AGXStarseed
Well-Known Member
(Not written by me. See the link at the bottom of the page for the full article, which is too long to post here)
Animation is big business. Pixar’s recent Incredibles 2 banked a massive $1.25bn at the global box office, making it the second-highest grossing animated film of all time. Sony’s Hotel Transylvania 3, also from 2018, raked in a sizable $529m, while another sequel, Disney’s Ralph Breaks the Internet, achieved $473.5m. Not only that, but Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse took $347m at the global box office and even had audiences and critics declaring it the best superhero movie of the year full stop — in the same year Black Panther so brilliantly addressed diversity and Avengers: Infinity War unleashed the Thanos Snap onto the world, no less.
Around the globe, box office figures tell the same story. If there was a time when moviegoers fell out of love with animation, in 2019 there’s incontrovertible evidence that we’ve universally fallen head over heels for it once again. Yet it’s not just CGI-stories that are wowing audiences. Anime — once a cult genre — celebrated its first ever world premiere at the Cannes film festival in 2018. Mamoru Hosoda’s Oscar-nominated Mirai, an immersive blend of family drama and fantasy, is ironclad proof that the world is fully embracing all types of animation.
As Hosoda told Fandom, “Animation is a method in filmmaking, so whether it be animation, be it live-action, computer graphics, so long as the story is good, it’s good and it’s a movie full stop. It’s not just an anime. It’s not a niche thing at all. I think it’s good to know that animation movies are accepted as standard, normal movies. I was at San Sebastian [Film Festival, this year], and I was there three years ago in the competition, and I can actually feel the trend shifting. At that time, if you were making animation movies they would say: ‘Well, there’s this animation festival that’s separate.’ But the borders are really blurred now. And I think it’s a good thing.”
It follows, then, that audiences and filmmakers are also embracing stop motion, a form of animation in which models, puppets or other otherwise static objects are animated by painstakingly shooting incremental movements. According to David Sproxton, co-founder of Aardman Animations, the British studio behind stop-motion stalwarts Wallace and Gromit, “Three or four years ago, there were more stop-frame films being made in the world in that year than have ever been made before in any one year.”
They’re doing alright at the box office too — with Aardman’s own Shaun the Sheep Movie (2014) taking $106m, Laika’s The Boxtrolls (from the same year) hitting $109m, and Aardman creations Chicken Run (2000) and The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) bringing in $225m and $193m respectively. Yet, even when they’re bringing home more modest sums, they’re getting plenty of praise and recognition — with Wes Anderson’s 2018 sophisticated sci-fi dramedy Isle of Dogs earning itself an Oscar nomination at this year’s ceremony, putting it on a par with 2016’s My Life As a Courgette, Kubo and the Two Strings, and 2015’s Anomalisa, which were also given Oscar nods. All that’s not to mention the Rotten Tomatoes scores, which almost across the board reflect high critical acclaim.
But the question is, why is stop motion thriving in a landscape that has been dominated in recent years by CGI?
A Brief History of Stop-Motion
Let’s face it, stop motion should be dead. It’s a crude, time-consuming, labour-intensive form of animation that has been trumped by the jaw-dropping, smooth, and lifelike qualities of CGI. Remember the fuss surrounding Disney’s Bolt in 2008, and how they managed to animate all those individual dog hairs? Rich Moore, co-director of Ralph Breaks the Internet, certainly does.
“I am blown away that when they made Bolt they fretted and tortured themselves over getting Bolt’s hair to blow in the wind in that one scene where he sticks his head out of the mobile home,” he told Fandom.
Acknowledging how far digital animation has come in just 10 short years, he continued: “And now we’re able to build a giant Ralph out of a million little Ralphs with all the little detail on them?! [Bolt] wasn’t that long ago!” The giant Ralph he refers to is the film’s biggest scene, and a feat of CGI.
Yet, despite incredible advancements in animation techniques, stop motion is alive and kicking. To fully understand why, however, is to first look at the origins of stop-motion in movies, and its journey to today.
The very first known animated feature film was a 1917 stop-motion effort by Quirino Cristiani made using cutouts, called El Apóstol (The Apostle). But the technique really started making a splash when Willis O’Brien’s pioneering special effects were integrated into live-action creature features The Lost World (1925), King Kong (1933) and Mighty Joe Young (1949). Today, of course, such effects are created using CGI and performance capture techniques, meaning that stop motion has evolved to become something that no longer trades on groundbreaking methods, but rather something else entirely (tradition and charm — more on which later.)
