The history of animation goes back over a century. In that time people have found a number of breathtaking ways to create sequential art, whether it be realistic or abstract. The last few decades of animation has even seen the rise of entirely new types of animation in the form of 3D and flash animation.
Technology has made the field more accessible than it has ever been before, with the creation of fantastic tools and software that streamline the animation process like Adobe Flash and Toon Boom. Also, access to free 3D animation software like Blender and Source Filmmaker has equally expanded the access. But with the ease of that access, there inevitably has come a flood of work lacking the skills which once made the medium a hotbed for astonishingly, polished expressions of creativity. The issue isn’t fatal to the medium, in fact, it has given life to many new outlets for expression in our tech-centric culture. Still, there is a sense of loss as the craft becomes more and more streamlined. The amount of attention artists have to put in details has inevitably dropped with the convenience of technology. That meticulous detail can best be seen in the art of stop motion animation.
Frozen Frame
Stop motion animation is the process of moving a real-world physical object into a stopped pose to create a single frame of animation. These objects can range from clay or puppets, as long as you can move it by hand. Essentially, stop motion media takes the practical effects you see in live action films, like models and animatronics, to represent things that either don’t exist or are impossible to manipulate and make it into its unique world. Stop motion as a practical effect was often in use in older films like the original King Kong from 1933 to represent all the larger than life creatures.
It shares some similarities to 2D animation where an artist draws each frame; then each snapshot is played rapidly in sequence to simulate motion. But unlike 2D animation, there isn’t a good way to scale up production. With 2D animation, there are more ways to simulate a production line, where animators can specialize and split up specific elements of a drawing and pass on their work to be finished to different specialists.
Someone has to move everything in a scene by hand to get one frame of animation. Note that most media is shot at around 24 frames per second, so to get a minute of film an animator would need to create thousands of unique poses. And unlike other types of animation, there isn’t even a way to fix a mistake if you didn’t catch a problem after recording. This is because stop motion shares the same limitations of a live-action shoot, where changes in lighting and sets can force an entire reshoot due to continuity errors. There is also the limitation of the objects that the artists are manipulating that needs to be accounted for as well, stop motion is still very collaborative despite the restraints on the number people who can animate a scene. There needs to be craftsmen who make the puppets and construct the sets, who also need the skills to make them with a range of articulation that can represent organic motion. It is obviously a very time-consuming and tedious process, which is also a death sentence for investors needed to get all the talent and construction to make a polished animation.
Benefit
It is a lot of hassle for something that seems entirely outdated by modern computer graphics which provide smoother and more cohesive visuals for the most part. Monsters and camera pans have especially become much more grandiose, but it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that a lot of authenticities were lost as well. The weight and sense of presence provided by a real physical object that people are moving around will probably never be truly replicated by computer-generated effects. Also despite the hurdles stop motion has the benefit of being lit by real light, which is a significant hurdle when making convincing digital effects due to how sensitive people are to artificial lighting. Bad lighting can easily rip someone out of the world animators painstakingly craft. That sense of reality provided by stop motion isn’t the only benefit of the artform either. The very limitation, which makes it an unpopular artform, has also given way to unique workarounds for effects which may be visually incongruent with more stylized animations. 2018’s Isle of Dogs, for example, makes use of cotton to simulate dense smoke, which is more reminiscent of what you’d see in 2D animation. Stop motion being bounded by reality makes the fantasy feel real because it has to be something people can make in real life. Other forms of animation’s lack of restrictions make it unlikely to convince the viewer that they’re somewhere that exists. This isn’t always a flaw; it's just a difference in medium, one who excels at exaggerating reality with its complete lack of limitations. But there is no substitute for the sometimes uncanny, but wholly real feel which is provided by the meticulous detail of stop motion.