I’ve always loved stop-motion animation. Over the years, animation has evolved into something so insanely detailed–with the help of computers, of course–that the artistry which goes into it can’t be overlooked in any given frame. That can be said with vigor when one is talking about stop-motion.
One of my very favorite films, “Coraline”, uses stop-motion animation to great effect. I happened across a 15-minute “making of” video for the movie and was stunned to see the processes animators go through to achieve the end result. Not only is every single character, stitch of clothing, and blade of grass hand-made, they also set up the movie and ran through it once before they even filmed it, meaning they had to essentially make it twice. It’s a time-intensive, labor-intensive bit of work–sometimes animators labor all day just to film four seconds of the movie–but in the end, it’s totally worth it.
The same can be said for “ParaNorman”, which opened earlier this month. And while this little behind-the-scenes vid doesn’t show nearly all of what I want to see–I could watch this stuff all day–it does give you a glimpse into how the characters and their world were made. Take a look.
