Task 1- Research

Coraline
Coraline is a 2009 American stop-motion 3D dark fantasy film based on Neil Gaiman's novel and directed by Henry Selick. Henry Selick said that the making of the film was a long and tiring process as they had started filming in 2000 where they finally finished nine years later. There was a around 28 animators on set working on different things at any one time. Some of them rehearsing or shooting scenes for the film and producing 90-100 seconds of finished animation each week. Others prepared from scratch all the puppets, costumes, sets and props. The puppets also went through a painting stage, giving detail and definition to faces and even clothing. Henry Selick and Tim Burton worked together on The Nightmare Before Christmas.





Frankenweenie

Tim Burton’s ‘Frankenweenie’ is a gothic black and white stop motion animation film that was released in 2012. Tim Burton is known for being the creator of other stop motion animation such as ‘Corpse Bride’ and ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’. On the set of Frankenweenie, set designers had to move miniature props such as tulips, clogs, character hands and legs so that that every scene was different from the last. There was 24 frames per second in the stop motion for “Frankenweenie.” This meant that the animators working on the film had to position the puppets 24 times to get one second of filmed action.

On average, one animator could only produce 5 seconds of animation per week. Over 200 puppets and sets were created for the film, there were 17 Victors and 12 Sparkys. Since each animator worked independently on different scenes they had to be more people working on set. They also needed backup of models just in case a puppet required repair. Most of the puppets where made of plasticine as Tim Burton felt that the characters ' had a real softness to them and he wanted that to come through with the puppets. He didn’t want them to look like they’re in a CG film. Tim loves the handmade quality to the puppets so we used texture in the skin tones and in the costumes.' Filming began at Three Mills Studios in July 2010 and ended in 2012. The crew created three giant sound stages, including Victor's cluttered family attic, a cemetery exterior, and a high school interior. The sound stages were then divided into 30 separate areas to deal with the handcrafted, frame-by-frame and the style of film making.

There was much debate on whether Frankenweenie was suitable it was a film that will be suitable for children because of the dark film, however after much discussion the film was rated PG nonetheless. Frankenweenie is a great film for adventurous young audiences. Similarly to the equally impressive ParaNorman it's an animation that combines humour, enjoyable scares, moments of wicked humour. 


King Kong (1933)
King Kong is distinguished for its stop-motion animation. It was created by Willis O’Brien and directed by Merian C. Cooper. Animators on the set of King Kong used a tool called a surface gauge by placing pointers on the gorilla and moving it slowly. Before all the current technological tools, surface gauge pointers were used to measure the movements of just the major parts of the puppet.

Willis O’Brien invented a lot of techniques of how to take his stop motion creatures and nail them with live action actors and performers. They used a lot of in camera effects, which was achieved by exposing part of the frame and then running the same piece of film through the camera again to expose the other part with a different image. It is then processed and checked if there aren’t any mistakes. This technique of Rear screen projection was used to merge live action with animation.