The legendary Ray Harryhausen was the natural successor to O’Brien — and worked with the animation kingpin, in fact, on Mighty Joe Young. Harryhausen picked up the stop-motion mantle to create his own legit movie magic in live-action fantasy epics including The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), Jason and the Argonauts (1963) and Clash of the Titans (1981).
As digital and practical effects began to take hold in Hollywood, stop motion was used less and less in live-action features, though use of it was made in some surprising blockbusters, where stop-motion sequences were intended to blend in with the film’s myriad effects. Films like the original Star Wars trilogy, Jaws 3, Ghostbusters, The Terminator, Aliens and more. Stop motion was even used as recently as 2015 in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
In the early 1990s, it became a device used for largely comedic effect. In both Army of Darkness and Coneheads, for example, we’re encouraged to laugh at the crudeness of the animation technique. This was an era in which audiences had recently witnessed the staggering molten metal T-1000 effects in Terminator 2, making stop motion ripe for mockery.
All the while, of course, stop-motion animated features continued to be made. One or two highlights came along but no one film really made a mark. And then along came the Wallace and Gromit films, culminating in Aardman’s big Hollywood break, and their first feature-length animation, Chicken Run, a film made in partnership with Dreamworks. It’s the highest-grossing stop motion film in history, and a sequel is currently — finally — in the works.
While Aardman was stamping its authority on stop motion, Tim Burton was getting in on the act, producing the Henry Selick-directed adult-orientated stop-motion feature The Nightmare Before Christmas in 1993 before taking the reins of the similarly toned Corpse Bride in 2005 and Frankenweenie (based on his own 1984 live-action short of the same name) in 2012. And in the midst of that, critically acclaimed studio, Laika, was established — founded in 2005 and helmed by Nike heir and Bumblebee director Travis Knight — bringing its own particular brand of stop motion to the table. The studio, in its infancy, worked on Corpse Bride but soon established a tone for itself in films like Coraline, ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls and Kubo and the Two Strings.
And so to 2019, and looking ahead to a slate of stop-motion films this year and beyond that includes the latest efforts from Aardman (Farmageddon: A Shaun the Sheep Movie), Laika (The Missing Link) and the Henry Selick-directed Wendall and Wild. That’s as well as Guillermo del Toro’s take on Pinocchio and Taika Waititi’s tale of Michael Jackson’s chimp, Bubbles. Stop Motion has never looked healthier.
Full: Breaking the Mold: Why Stop Motion Is Thriving in a CGI World
Animation is big business. Pixar’s recent Incredibles 2 banked a massive $1.25bn at the global box office, making it the second-highest grossing animated film of all time. Sony’s Hotel Transylvania 3, also from 2018, raked in a sizable $529m, while another sequel, Disney’s Ralph Breaks the Internet, achieved $473.5m. Not only that, but Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse took $347m at the global box office and even had audiences and critics declaring it the best superhero movie of the year full stop — in the same year Black Panther so brilliantly addressed diversity and Avengers: Infinity War unleashed the Thanos Snap onto the world, no less.
Around the globe, box office figures tell the same story. If there was a time when moviegoers fell out of love with animation, in 2019 there’s incontrovertible evidence that we’ve universally fallen head over heels for it once again. Yet it’s not just CGI-stories that are wowing audiences. Anime — once a cult genre — celebrated its first ever world premiere at the Cannes film festival in 2018. Mamoru Hosoda’s Oscar-nominated Mirai, an immersive blend of family drama and fantasy, is ironclad proof that the world is fully embracing all types of animation.
As Hosoda told Fandom, “Animation is a method in filmmaking, so whether it be animation, be it live-action, computer graphics, so long as the story is good, it’s good and it’s a movie full stop. It’s not just an anime. It’s not a niche thing at all. I think it’s good to know that animation movies are accepted as standard, normal movies. I was at San Sebastian [Film Festival, this year], and I was there three years ago in the competition, and I can actually feel the trend shifting. At that time, if you were making animation movies they would say: ‘Well, there’s this animation festival that’s separate.’ But the borders are really blurred now. And I think it’s a good thing.”
It follows, then, that audiences and filmmakers are also embracing stop motion, a form of animation in which models, puppets or other otherwise static objects are animated by painstakingly shooting incremental movements. According to David Sproxton, co-founder of Aardman Animations, the British studio behind stop-motion stalwarts Wallace and Gromit, “Three or four years ago, there were more stop-frame films being made in the world in that year than have ever been made before in any one year.”
