Stop Motion: Craft Skills for Model Animation

by Susannah Shaw

Book Overview

To make great animation, you need to know how to control a whole world: how to make a character, how to make that character live and be happy or sad. You need to create four walls around them, a landscape, the sun and moon - a whole life for them. You have to get inside that puppet and first make it live, then make it perform. Susannah Shaw provides the first truly practical introduction to the craft skills of model animation. This is a vital book...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0240516591
• ISBN13: 9780240516592
• Release Date: September 2003
• Publisher: Focal Press
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 7.9" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Great Illustrated Instructions

As a visual person, I learn well when I see things demonstrated visually. That's why I like this book; lots of nice four-color photos of armatures, puppets, techniques for building them in great detail. What other book provides a close-up image of an armature joint? The language is a bit difficult to understand at times, because it is written and published in Britian, but that just confirms its authenticity. England is a world stop-motion mecca as home to Aardman Animations, creators of "Wallace and Gromit." I highly recommend this book to anyone interested specifically in stop-motion puppet animation.

Excellent informative book

I am in the middle of producing my own stop motion film and this book has really helped guide my production.... from creating armatures to set construction to animation... this book has a little of everything for those of us who have chosen this "lost art" of stop motion animation. This is a great book for anyone that is serious about getting their stop motion film made... I am constantly referring back to it because it is loaded with useful information. So I would definetly reccomend this book to anyone interested in making their own stop motion animation.

Great Book

This is a truly wonderful book, Susannah and Focal Press should be applauded for putting out a stop motion book in these CGI saturated times. I couldn't fault it in any way and I would say it should be a must have for any stop motion enthusiast. Susannah definately knows her stuff, I found it easy to follow the tips were great and there is heaps of information to study.

Excellent practical guide

This is probably as good a guide to the many craft areas required for stop motion animation as we're likely to get in one volume. More direct and individual than computer 3d animation, stop motion has two main traditions - as a special effects tool for bringing life to the impossible in the hands of masters like Ray Harryhausen and Jim Danforth, and as an art form with it's roots in a European puppet theatre tradition. It is this area of puppet film that stop motion is now most vigorous, as exemplified by contemporary masters like Nick Park and Barry Purves, and this book contains many direct quotes from professionals offering insights into their ways of working. The book covers the basics of writing the story, creating the characters, constructing sets and puppets, lighting, photography, and animation techniques at a level that is practical for a beginner or intermediate, with much to offer the more experienced animator. A fully comprehensive guide would need to be in six fat volumes, as many of the crafts involved (like armature machining, or cinemaphotography) need a book to themselves to fully cover those fields . This is not a coffee-table book on the history and variety of stop motion, but a guide which will help the would-be animator to actually make an animated film.

Treasure Chest of Hard-to-Find Stop Motion Information

Stop Motion Animation is also known as "Puppet Animation". You may have seen it before .... movies like Nightmare Before Christmas, Chicken Run, and the classic works by master stop motion animator, Ray Harryhausen. You also may have seen stop motion used in TV commercials, like the Brisk Iced Tea spots (Bruce Lee, James Brown, etc.) or the Chevron talking cars commercials. Stop Motion uses real miniature puppets fabricated from various materials like foam rubber, plastics, metal, or clay (like Gumby or the singing California Raisens). The puppets are about the size of a Barbie-type doll with an internal wire or jointed skeleton. Using a movie camera or video cam, the puppets/figures are placed in front of camera, then the arms, legs, head, etc. are incrementally moved (animated) frame by frame. When the film or video is played back at regular speed, the puppets appear to be moving on their own. Having been involved with stop motion, doing professional work for about 16 plus years, I can tell you that "how-to" information about this esoteric and arcane animation art/craft is indeed very rare today. This is because "computer animation" techniques are now dominating the animation market and the public does not see the hand crafted works of stop motion animation, as often. Susannah Shaw's book includes difficult to find information about the overall production aspects of Stop Motion/Puppet Animation. At the time of this review, there are no other books that covers the entire stop motion process as well as this book does. Do a search on the internet and you will see that published books specifically about stop motion production, are almost non-existent. If the author cannot cover a particular area in depth, she has provided a very comprehensive appendix of resources, materials, suppliers, and other informational sources where you can find out more about Stop Motion Animation. This book is a great introduction for beginners, students, intermediates and for schools or universities who wish to cover this unique animation craft in their curriculum. Get it now while it is available and you can help keep Stop Motion ALIVE in the new millennium!You should also add these other books to your animation library: "Creating 3D Animation" by Peter Lord; "The Animators Survival Kit" by Richard Williams; and "Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas" by Thompson & Burton.