Chapter One: A Brief History of Stop Motion Animation
“The Humpty Dumpty Circus” (1897) is a show to go down in history, literally.
The short film by Albert E. Smith and J. Stuart Blackton, founders of Vitagraph Studios, was the first American short film to use stop-motion techniques. The film featured acrobats and animals dancing within a circus that came to life. Unfortunately, no footage has survived the test of time, apart from a few archived images. The animation was created, according to Smith in “The Art of Stop Motion” (Priebe, 2006), using a set of dolls with jointed limbs. These jointed limbs enabled the dolls to transform into minifigures that can be shaped into a variety of poses. These were then photographed in sequence to create an animation. This is the definition of stop-motion animation, to manipulate …show more content…
Willis O’Brien’s, “The Lost World” (1925), featured 49 stop-motion dinosaurs (O Reilly) mixed among live action actors and actresses, as if they were actually acting side by side with one another. A technique called Dynamation that was later developed, and refined by Ray Harryhausen. According to the official rayharryhausen.com website, the idea behind the technique started as early as 1938/39. The idea to ‘split’ live action apart, enabling the use of models to interact with the actors within a scene together using post compositing.
It was not until O’Brien’s work on “King Kong” (1993) that stop-motion was taken to a new height in filmmaking. Early audience reaction to King Kong (1933) was very positive, though some reviews mentioned it has an overall clumsiness to the animation, but proved to become a success nevertheless as noted by The New York Times; “(the) main attraction now is a fantastic film known as "King Kong." (Hall) at both the Radio City Music Hall and the RKO Roxy, both venues’ combined having a seating of
“The Humpty Dumpty Circus” (1897) is a show to go down in history, literally.
The short film by Albert E. Smith and J. Stuart Blackton, founders of Vitagraph Studios, was the first American short film to use stop-motion techniques. The film featured acrobats and animals dancing within a circus that came to life. Unfortunately, no footage has survived the test of time, apart from a few archived images. The animation was created, according to Smith in “The Art of Stop Motion” (Priebe, 2006), using a set of dolls with jointed limbs. These jointed limbs enabled the dolls to transform into minifigures that can be shaped into a variety of poses. These were then photographed in sequence to create an animation. This is the definition of stop-motion animation, to manipulate …show more content…
Willis O’Brien’s, “The Lost World” (1925), featured 49 stop-motion dinosaurs (O Reilly) mixed among live action actors and actresses, as if they were actually acting side by side with one another. A technique called Dynamation that was later developed, and refined by Ray Harryhausen. According to the official rayharryhausen.com website, the idea behind the technique started as early as 1938/39. The idea to ‘split’ live action apart, enabling the use of models to interact with the actors within a scene together using post compositing.
It was not until O’Brien’s work on “King Kong” (1993) that stop-motion was taken to a new height in filmmaking. Early audience reaction to King Kong (1933) was very positive, though some reviews mentioned it has an overall clumsiness to the animation, but proved to become a success nevertheless as noted by The New York Times; “(the) main attraction now is a fantastic film known as "King Kong." (Hall) at both the Radio City Music Hall and the RKO Roxy, both venues’ combined having a seating of