Filming the Fantastic: A Guide to Visual Effects Cinematography

Chapter 3

Stop Motion

Of all the branches of visual effects technique, stop motion animation more than any other laid the groundwork for the computer graphic methods of today. Stop motion animation is the process of animating a three-dimensional (3-D) model frame by frame in a linear manner to achieve the appearance of motion. The traditional drawn animation technique differed from stop motion animation in that it easily lent itself to a factory modality in which the animation process could be distributed among many different artists. In traditional drawn animation, the key animator would draw the “key” poses of the character in motion. A character jumping a fence might have the key drawings of a running pose, a crouch before the jump, the ...