They’re doing alright at the box office too — with Aardman’s own Shaun the Sheep Movie (2014) taking $106m, Laika’s The Boxtrolls (from the same year) hitting $109m, and Aardman creations Chicken Run (2000) and The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) bringing in $225m and $193m respectively. Yet, even when they’re bringing home more modest sums, they’re getting plenty of praise and recognition — with Wes Anderson’s 2018 sophisticated sci-fi dramedy Isle of Dogs earning itself an Oscar nomination at this year’s ceremony, putting it on a par with 2016’s My Life As a Courgette, Kubo and the Two Strings, and 2015’s Anomalisa, which were also given Oscar nods. All that’s not to mention the Rotten Tomatoes scores, which almost across the board reflect high critical acclaim.
But the question is, why is stop motion thriving in a landscape that has been dominated in recent years by CGI?
A Brief History of Stop-Motion
Let’s face it, stop motion should be dead. It’s a crude, time-consuming, labour-intensive form of animation that has been trumped by the jaw-dropping, smooth, and lifelike qualities of CGI. Remember the fuss surrounding Disney’s Bolt in 2008, and how they managed to animate all those individual dog hairs? Rich Moore, co-director of Ralph Breaks the Internet, certainly does.
“I am blown away that when they made Bolt they fretted and tortured themselves over getting Bolt’s hair to blow in the wind in that one scene where he sticks his head out of the mobile home,” he told Fandom.
Acknowledging how far digital animation has come in just 10 short years, he continued: “And now we’re able to build a giant Ralph out of a million little Ralphs with all the little detail on them?! [Bolt] wasn’t that long ago!” The giant Ralph he refers to is the film’s biggest scene, and a feat of CGI.
Yet, despite incredible advancements in animation techniques, stop motion is alive and kicking. To fully understand why, however, is to first look at the origins of stop-motion in movies, and its journey to today.
The very first known animated feature film was a 1917 stop-motion effort by Quirino Cristiani made using cutouts, called El Apóstol (The Apostle). But the technique really started making a splash when Willis O’Brien’s pioneering special effects were integrated into live-action creature features The Lost World (1925), King Kong (1933) and Mighty Joe Young (1949). Today, of course, such effects are created using CGI and performance capture techniques, meaning that stop motion has evolved to become something that no longer trades on groundbreaking methods, but rather something else entirely (tradition and charm — more on which later.)
The legendary Ray Harryhausen was the natural successor to O’Brien — and worked with the animation kingpin, in fact, on Mighty Joe Young. Harryhausen picked up the stop-motion mantle to create his own legit movie magic in live-action fantasy epics including The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), Jason and the Argonauts (1963) and Clash of the Titans (1981).
As digital and practical effects began to take hold in Hollywood, stop motion was used less and less in live-action features, though use of it was made in some surprising blockbusters, where stop-motion sequences were intended to blend in with the film’s myriad effects. Films like the original Star Wars trilogy, Jaws 3, Ghostbusters, The Terminator, Aliens and more. Stop motion was even used as recently as 2015 in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
In the early 1990s, it became a device used for largely comedic effect. In both Army of Darkness and Coneheads, for example, we’re encouraged to laugh at the crudeness of the animation technique. This was an era in which audiences had recently witnessed the staggering molten metal T-1000 effects in Terminator 2, making stop motion ripe for mockery.
All the while, of course, stop-motion animated features continued to be made. One or two highlights came along but no one film really made a mark. And then along came the Wallace and Gromit films, culminating in Aardman’s big Hollywood break, and their first feature-length animation, Chicken Run, a film made in partnership with Dreamworks. It’s the highest-grossing stop motion film in history, and a sequel is currently — finally — in the works.
While Aardman was stamping its authority on stop motion, Tim Burton was getting in on the act, producing the Henry Selick-directed adult-orientated stop-motion feature The Nightmare Before Christmas in 1993 before taking the reins of the similarly toned Corpse Bride in 2005 and Frankenweenie (based on his own 1984 live-action short of the same name) in 2012. And in the midst of that, critically acclaimed studio, Laika, was established — founded in 2005 and helmed by Nike heir and Bumblebee director Travis Knight — bringing its own particular brand of stop motion to the table. The studio, in its infancy, worked on Corpse Bride but soon established a tone for itself in films like Coraline, ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls and Kubo and the Two Strings.
And so to 2019, and looking ahead to a slate of stop-motion films this year and beyond that includes the latest efforts from Aardman (Farmageddon: A Shaun the Sheep Movie), Laika (The Missing Link) and the Henry Selick-directed Wendall and Wild. That’s as well as Guillermo del Toro’s take on Pinocchio and Taika Waititi’s tale of Michael Jackson’s chimp, Bubbles. Stop Motion has never looked healthier.
Full: Breaking the Mold: Why Stop Motion Is Thriving in a CGI World
