Stop-motion animation is a filmmaking technique that works like this: you take a picture of a puppet or object, then move it a little bit and take another picture. Then you move it again, and take another picture. By repeating this process hundreds of times and playing the individual pictures back in sequence, the illusion is created that the puppet or object moves by itself and comes to life! Believe it or not, there are people who devote much of their lives to doing this very thing, in order to tell stories and entertain an audience. It is likely you have seen a stop-motion film somewhere and been inspired by it, which may have led you to pick up this book and learn more about it. If stop-motion animation excites you so much that you might want to try it yourself, welcome to the club! You are now part of a community of artists who lurk in dark corners, contributing to this amazing underground art form. Compared to other forms of filmmaking, stop-motion animation has always had an under-appreciated existence, very much on the cutting-edge, which is part of what attracts many of us to it in the first place.
For me, stop-motion animation is something that I felt was always sneaking up on me and then finally grabbed me at the right time. As a child growing up in Grosse Pointe, a suburb of Detroit, Michigan, I loved animated films, and I would see the odd stop-motion film here and there without really knowing what I was looking at. The first glimpse I ever saw into how it was done was a behind-the-scenes television special for The Empire Strikes Back, when I saw Phil Tippett bringing a Tauntaun to life frame by frame. In later years, Will Vinton’s Meet the Raisins special really caught my attention in regards to how expressive and lifelike his clay characters were. One day, while watching an episode of Ren & Stimpy on Nickelodeon, the show was interrupted unexpectedly by a film called Creature Comforts, which blew me away and piqued my interest even further. Upon attending the University of Michigan School of Art, The Nightmare Before Christmas and Wallace and Gromit in The Wrong Trousers were both released, and by that point I was so inspired that I decided I had to try this technique myself. Animation was not really taught formally where I was, so I managed to combine my art courses with as many filmmaking courses as possible and start teaching myself. I started making 16mm films with Monty Python-style cut-outs and then tried my hand at animating clay and was fascinated when I got to see the results projected. My first experiments led to an independent study in my final year, where I created a live-action/clay animation silent film called Snot Living. During this time I also got to work in 2D animation with a local animator named Steve Stanchfield, who taught me how to improve my animation and gave me a real passion for the films of the past. Having now been consumed by the animation bug, I discovered a one-year program in Vancouver, Canada, at a school called VanArts, and moved there in 1998 to further my training in Classical Animation under the master animator Lee Mishkin. The school offered me the opportunity to stay a second year and make a film, so I decided to try and return to my stop-motion roots. Once again, I created my own opportunities to shoot my film using a new software that had just come out called Stop Motion Pro. While working on my student project, someone suggested I should offer a workshop for some students at VanArts who were interested in trying stop-motion. I started teaching workshops, and they soon grew into a 12-week part-time weekend course which I have taught there ever since. My student film, Bad News, was never completed, but the trade-off was full-time work at VanArts as an admissions advisor and meeting a cute animation student named Janet, who I eventually married in 2001. Having established roots in Vancouver, I later started another film that is still in progress, Storytime with Nigel, combining stop-motion with 2D animation. Alongside my own projects, the main thing that has kept me going with stop-motion animation has been my students from all over the world with whom I have shared in pursuing this wonderful craft (see Figure I.1).
In the art world, there has been and always will be a “clash of the titans,” you could say, between artists with a vision for art and businessmen with a vision for money. Stop-motion animation is often referred to as a medium for artists rather than for producers. Right now, due to the monumental success of computer-generated (CG) animation by Pixar and other filmmakers, there is what some would call an over-saturation of this brand of digital animation. Mainstream Hollywood has seen the dollar signs racked in by these CG films and has concluded that this is the best way to make money...and, oh yes, movies too. Producers, directors, and animators alike also like CG because it’s easy to change things and go over the animation repeatedly until they get it right. Stop-motion does not typically allow for going back to make changes to please a client or producer; once a scene is animated after long hours of hard work, it is finished. Ultimately, as technology grows and computers get faster, production for CG animation also gets faster, and cheaper. When faced with the budget for a CG production versus the vast amount of expensive studio space, materials, equipment, and specialized talent required for a stop-motion production, investors and producers will most likely go for the cheaper CG route, especially in our fast-food culture that wants everything now. To be green-lit, stop-motion productions have always relied on the dedication of talented craftsmen who love to create these miniature worlds from scratch, combined with creative management who believe in the project.
