Blog 11: 100 years of Puppet and Claymation

Magen Thornhill
Blog 11: 100 years of Puppet and Claymation

This weeks reading was about stop motion and pixilation. Both are very time consuming. The reading talks about all the detail that goes into a frame. I’ve have an idea on how much work is involved from my own stop motion animation and that was only a few seconds. The use of clay must be especially difficult since it’s so easy to move the wrong way or leave a thumbprint. I really like the use of puppets in stop animation. The Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride, and Coraline all felt very surreal. They had their own look which really added to the feeling of the story. The plots are very in depth and the scenery changes naturally with attention to detail. Stop motion and puppets are also used a lot in kid’s shows.

Pixilation is amazing since it involves real actors. I don’t know how someone would be able to keep so still or hold an exact pose for an undetermined amount of time. Pixilation is more common than I thought. I don’t think I’ve paid that much attention to it before but now that I think about I can recall examples from commercials and TV. I would really like to see some more feature length stop motion in theaters since it’s so in depth and it’s an experience to watch.

This isn’t stop animation but it’s still done with puppets and I thought the creators did a very good with this so I wanted to point it out.

Harry Potter and The Mysterious Ticking Noise.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tx1XIm6q4r4

I really liked the section on anime. I’ve watched Ghost in the Shell when they had the TV series on Cartoon Network but I’ve never watched the movie all the way through. It reminded me a lot of Blade Runner since I just saw it in film theory. I’ve also seen all of Neon Genesis, including the two movies and Cowboy Bebop. Neon Genesis was just strange and all the characters had psychological problems. Half the time I wasn’t even sure what was going on in the series. I still loved it and I can definitely see why it would be revolutionary.