The Basic Principles of Stop and Clay animation

The practise of stop motion animation is extremely similar to standard filming, taking one still frame after another and playing them in quick succession to produce a moving picture. The process of photographing something move in quick succession could be attributed to Eadweard Muybridge. Muybridge was trying discover whether or not a horse lifts all hooves of the ground while in full gallop. how he did this was by setting up multiple cameras along a race track and taking a photo as the horse gallops by. Playing these photographs one after another in quick succession made the horse animate and appear to be running. This was how film was created and in a way it was the very first stop motion.

However the term stop motion is generally used as a means of making objects appear to move and animate of there own accord which they would not otherwise be able to do. For example if you had a model of a person with moveable joints and limbs you would be able to make it appear to animate through stop motion. What you would do is to take a still image of the object as is, then move a limb ever so slightly, take another still then move it again and so on. Then when you play the images back the model would appear to moving on screen of its own accord. Depending on how small the movements are between each new photo will effect how smooth the animation will be If you were to have big movements between each frame it would create a more jumpy effect and the smaller each movement a smoother one.

Claymation 

Claymation is another form of stop motion which uses the same principle of taking frame after frame an moving the subject between each frame and then playing it back in quick succession. The Subject or subjects in the case of claymation are all malleable and so are easy to rearrange between each frame, obvious and well known examples of claymation in modern culture would include Wallace and Gromit by Nick Parks and Robert Chicken, created by Seth Green. Another famous example of claymation is in the Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark film. The scene in which the ark is opened and a number of nazi officers have their faces melted of, used techniques similar to those used in claymation.  

  

This is my example of short stop motion to demonstrate my understanding and findings of the basic principles. Its a short 30 second piece showing a ball of blue tac move across screen and morph into different shapes and forms on its own volition.   

Its a very simple piece and not at all perfect, iv created other stop motions in the past which took a lot more time and effort, however for the sake of a demonstration and due to the short amount of time i had this does the job of showing very simply how the process works and what you can do with almost nothing.