Stop-motion Animated Short Films

Stop motion is an animated filmmaking technique in which objects are physically manipulated in small increments between individually photographed frames so that they will appear to exhibit independent motion or change when the series of frames is played back. Any kind of object can thus be animated, but puppets with movable joints (puppet animation) or plasticine figures (''clay animation'' or claymation) are most commonly used. Puppets, models or clay figures built around an armature are used in model animation. Stop motion with live actors is often referred to as pixilation. Stop motion of flat materials such as paper, fabrics or photographs is usually called cutout animation.

Terminology

The term "stop motion", relating to the animation technique, is often spelled with a hyphen as "stop-motion". Both orthographical variants, with and without the hyphen, are correct, but the hyphenated one has a second meaning that is unrelated to animation or cinema: "a device for automatically stopping a machine or engine when something has gone wrong" ('' The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary'', 1993 edition).

History

1849 to 1895: Before film

Before the advent of chronophotography in 1878, a small number of picture sequences were photographed with subjects in separate poses. These can now be regarded as a form of stop motion or pixilation, but very few results were meant to be animated. Until celluloid film base was established in 1888 and set the standard for moving image, animation could only be presented via mechanisms such as the zoetrope.

In 1849, Joseph Plateau published a note about improvements for his Fantascope (a.k.a. phénakisticope). A new translucent variation had improved picture quality and could be viewed with both eyes, by several people at the same time. Plateau stated that the illusion could be advanced even further with an idea communicated to him by Charles Wheatstone: a combination of the fantascope and Wheatstone's stereoscope. Plateau thought the construction of a sequential set of stereoscopic image pairs would be the more difficult part of the plan than adapting two copies of his improved fantascope to be fitted with a stereoscope. Wheatstone had suggested using photographs on paper of a solid object, for instance a statuette. Plateau concluded that for this purpose 16 plaster models could be made with 16 regular modifications. He believed such a project would take much time and careful effort, but would be well worth it because of the expected marvelous results. Unfortunately, the plan was never executed, possibly because Plateau was almost completely blind by this time.

In 1852, Jules Duboscq patented a "Stéréoscope-fantascope ou Bïoscope" (or abbreviated as stéréofantascope) stroboscopic disc. The only known extant disc contains stereoscopic photograph pairs of different phases of the motion of a machine. Due to the long exposure times necessary to capture an image with the photographic emulsions of the period, the sequence could not be recorded live and must have been assembled from separate photographs of the various positions of the machinery.

In 1855, Johann Nepomuk Czermak's published an article about his Stereophoroskop and other experiments aimed at stereoscopic moving images. He mentioned a method of sticking needles in a stroboscopic disc so that it looked like one needle was being pushed in and out of the cardboard when animated. He realized that this method provided basically endless possibilities to make different 3D animations. He then introduced two methods to animate stereoscopic pairs of images, one was basically a stereo viewer using two stroboscopic discs and the other was more or less similar to the later zoetrope. Czermak explained how suitable stereoscopic photographs could be made by recording a series of models, for instance to animate a growing pyramid.

On 27 February 1860, Peter Hubert Desvignes received British patent no. 537 for 28 monocular and stereoscopic variations of cylindrical stroboscopic devices (much like the later zoetrope). Desvignes' ''Mimoscope'', received an Honourable Mention "for ingenuity of construction" at the 1862 International Exhibition in London. Desvignes "employed models, insects and other objects, instead of pictures, with perfect success."

In 1874, Jules Janssen made several practice discs for the recording of the passage of Venus with his photographic rifle. He used a model of the planet and a light source standing in for the sun. While actual recordings of the passage of Venus have not been located, some practice discs survived and the images of one were turned into a short animated film decades after the development of cinematography.

In 1887, Étienne-Jules Marey created a large zoetrope with a series of plaster models based on his chronophotographs of birds in flight.Herbert, Stephen. (n.d.
''From Daedaleum to Zoetrope'', Part 2.
Retrieved 2014-05-31.

1895-1928: The silent film era

It is estimated that 80 to 90 percent of all silent film are lost. Extant contemporary movie catalogs, reviews and other documentation can provide some details on lost films, but this kind of written documentation is also incomplete and often insufficient to properly date all extant films or even identify them if original titles are missing. Possible stop motion in lost films is even harder to trace. The principles of animation and other special effects were mostly kept a secret, not only to prevent use of such techniques by competitors, but also to keep audiences interested in the mystery of the magic tricks.

