Theme: Stop-Motion Animation

Stop-Motion Animation is a film technique where a three-dimensional model is moved by minute increments and each movement filmed one frame at a time. When the frames are run together, this gives the appearance of the model moving. This should be differentiated from regular Animation where a two-dimensional drawn image is moved one frame at a time.

The first stop-motion animated films were made in the silent era. The pioneer of the form was Willis O’Brien who went on to make the greatest of all stop-motion animated films King Kong (1933). The most famous of animators was Ray Harryhausen who made a series of films from the 1950s to the 1980s where his stop-motion animated creatures were the stars of the show.

Stop-motion is a costly and time-consuming process. It has largely died away since the 1980s, being supplanted by advances in visual effects and then the CGI revolution of the 1990s onwards. There are however still some throwbacks, in particular the work of Henry Selick and Aardman Animation, as well as small appearances in other films.

A side branch of Stop-Motion Animation is Claymation where the dimensional models are made out of clay.