Rachael's Blog: Inspiration.

For inspiration towards my animation I have been looking mainly at stop animation/plasticine, so the first thing you think of really when you think of plasticine animation is...wallace and gromit! who are made by aardman animations and nick parkman. They also do the character Morph as well as creature comforts. I like creature comforts because they use members of the public as their voices and then animate characters to speak in their voices.

This is a car advert that I found featuring wallace and gromit.

The Wallace and Gromit films are shot using the stop motion animation technique.After detailed storyboarding, set and plasticine model construction, the film is shot one frame at a time, moving the models of the characters slightly between to give the impression of movement in the final film. In common with other animation techniques, the stop motion animation in Wallace and Gromit may duplicate frames if there is little motion, and in action scenes sometimes multiple exposures per frame are used to produce a fake motion blur. Because a second of film constitutes 24 separate frames, even a short half-hour film like A Close Shave takes a great deal of time to animate well. General quotes on the speed of animation of a Wallace and Gromit film put the filming rate at typically around 30 frames per day — i.e. just over one second of film photographed for each day of production. The Curse of the Were-Rabbit is an example for how long this technique takes to produce quality animation; it took five years to make

Nick Park

Nick Park a British film maker, and is the creator of Wallace and Gromit, as well as many other animations including Shaun the Sheep and Creature Comforts. He has won numerous awards for his animation work, including four Academy Awards, including Oscar Awards! He studied at Sheffield Hallam University too which I think is amazing! He joined the Aardman animation company as a commercial animator and, as I have mentioned before, he worked on the music video "Sledgehammer" by the singer Peter Gabriel. Park has created many successful feature length animations such as "Chicken Run", "Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit", "A Matter of Loaf and Death" as well as being involved in "Flushed Away".

this is a clip from the film "The Curse of the Were-Rabbit"

The Official trailer for "Chicken Run"

The official trailer for "Flushed Away"

Tim Burton and Henry Selick

Tim Burton is a film director who has created many successful stop motion animated films, including "The Nightmare Before Christmas" which is probably his most famous, where he took the role of producer, "Corpse Bride", "James and the Giant Peach". "The Nightmare Before Christmas" took three years in production due to the amount of time it took to make, it was actually directed by another stop motion artist Henry Selick, who also directed the stop motion film "Coraline". Burton and Selick have worked on many collaborations, Selick also directed Burton's "James and the Giant Peach". Burton wanted to direct "Nightmare.." but was busy filming "Batman Returns" so therefore asked Selick to take his place, It took a group of around 100 people three years to complete this movie. For one second of film, up to 12 stop-motion moves had to be made.