Stop motion is closely related to the stop trick, in which the camera is temporarily stopped during the recording of a scene to create a change before filming is continued (or for which the cause of the change is edited out of the film). In the resulting film the change will be sudden and a logical cause of the change will be mysteriously absent or replaced with a fake cause that is suggested in the scene. The oldest known example is used for the beheading in Edison Manufacturing Company's 1895 film ''The Execution of Mary Stuart''. The technique of stop motion can be interpreted as repeatedly applying the stop trick. In 1917 clay animation pioneer Helena Smith-Dayton referred to the principle behind her work as "stop action", a synonym of "stop motion".

French trick film pioneer Georges Méliès claimed to have invented the stop-trick and popularized it by using it in many of his short films. He reportedly used stop-motion animation in 1899 to produce moving letterforms.

Segundo de Chomón

Spanish filmmaker Segundo de Chomón (1871–1929) made many trick films in France for Pathé. He has often been compared to Georges Méliès as he also made many fantasy films with stop tricks and other illusions (helped by his wife, Julienne Mathieu). By 1906 Chomón was using stop motion animation. ''Le théâtre de Bob'' (April 1906) features over three minutes of stop motion animation with dolls and objects to represent a fictional automated theatre owned by Bob, played by a live-action child actor. It is the oldest extant film with proper stop motion and a definite release date.

Segundo de Chomón's ''Sculpteur moderne'' was released on 31 January 1908 and features heaps of clay molding itself into detailed sculptures that are capable of minor movements. The final sculpture depicts an old woman and walks around before it's picked up, squashed and molded back into a sitting old lady.

Edwin S. Porter and Wallace McCutcheon Sr.

American film pioneer Edwin S. Porter filmed a single-shot "lightning sculpting" film with a baker molding faces from a patch of dough in ''Fun in a Bakery Shop'' (1902), considered as foreshadowing of clay animation.

In 1905, Porter showed animated letters and very simple cutout animation of two hands in the intertitles in ''How Jones lost his roll''.

Porter experimented with a small bit of crude stop-motion animation in his trick film '' Dream of a Rarebit Fiend'' (1906).

''The "Teddy" Bears'' (2 March 1907), made in collaboration with Wallace McCutcheon Sr., mainly shows people in bear costumes, but the short film also features a short stop-motion segment with small teddy bears.

On 15 February 1908, Porter released the trick film ''A Sculptor's Welsh Rabbit Dream'' that featured clay molding itself into three complete busts. No copy of the film has yet been located. It was soon followed by the similar extant film ''The Sculptor's Nightmare'' (6 May 1908) by Wallace McCutcheon Sr.

J. Stuart Blackton

J. Stuart Blackton's ''The Haunted Hotel'' (23 February 1907) featured a combination of live-action with practical special effects and stop motion animation of several objects, a puppet and a model of the haunted hotel. It was the first stop motion film to receive wide scale appreciation. Especially a large close-up view of a table being set by itself baffled viewers; there were no visible wires or other noticeable well-known tricks. This inspired other filmmakers, including French animator Émile Cohl and Segundo de Chomón. De Chomón would release the similar '' The House of Ghosts'' and ''El hotel eléctrico'' in 1908, with the latter also containing some very early pixilation.

''The Humpty Dumpty Circus'' (1908, considered lost) by Blackton and his British-American Vitagraph partner Albert E. Smith showed an animated performance of the figures from a popular wooden toy set. Smith would later claim that this was "the first stop-motion picture in America". The inspiration would have come from seeing how puffs of smoke behaved in the interrupted recordings for a stop trick film they were making. Smith would have suggested to get a patent for the technique, but Blackton thought it wasn't that important. Smith's recollections are not considered to be very reliable.

Émile Cohl

Blackton's ''The Haunted Hotel'' made a big impression in Paris, where it was released as ''L'hôtel hanté: fantasmagorie épouvantable''. When Gaumont bought a copy to further distribute the film, it was carefully studied by some of their filmmakers to find out how it was made. Reportedly it was newcomer Émile Cohl who unraveled the mystery. Not long after, Cohl released his first film, ''Japon de fantaisie'' (June 1907), featuring his own imaginative use of the stop-motion technique.
It was followed by the revolutionary hand-drawn '' Fantasmagorie'' (17 August 1908) and many more animated films by Cohl.

