Stop Motion Developers

Developers of Stop Motion

Willis O’Brien

Willis O’Brien was a motion picture specialist from America. His work revolved around stop motion, and he was a pioneer as well as a developer for the modern day works of film and animation. O’Brien is important, and is said to have responsibility for “some of the best-known images in cinema history”.

O’Brien is most notably known for his work on “The Lost World”, “King Kong” and “Mighty Joe Young”, across the 20^th century. In 1950, O’Brien won an Academy Award for Best Visual effects, for the film Mighty Joe Young. O’Brien made a name for himself, and was recognised by Thomas Edison, who was impressed by the films he was producing. Edison was, more specifically, impressed by O'Brien's “The Dinosaur and the Missing Link: A Prehistoric Tragedy” in 1915. He was then hired by the Thomas Edison company to animate a series of short films, containing a prehistoric theme.

Jan Svankmajer

Jan Svankmajer is a Czech artist and filmmaker who works in many different forms of the media industry. his most notable works have influenced the work of others like Terry Gilliam and the Brothers Quay.

Svankmajer would re imagine popular fairy tales in a dark manner, and also for his experimental ideas in terms of the use of his 3D animation in synchronisation with pixilation (human animation).

During the 1950s, Svankmajer pursued a great interest in both theatre and puppetry. He worked at theatres, and it was there that he gained an appreciation for the creation of film, which would be considered by some a bad thing, but by many a good thing. After this, he began his career in cinematography. His first short film, The Last Trick  (1964) gave evidence to his interest in stop motion animation. Svankmajer experimented with a wide range of tecnhiques, such as puppetry, stop motion, clay-mation and pixilation.

Ray Harryhausen

Ray Harryhausen, after seeing King Kong after its release in 1933, was inspired to work with animated short films. He also was inspired by Willis O'Brien's models which were created for King Kong. A friend of Harryhausen was able to arrange a meeting between Harryhausen and O'Brien, at which, O'Brien told Harryhausen to take classes in graphic arts, as well as sculpture, to improve his work. During this time, Harryhausen became friends with Ray Bradbury, a writer, who shared similar ideologies. The two joined the Los Angeles Science Fiction League, which was formed in 1939 by Forrest J. Ackerman.

Harryhausen's first film in which he was in charge indefinitely of the technical aspects was called "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms." and was released in 1953. It was discovered by the film makers that Bradbury, Harryhausen's long term friend, had sold a short story with the same name, with a similar scene. Bradbury's story was bought by the company, meaning that Harryhausen had attempted at a solo feature film. It was a major international hit for Warner Brothers, and was incredibly successful.

Harryhausen expanded on stop motion techniques by creating "Dynamation". Dynamation was when the background and foreground was split into two separate images, which the models were then involved with, which seemingly made the models interact with the live action of the scene. This was advanced, and was incredibly important for the future of animation and film making. If Harryhausen hadn't experimented with this technique, it may have made modern day CGI more complicated, and could also have had a reduction in the creative minds of animators and film makers today.