Wednesday, January 26, 2011

What is Claymation?

By James Goldstein


While you are attending a online film school, you will take many courses that involve different methods used for animation. All of these course are necessary whether you decide to work in animation or film, because they often are used together to create a desired result. One of these courses is the method of Claymation.

Claymation is another type of animation that became popular in the early 1900's. Using clay figures, the creator makes his characters, poses them in different ways, then takes pictures and by running the frames at the needed speed creates the illusion of the characters moving. This method was a manual method that can now be done with the addition of digital programs

Stop motion animation is the process of taking an object and making it appear to move on its own. The process involves the use of different photographed frames, each one of the same elements and images, but each one a little different from the one in front. When the film is run at regular speed, the characters and objects appear to be moving on their own.

The techniques used in claymation involves the method of making characters from clay, posing them in different poses, taking photos and transferring them to movie film. The film is then played back at 10 to 12 frames per second, giving the illusion that the characters are moving and talking. You will learn this technique at the online animation school.

In 1908 Edison Manufacturing made the first use of claymation in their rendition of "The Sculptors Welsh Rarebit Dream". Eight years later several small films using many different clay characters was developed and produced by Helena Smith Dayton and Willie Hopkins. Even though the popularity died, it was revived in 1921 with the film titled "Modeling".

The Wallace and Grommit films, originally created by Nick Park of Aardman Animations brought claymation back into popularity in the early 1970's. The Sand Castle, Creature Comforts and Closed Mondays were all Academy Award winners in the animation genre. The Presentators was created by Nick Parker, also, for Nicktoons. They were little one minute segments presented each week.




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