Other notable stop-motion films by Cohl include ''Les allumettes animées (Animated Matches)'' (1908), and ''Mobilier fidèle'' (1910, in collaboration with Romeo Bosetti). ''Mobilier fidèle'' is often confused with Bosetti's object animation tour de force ''Le garde-meubles automatique (The Automatic Moving Company)'' (1912). Both films feature furniture moving by itself.

Arthur Melbourne-Cooper

Of the more than 300 short films produced between 1896 and 1915 by British film pioneer Arthur Melbourne-Cooper, an estimated 36 contained forms of animation. Based on later reports by Melbourne-Cooper and by his daughter Audrey Wadowska, some believe that Cooper's ''Matches: an Appeal'' was produced in 1899 and therefore the very first stop-motion animation. The extant black-and-white film shows a matchstick figure writing an appeal to donate a Guinea for which Bryant and May would supply soldiers with sufficient matches. No archival records are known that could proof that the film was indeed created in 1899 during the beginning of the Second Boer War. Others place it at 1914, during the beginning of World War I. Cooper created more ''Animated Matches'' scenes in the same setting. These are believed to also have been produced in 1899, while a release date of 1908 has also been given. The 1908 ''Animated Matches'' film by Émile Cohl may have caused more confusion about the release dates of Cooper's matchstick animations. It also raises the question whether Cohl may have been inspired by Melbourne-Cooper or vice versa.

Melbourne-Cooper's lost films ''Dolly's Toys'' (1901) and ''The Enchanted Toymaker'' (1904) may have included stop-motion animation. ''Dreams of Toyland'' (1908) features a scene with many animated toys that lasts approximately three and a half minutes.

Alexander Shiryaev

As a means to plan his performances, ballet dancer and choreographer Alexander Shiryaev started making approximately 20- to 25-centimeter-tall puppets out of papier-mâché on poseable wire frames. He then sketched all the sequential movements on paper. When he arranged these vertically on a long strip, it was possible to give a presentation of the complete dance with a home cinema projector. Later on, he bought a movie camera and between 1906 and 1909 he made many short films, including puppet animations. As a dancer and choreographer, Shiryaev had a special talent to create motion in his animated films. According to animator Peter Lord his work was decades ahead of its time. Part of Shiryaev's animation work is featured in Viktor Bocharov's documentary "Alexander Shiryaev: A Belated Premiere" (2003).

Władysław Starewicz (Russian period)

Polish-Russian Władysław Starewicz (1882–1965), started his film career around 1909 in Kaunas filming live insects. He wanted to document rutting stag beetles, but the creatures wouldn't cooperate or would even die under the bright lamps needed for filming. He solved the problem by using wire for the limbs of dried beetles and then animating them in stop motion. The resulting short film, presumably 1 minute long, was probably titled by the Latin name for the species: '' Жук-олень (Lucanus Cervus)'' (1910, considered lost).

After moving to Moscow, Starewicz continued animating dead insects, but now as characters in imaginative stories with much dramatic complexity. He garnered much attention and international acclaim with these short films, including the 10-minute '' Прекрасная Люканида, или Война усачей с рогачами (The Beautiful Leukanida)'' (03-1912), the two-minute ''Веселые сценки из жизни животных (Happy Scenes from Animal Life)'', the 12-minute '' Прекрасная Люканида, или Война усачей с рогачами (The Cameraman's Revenge)'' (10-1912) and the 5-minute '' Стрекоза и муравей (The Grasshopper and the Ant )'' (1913). Reportedly many viewers were impressed with how much could be achieved with trained insects, or at least wondered what tricks could have been used, since few people were familiar with the secrets of stop motion animation. ''Рождество обитателей леса (The Insects' Christmas)'' (1913) featured other animated puppets, including Father Christmas and a frog. Starewicz made several other stop motion films in the next two years, but mainly went on to direct live-action short and feature films before he fled from Russia in 1918.

