Lego Annimation

Ammu and I created a lego animation with sound.
This was our first try at adding sound/music to our stop-motion.
I think it came out alright but overall I think the video should have been longer.

Significant developers

Ray Harryhausen
Born 29th June, 1920.


Harryhausen was an American visual effects creator, producer and writer who created a form of stop-motion model animation known as 'Dynamation'.
Ray is the fantasy filmmaker that inspired many filmmakers, Ray made the impossible possible.
He created so many animated films that became a huge success. His work lives on and will do for many years to come.

Ray created a technique called Dynamation, this was a technique that used a split screen with rear projection. The effect had been there since the begging of film but Ray just added some additional twists.

source: http://www.unmuseum.org/dyna.htm

Contemporary animators

Tim Burton
Born 25th August, 1958.


Burton is an American film director, producer, writer, artist and animator. He is known for his gothic, dark, quirky horror and fantasy movies.
His most famous movies were:

• Edward Scissorhands (1990)
• The nightmare before Christmas (1993)
• Beetle Juice (1988)
• Corpse Bride (2005)
• Sweeny Todd (2007)

And many more.

Burton is a very creative man with amazing imagination.
One stop-animation I personally like is the Corpse Bride.


A lot of effort went into making this film. The production of the film started in early November 2003 and was finished early September 2005 and was also released in September 2005.
Over all 300 puppets were made to film the whole movie. The Corpse Bride alone has 14 puppet.
There were 23 animators used to help produced the film.
Overall they had a budget of $40 million and they earned $117.2 million from the Box Office alone.There were just over 50 model makers for the puppets.
50% Art/creative and 50% technical that went into making the puppets.
The puppets skin has strings and paddles attached within their foam and silicone which is attached to their gear system to able to move them. Their eyes are made from urethane. 
Their fabric is made from foam and their hair is a combination of resin and silicone.
The gears have different parts which are connected to different parts of the puppets which make them smile, wave, walk, ect.

This is a video showing how the puppets were made and also the scenes.

Source: http://www.awn.com/vfxworld/corpse-bride-stop-motion-goes-digital

Test 1

This was my first attempt in making a stop motion. I made an alien, with its spaceship and a snail in its garden.
The alien makes the snail come to him and then with his powers he destroys the snail. The snail then gets control and ends up killing the alien.

Making stop motion with plasticine

 I created a 'home' scene. The house in the background and a snail and ladybird in the garden. 

Pioneers & Early Inventions

Lumière brothers

 The Lumiere brothers were French inventors and pioneer manufactures. They were the first filmmakers in history. The first film they made was 'Sortie de l'usine Lumière de Lyon' which was shot in 1894. This film is considered the first true motion picture. 

The film:

The brothers were both well known for creating the first camera that can capture and play moving images, and which could project them for other people to see. This was titled as the ‘Cinematographer’, and was patented in 1895. This was a big revelation in the film industry, as the only camera that had been made before this, which could capture moving images, was Edison’s ‘Kinetoscope’. The problem with Edison’s was that it was huge, and only one person was able to view the images at once, which made it extremely impractical to use.



The brothers were manufacturers of photographic equipment that devised an early motion-picture camera and projector called the Cinematographe.
Auguste began the first experiments in the winter of the 1894, and by the next year the brothers had come up with their own device, which they called the Cinematographe.
Much smaller and lighter than the Kinetograph, it weighed around five kilograms (11 pounds) and opened with the use of a hand-powered crank. The Cinematographe photographed and projected film at a speed of 16 frames per second, this was much slower than Edison's device (48 frames per second), which meant that it was less noisy to operate and it used less film.

'Pocket' annimation - Test

Alex and I made a short animation using a pencil case, lighter, USB and a earphone splitter.

The story we made up was that the panda which was the pencil-case comes along and eats the the monkey, rabbit and lighter.

They try to run but the case still gets them.

http://youtu.be/iTsMf3OntMU

First try at persistence vision

My first try in making a persistence of vision. I just used shapes to create a 'moving' image.

I created circles to get bigger and bigger and drew some patterns. 

A persistence vision refers to the optical illusion where you can see multiple discrete images that blend into a single image that the mind believes that the explanation for motion perception in cinema and animated films.