Stop-motion
What is stop-motion?
Stop-motion animation (also can be called “Stop-frame” animation) is multiple photo’s chained
together to create moving image, multiple photos are taken each frame moving an object a little
each time and when played back at a high speed creates an illusion of movement. Early stop motion
was captured with film cameras. Animators could not see how their work looked until they got their
film processed. But very early stop motion was done with toys and mechanical inventions, the very
beginning of stop-motion started in 1832 with Joseph Plataeu.
Joseph Plataeu was one of the first people to introduce moving image, using a device that used
counter rotating disks to create the illusion of a moving image.
The Phenakistoscope works by moving fast, when the correct speed is reached the eye is tricked into
seeing a moving image rather than still images, in 1832 Plateua created the Phenakistoscope, two
disks spin at a fast speed in opposite directions and uses persistence of vision to create the illusion of
motion. The use of this lead to more inventions that used persistence of vison like the Zoetrope.
Another man who helped lead the industry was Emile Reynaud, he was responsible for the first
projected animation, by creating the Praxinoscope in 1877. It worked by having a strip of images
placed around a mirror in a spinning circle, so when spun an animation would appear on the mirror.
This was a successor to the Zoetrope, the zoetrope came after the thaumatrope and
phenakistoscope, it also uses the persistence of motion method to create an illusion of motion.
British mathematician William Horner put forward his own variation of the Zoetrope in 1834, having
it in a cylinder. Horner's zoetrope had viewing slits between the pictures instead of above them as
much later zoetrope variations would have. So when moving at a high enough speed the human eye
cannot see the breaks in the picture, therefore you can only see the image constantly changing due
to the persistence of vision this was a very early version of stop-frame. The frame rate for something
like this would have been quite low, since there would have only been about 15 pictures the motion
of the image would be repeated until the speed lowers.