Willis O'Brien's early films

Willis O' Brien's first stop motion film was '' The Dinosaur and the Missing Link: A Prehistoric Tragedy'' (1915). Apart from the titular dinosaur and " missing link" ape, it featured several cavemen and an ostrich-like "desert quail", all relatively lifelike models made with clay. This led to a series of short animated comedies with a prehistoric theme for Edison Company, including ''Prehistoric Poultry'' (1916), ''R.F.D. 10,000 B.C.'' (1917), ''The Birth of a Flivver'' (1917) and ''Curious Pets of Our Ancestors'' (1917). O'Brien was then hired by producer Herbert M. Dawley to direct, create effects, co-write and co-star with him for ''The Ghost of Slumber Mountain'' (1918). The collaborative film combined live-action with animated dinosaur models in a 45-minute film, but after the premiere it was cut down to approximately 12 minutes. Dawley did not give O'Brien credits for the visual effects, and instead claimed the animation process as his own invention and even applied for patents. O'Brien's stop motion work was recognized as a technique to create lifelike creatures for adventure films. O' Brien further pioneered the technique with animated dinosaur sequences for the live-action feature '' The Lost World'' (1925).

Helena Smith Dayton

New York artist Helena Smith Dayton, possibly the first female animator, had much success with her "Caricatypes" clay statuettes before she began experimenting with clay animation. Some of her first resulting short films were screened on 25 March 1917. She released an adaptation of William Shakespeare's '' Romeo and Juliet'' approximately half a year later. Although the films and her technique received much attention of the press, it seems she did not continue making films after she returned to New York from managing a YMCA in Paris around 1918. None of her films have yet surfaced, but the extant magazine articles have provided several stills and approximately 20 poorly printed frames from two film strips.

Starewicz in Paris

By 1920 Starewicz had settled in Paris, and started making new stop motion films. ''Dans les Griffes de L'araignée'' (finished 1920, released 1924) featured detailed hand-made insect puppets that could convey facial expressions with moving lips and eyelids.

Other silent stop motion

One of the earliest clay animation films was ''Modelling Extraordinary'', which impressed audiences in 1912.

The early Italian feature film ''Cabiria'' (1914) featured some stop motion techniques.

1930s and 1940s

Starewicz finished the first feature stop motion film '' Le Roman de Renard (The Tale of the Fox)'' in 1930, but problems with its soundtrack delayed its release. In 1937 it was released with a German soundtrack and in 1941 with its French soundtrack.

Hungarian-American filmmaker George Pal developed his own stop motion technique of replacing wooden dolls (or parts of them) with similar figures displaying changed poses and/or expressions. He called it Pal-Doll and used it for his Puppetoons films since 1932. The particular replacement animation method itself also became better known as puppetoon. In Europe he mainly worked on promotional films for companies such as Philips. Later Pal gained much success in Hollywood with a string of Academy Award for Best Animated Short Films, including ''Rhythm in the Ranks'' (1941), ''Tulips Shall Grow'' (1942), ''Jasper and the Haunted House'' (1942), the Dr. Seuss'' (1943) and ''And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street'' (1944), ''Jasper and the Beanstalk'' (1945), ''John Henry and the Inky-Poo'' (1946), ''Jasper in a Jam'' (1946), and '' Tubby the Tuba'' (1947). Many of his puppetoon films were selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

Willis O' Brien's expressive and emotionally convincing animation of the big ape in ''King Kong'' (1933) is widely regarded as a milestone in stop-motion animation and a highlight of Hollywood cinema in general.

A 1940 promotional film for Autolite, an automotive parts supplier, featured stop-motion animation of its products marching past Autolite factories to the tune of Franz Schubert's '' Military March''. An abbreviated version of this sequence was later used in television ads for Autolite, especially those on the 1950s CBS program '' Suspense'', which Autolite sponsored.

The first British animated feature was the stop motion instruction film '' Handling Ships'' (1945) by Halas and Batchelor for the British Admiralty. It was not meant for general cinemas, but did become part of the official selection of the 1946 Cannes Film Festival.

The first Belgian animated feature was an adaptation of the Tintin comic ''The Crab with the Golden Claws'' (1947) with animated puppets.

The first Czech animated feature was the package film ''The Czech Year'' (1947) with animated puppets by Jiří Trnka. The film won several awards at the Venice Film Festival and other international festivals. Trnka would make several more award-winning stop motion features including '' The Emperor's Nightingale'' (1949), ''Prince Bayaya'' (1950), ''Old Czech Legends'' (1953) or '' A Midsummer Night's Dream'' (1959). He also directed many short films and experimented with other forms of animation.

1950s

Ray Harryhausen learned under O'Brien on the film '' Mighty Joe Young'' (1949). Harryhausen would go on to create many memorable stop motion effects for a string of successful fantasy films over the next three decades. These included ''The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms'' (1953), ''It Came from Beneath the Sea'' (1955), '' Jason and the Argonauts'' (1963), ''The Golden Voyage of Sinbad'' (1973) and '' Clash of the Titans'' (1981).

