3. Claymation and Stop-Motion Animation

Claymation and stop-motion animation has interested me because recently I have seen The Fantastic Mr. Fox and Coraline, two amazing films. Claymation is a form of stop-motion animation that uses of frame captures of clay figures in different positions to create the illusion of movement; stop motion is the same thing, just not specifically with clay. The claymation and stop-motion animations that I have seen have enlightened me to how tedious the work is. I have also seen the shift toward realism manifest itself within these forms of animation. Coraline being a claymation film and the latter being stop-motion animation. both of these films were fantastic in plot line, but I had never seen a feature length stop-motion or claymation film before, and I realized how tedious the art work must have been because of all of the little subtle movements of their whiskers, eyes, hair, and endless other aspects of movement. Although I did find out that the sets in Coraline were scanned into a computer and converted into digital imaging, the film was nonetheless amazing. these types of films are usually projected at a frame rate of about 12 frames per second, different from motion picture films which are projected at a frame rate of 24 frames per second. This type of animation really does depend on the “interstices that lie between the frames”, just as Norman McLaren put it.

The concepts of these films both have surrealist and realist aspects within them. As talked about in chapter one of Understanding Animation, Disney pushed for a shift toward realism within cel animation. This shift is still present today because there are very few mainstream films that are abstract and lack a perception of some sort of reality. These two stop-motion films are no exception. The Fantastic Mr. Fox displays ideas such as foxes and other woodland animals can dig tunnels to anywhere or foxes can drive cars or foxes can have wars with humans. The characters within the film are basically given human characteristics. Coraline is more surreal with the introduction of an ‘Alice in Wonderland’ type alternate reality, where Coraline can escape to. These films both have surreal elements, but they would definitely be classified with Disney’s genre of realism because of the life-like movements and the boundaries of reality within each film.

Another claymation, which was viewed in class, is Creature Comforts. I thought it was such a clever little short because it combined surreal and real aspects. The animals in the zoo were talking about life living in the zoo, but the twist was that some of the animals were actually people who they interviewed at a zoo. The idea of animals having human characteristics is shared with The Fantastic Mr. Fox, but they were both realism inspired as well because of the life-like movements, and the setting in which the animals are in.