as a table. This clip above is a paper animation remake of the tale 'little red riding hood', in it we see litte red riding hood walking through the woods to get to her Grandmas house, while walking there a wolf follows her and gets to her Grandmas house before her. By the time she arrives her Grandma has been eaten by the wolf, finally a lumberjack comes and kills the wolf and the equilibrium is restored. Paper animation is the easiest of all the stop motions to do, it is the most time efficient and also it is easy to make the figures and back ground.
My opinion on stop motion is that it is very good, the fact that it makes static objects move is very fascinating however the time that it takes to do puts me off doing it, for this reason i have decided not to include any stop motion in my film at all due to time restrictions. However if i had a longer time to make my film opening then stop motion would become a serious consideration.
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