Animation…

Animation has been around since prehistoric times. The images on caves show that they tried to show movement in their pictures and may have used light to trick the eyes into believing the images are moving (Ceurstemont, 2013). 

Cave Painting

There are different types of animation; I will be looking at Stop-Motion Animation. Stop-Motion Animation is when physical objects are moved between images (frames), this creates the optical illusion of the object actually moving. Initially toys and other inflexible physical objects were used until the idea of using Cel animation which gave way to clay and puppets being used (O’Reilly, 2007). This then led onto animations such as Wallace and Gromit, a Grand Day Out created by Nick Park and Chicken Run also created by Nick Park (BBC, 2002).

A Grand Day Out

Stop-Motion is unique and is capable in bringing creativity and life to inanimate objects. This type of animation is highly popular in social media and when the video is shared more money is being made and their message is being sent further than they themselves could (Qudos-Animations, 2014).

Unfortunately Stop-Motion becoming less common in films with by computer generated animation taking over (Emson, 2011). This is due to the amount of effort put into making a film length Stop-Motion animation with painstaking work and the film generally take years to create. It is also extremely difficult to change and adapt a scene once it has been shot (Pomerantz, 2014).

Chicken Run - Stop-Motion

Chicken Run is a stop-motion animation that uses clay models to create the story of a group of chickens trying to escape from the life chosen for them by the farmer and his wife. This film was created 3 dimensionally, to provide more quality to the movie. There were 40 animators working on the film and for 1 minute of filming was about 1,440 frames (Jeanmendoza, 2011).