Early work from pioneers can still be seen in contemporary times such as persistence of
vision which was being used back in 1878 by Eadward Muybridge; this was seen in the
animated horse image which tricked people of the time that the image was really moving
and it was a horse running for miles. This was done through the high framerate of the 3
second piece that was used to trick people into believing that the images at a high
framerate were really moving. This is still seen today with Aardman Animations and how
they use fast framerates to make people believe films like Wallace and Gromit and Shaun
the Sheep was really done with a motion picture camera. This is interesting as all you are
really looking at is moving images at a high framerate, this also links in with live action films
as they also are shot in frames per second the norm being around 24 frames per second. In
this video you can see the difference between the framerates and how they run differently
when using a higher or lower frames per second.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDBW53cgWjs
Next will be the developers of which there were many that helped to evolve and develop animation
to what it is today and help today evolve it into a more modern style as some of the older pieces are
very simplistic in today’s world so these developers were really the things that helped to push
cinema to more modern standards. First off is the developer named Willis H. O’Brien and is one of
the first pioneers for stop motion and special effects and is known mostly for the monster horror
genre. One of the first animated films he directed was called “The Dinosaur and the Missing Link: A
Prehistoric Tragedy” and is one of the first long animated films to be created. Although not as
mainstream as his later movies this helped to develop his style of monster films. One of the more
famous films he was involved with is “King Kong” for this film he did the ground-breaking stop
motion animation for the film, this animation is still seen today in some films such as his way of using
small scenery and putting a big object on it to make the object or thing seem massive in comparison,
in this film this is done through building a small city and making a massive model to put against it
making it look massive in comparison. This model was then used by moving parts of the model and
making it look as if the monster was moving, tricking the audience that it was r eally climbing up the
empire state building. This type of animation is still used today in things like Wallace and Gromit and
other films as moving part of the body on every frame become a common stop motion technique.
Another famous developer is called Ray Harryhausen and is known for his work on stop motion
animation in films such as “Jason and the Argonauts” and “The 7th voyage of Sinbad” and “Clash of
the Titans” all of which were released in 1963,1958, 1981 respectively. These three films had
developments in all of them helping to advance stop motion animation this was helped by the
animator of these films Ray Harryhausen, he was mentored by Willis H. O’Brien a previous stop
motion animation famous for his animation in films. Harryhausen’s stop motion animation was done
mostly on monster and mythical films as shown by the three films shown above. In Jason and the
Argonauts there is a scene in which the warriors fight a group of skeletons, these skeletons were
fully stop motion animated to get the correct movements from the monsters as this would be
impossible as skeletons of course cannot walk. This scene was recorded and made for over 3 months
for only a few seconds of revolutionary footage, this shows the dedication of many of the stop
motion animators, also this skeleton scene helped to influence many future monster directors from
the unique style of animation used in the film that looked realistic also there are many other strange
looking monsters and creatures in the film that added to the effects future animators would use
such as movement and how the monster looked.
https://youtu.be/pF_Fi7x93PY