It wasn't until 1954 before a feature animated film with a technique other than cel animation was produced in the US. The first was the stop motion adaptation of 19th century composer Engelbert Humperdinck's opera '' Hänsel und Gretel'' as '' Hansel and Gretel: An Opera Fantasy''.

In 1955 Karel Zeman made his first feature film ''Journey to the Beginning of Time'' inspired by Jules Verne, featuring stop motion animation of dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures.

Art Clokey started his adventures in clay with a freeform clay short film called ''Gumbasia'' (1955), which shortly thereafter propelled him into the production of his more structured TV series ''Gumby'' (1955–1989), with the iconic titular character. In partnership with the United Lutheran Church in America, he also produced ''Davey and Goliath'' (1960–2004). The theatrical feature '' Gumby: The Movie'' (1992, released in 1995) was a box office bomb.

On 22 November 1959, the first episode of '' Unser Sandmänchen (Our Little Sandman)'' was broadcast on DFF (East German television). The 10-minute daily bedtime show for young children features the title character as an animated puppet, and other puppets in different segments. A very similar ''Sandmänchen'' series, possibly conceived earlier, ran on West German television from 1 December 1959 until the German reunification in 1989. The East German show was continued on other German networks when DFF ended in 1991, and is one of the longest running animated series in the world. The theatrical feature ''Das Sandmännchen – Abenteuer im Traumland'' (2010) was fully animated with stop motion puppets.

1960s and 1970s

Japanese puppet animator Tadahito Mochinaga started out as assistant animator in short anime (propaganda) films ''Arichan'' (1941) and ''Momotarō no Umiwashi'' (1943). He fled to Manchukuo during the war and stayed in China afterwards. Due to the scarcity of paint and film stock shortly after the war, Mochinaga decided to work with puppets and stop motion. His work helped popularize puppet animation in China, before he returned to Japan around 1953 where he continued working as animation director. In the 1960s, Mochinaga supervised the "Animagic" puppet animation for productions by Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass' Videocraft International, Ltd. (later called Rankin/Bass Productions, Inc.) and Dentsu, starting with the syndicated television series '' The New Adventures of Pinocchio'' (1960-1961). The Christmas TV special ''Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer'' has been telecasted annually since 1964 and has become one of the most beloved holiday specials in the United States. They made three theatrical feature films ''Willy McBean and His Magic Machine'' (1965), '' The Daydreamer'' (1966, stop motion / live-action) and ''Mad Monster Party?'' (1966, released in 1967), and the television special ''Ballad of Smokey the Bear'' (1966) before the collaboration ended. Rankin/Bass worked with other animators for more TV specials, with titles such as '' The Little Drummer Boy'' (1968), ''Santa Claus is Comin' to Town'' (1970) and ''Here Comes Peter Cottontail'' (1971).

British television has shown many stop motion series for young children since the 1960s. An early example is '' Snip and Snap'' (1960-1961) by John Halas in collaboration with Danish paper sculptor Thok Søndergaard (Thoki Yenn), featuring dog Snap, cut from a sheet of paper by pair of scissors Snip.

Apart from their cutout animation series, British studio Smallfilms (Peter Firmin and Oliver Postgate) produced several stop motion series with puppets, beginning with ''Pingwings'' (1961-1965) featuring penguin-like birds knitted by Peter's wife Joan and filmed on their farm (where most of their productions were filmed in an unused barn). It was followed by ''Pogles' Wood'' (1965-1967), ''Clangers'' (1969-1972, 1974, revived in 2015), ''Bagpuss'' (1974) and '' Tottie: The Story of a Doll's House'' (1984).

Czech surrealist filmmaker Jan Švankmajer's released his short artistic films since 1964, which usually contain much experimental stop motion. He started to gain much international recognition in the 1980s. Since 1988 he has mostly been directing feature films which feature much more live action than stop motion. These include '' Alice'', an adaptation of Lewis Carroll's ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'', and ''Faust'', a rendition of the legend of the German scholar. Švankmajer's work has been highly influential on other artists, such as Terry Gilliam and the Quay brothers (although the latter claim to have only discovered Švankmajer's films after having developed their own similar style).

French animator Serge Danot created ''The Magic Roundabout'' (1965) which played for many years on the BBC
...