Modern Animators
The Brothers Quay were influenced by Jan Svankmajer and his surrealist style. The even named one of their films after him: The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer. They create their models out of dolls, clay and other materials. This mix of materials gives their work a disturbing feel as the parts do not match. The use multiple heads with different faces to create expression in their characters. Their film Street of Crocodiles has been voted one of the top ten animations of all time. They developed the model movement techniques that Svankmajer used by using objects to animate. They worked as animators on the music video for Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer which uses pixilation as they use live people as puppets by using them in the stop motion rather than using a video if the person and using stop motion for the animation.
(Street of Crocodiles)
Tim Burton born in 1958 in California. Growing up he was inspired my films such as Harryhausen’s Jason and the Argonauts, and made his own stop motion shorts. He later went on to study character animation at university before being offered an apprenticeship with diesney after seeing his stop motion The Stalk of the Celery Monster. When making Vincent 1982 he decided to use stop motion as he believed it gave the character a crude elegance. His models are mainly made of clay and are animations kept simple to match the original drawings. His animations use 24 frames per second the same as Rieninger used in 1926. This makes the movement smooth and realistic. The Nightmare Before Christmas was important to the development of animation as it was the first feature length stop motion film to be produced by Hollywood. It was a risk to make as no one knew how much of a success it would be as it was the first. However, after its release it grossed over $75 million worldwide. This introduced stop motion to the big screen again as it hadn’t been seen since the days of stop motion special effects. By gaining popularity it influenced another generation of stop motion animators that may not have come across previous work from the likes of Willis O’Brien.
(Stalk of the Celery Monster)
(Nightmare Before Christmas)