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Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Introduction to Claymation

By James Goldstein


While you were attending online film school, you took many different courses in animation. One of them should have been claymation. Although this method is not used much today, learning the skills and techniques are just as important as the rest of your course. Claymation, at some point in your career, may come into play with the other techniques you use.

Claymation is the method of taking clay figurines, posing them in different positions, filming them different films. When the film is run at the right speed, the clay figures appear to be moving. When this method used to be done with photographed frames, there are now computer enhanced programs that allow it to be done digitally.

Stop motion involves the creation of photographed frames, each one a little different from the previous one. Other frames that are masked so they aren't double exposed. Stop motion, when done right makes the images and characters appear to be moving and interacting. Claymation is another form of using stop motion animation.

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.

The Sculptors Welsh Rarebit Dream was produced in 1908 by Edison Manufacturing. This was the first film where claymation was used. Eight years later Helena Smith Dayton and Willie Hopkins combined their talents and produced films on many subjects using the technique of claymation. For several years this method fell to the wayside while other animation techniques survived. It was revived in 1921 in with the release of the film "Modeling".

In the early 1970's claymation made a real comeback in the Wallace and Grommit films that were created by Nick Park of Aardman Animations. "Closed Mondays", "The Sand Castle", and "Creature Comforts", were all Academy Award winners. Nick Park also created "The Presentators". These were short, one minute segments with clay animation featured on Nicktoons.




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