So long as there are good stories to back them up, there is nothing inherently wrong with the CG films and effects being made today. I quite enjoy some of them, and every medium has its place in the animation industry. The main concern that I have, which I already get glimpses of from working in an animation school, is that young people today growing up with CG films and video games are looking only at the final product. They see that it is made with a computer, so they think that if they learn everything about computers, they can be animators. However, animation is an art form that for most of its history has been created with pencil and paper, or a lump of clay, perhaps. The computer can mimic the same effects created with these materials, but what will happen to these original art forms if they are not learned first, or at all? Luckily, today’s major studios still recognize the value of measuring an animator’s skill by their artistic ability rather than their technical knowledge, but what happens if there are no longer any young artists who know how to create art without plugging something in? My friend Ken Southworth, who worked at Disney, MGM, and Hanna-Barbera studios from the 1940s through the 1970s, describes an animator as being “one-third artist, one-third actor, and one-third engineer.” There should always be a balance between all of these skills: the ability to draw and create art, to create a performance, and to understand the technical side of how to put it all together. The technology behind animation is always changing, but art and performance are the heart and soul that never change, regardless of the medium used.
Sometimes I hear common people complain about a stiff, lifeless quality to some of the CG films being made, and this is simply what happens when the traditional skills are ignored in any medium. It is also why most people perk up when a good stop-motion film is released every now and then. It is a medium that people love to watch! They love watching real physical objects move on the screen with a life of their own, bathed in real lights on real sets. It truly is a fantastic magic trick that people really respond to. I think part of this fascination deals with the subconscious mind, in that we all have memories of playing with dolls, action figures or Play-Doh from our childhood, and the tactile senses that come with it. So to see these kinds of materials come to life on screen is a kind of surreal nostalgia trip that harkens us back to old pastimes and imagining the life we would give to our toys. All observation of animation involves the senses of sight and sound, but for the one creating it, stop-motion also combines this with the senses of smell (although not all of them pleasant) and more importantly, of touch. Like King Midas turning all he touched into gold, the sensation of touching a puppet and feeling the life inside it is another discipline that takes us back to simpler times and a world of magic. There is also something strangely satisfying about seeing a puppet made of clay have its own life on screen, while at the same time seeing fingerprints of the animator dance around on its clay surface. It is much like leaning in close to a painting to see all of the brushstrokes and canvas texture leaking through, and then stepping back to see the wonderful illusion it creates. The mark of the creator is evident in the work itself, which is why we still travel miles to see the pyramids or an original Leonardo or Picasso. It is all part of the same human impulse for staying connected to our past by exposing ourselves to great art. Stop-motion animation satisfies this hunger within us in a way that no other medium can, and that is why it must and will continue, whether it is through the occasional million-dollar studio production or the lonely artist living on noodles in their basement.
As much as computer technology has dominated the practice of creating animation, the irony is that the same technology has made stop-motion more accessible and better looking than ever before. What used to be only possible with expensive film equipment can now be done with a webcam on the same machine you use to check your e-mail. The Internet has also opened a whole new world of possibilities for showcasing films for all to enjoy and for artists to share ideas. The technical tools of the present and future are allowing people of all ages to enhance and improve the quality of this unique art form. The purpose of this book is to serve as a launching pad for you to get started with creating your own stop-motion animation. It is not meant to be an exhaustive document of every single skill or technique required to master all aspects of the craft, because there are so many: drawing, sculpting, lighting, storytelling, acting, molding, casting, welding, brazing, designing, woodworking, and the list goes on. You would need an entire encyclopedia of books to cover the multifaceted disciplines of stop-motion, and ultimately, the best way to learn the medium is to just do it! This book will help you understand the history of past stop-motion films, what the animation industry is like, how to set up your own studio space, how to build puppets and animate them, and how to plan your own films, so you can carry on with your own experimentation. The exercises and lessons are based on the animation and film training I have received and the lessons I have learned in my own experience creating and teaching stop-motion, passing them along from one artist to another. The book also contains interviews with six other stop-motion artists who share their knowledge and experience working in different corners of the industry, from feature films to independent productions. If you are a beginner and have never animated before, the basic exercises in this book will help you get started learning the principles that make animation work best. If you are a CG or traditional animator, these exercises may also help you get back to the basics and enjoy the experience of getting your hands dirty, and hopefully they’ll help you improve your animation skills.
In one of my favorite stop-motion films, Closed Mondays by Will Vinton and Bob Gardiner, the central character looks at the camera and says, “I wonder what makes it work!” After reading through this book and using it to create your own animation, you will know what makes it work, but make sure you keep wondering.