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aidanw01-blog · 6 years

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Modern Stop Motion Animation

Stop Motion today has changed beyond anything from it’s history and its evolution. It has transformed in ways we could not have expected, varying its audiences from children to adults.

Children have multiple ways in which they digest stop motion animation, for entertainment and for education. Entertainment spans from the likes of Wes Anderson and Laika Studios. Wes Anderson has created such films as “Fantastic Mr Fox” (2009) and “Isle Of Dogs” (2018). Anderson uses puppets for his films. Fantastic Mr Fox was his first stop motion film which was a film generated from the famous Roald Dahl book. His colourful style attracts children and has very funny moments within that entertain the child audience. Isle of Dogs does exactly the same. Laika Studios have done many films such as “Coraline” (2009) and “ParaNorman” (2012). These films, compared to Wes Anderson’s use models, like King Kong from 1933. However, the models in Laika’s productions are a lot more up to date and very professional. These films attract child audience through their bright colours and funny moments. However, they have made a huge leap forward in terms of Ray Harryhausen and King Kong as these people had issues with the movement being in someway bitty and not adding up as much as it could. The child audience now takes an interest in these films because of their style of animation and the ability we can achieve now in stop motion. It makes the film look very impressive and amazing to this wide eyed audience and Laika has majorly profited from what seemed like a strenuous production. Nevertheless, modern stop motion is perfect in movement and is the highest quality stop motion can be.

Education for children has spanned to the online world, especially YouTube. There are many channels that use stop motion animation to educate the younger generation and entertain in a simple and fun way. One of the main channels at the forefront of this is OKG. OKG has amassed a large following of 1.9 million subscribers, teaching children basic education such as their ABC’s and 123’s. The stop motion used in these productions varies between Clay-Mation and found objects. In assessing their stop motion skills, it shows how stop motion came from a huge tedious production to a simple set up at home. Their simple designs mixed with a somewhat simple video allows the child audience to learn from this and learn in a fun and entertaining way. In evaluating this I now understand that it pushes the boundaries of what we can do in stop motion, showing that it has more possibilities than entertainment purposes, with a learning curve that is fun for children. This brings about a new area to work with in the stop motion community.

Stop motion has expanded its demographic to a much wider audience. Adults are now audiences to many shows such as South Park(1997-present) and Celebrity Deathmatch(1998-2007). South Park uses a paper stop motion on a separate layer of paper setting. They move the characters one fraction at a time to capture this authentic look that South Park had in it’s early series. This was so the animators could move the characters and not affect the setting. This allowed for some creativity within the pilot episode and the series proceeding until season 5 when they switched from stop motion to full computer generated. This series changed the demographic of cartoon audiences, with young adults from ages 18 and above being the prime demographic. Its crude humour and constant pop culture references allowed it to be as funny as it could be to the demographic. In evaluating this series i have come to realise that its very child like look to the animation is what made it so successful as it was so unseaming to the normal eye, but viewing the actual episode the writing was made to laugh at different political and social points and events; such as Donald Trump and many more political figures. Its very nature is to be offensive and their animation allows the audience to be reeled in as it is simple and has become the staple for adult cartoon entertainment. This series determined companies such as adult swim, who would produce adult cartoon entertainment like Rick and Morty (2013-present) and Robot Chicken (2005-present), making this the one cartoon to have fully brought in the adult demographic. Bringing in this new audience was extremely important for stop motion as it’s older animation style of Clay-Mation reminded this adult demographic of old cartoons such as Wallace and Gromit (1990) and Pingu (1986) that they would have watched when they were younger and they would be intrigued to find out more.. The adult humour allowed the demographic to openly like this content. Celebrity Deathmatch is unprecedented in its capturing of the adult audience and it’s execution of humour and animation. However, South Park became something bigger than it’s stop motion days and decided to move over to computer generated animation. South Park is and always will be a big social political satire and their reputation for going large with it’s plot made it switch from the paper to computers.

There has been different uses of stop motion animation in appealing to the adult demographic. Advertisements have popped up in the last decade that have used stop motion to sell their products to the public. One famous advertisement was Guinness. They used Clay-Mation in order to create their advert of a little man drinking an entire pint then falling right asleep. This firstly, informs the audience of this product and the fun you could have with it. Its humorous content makes adults laugh, further reeling the audience in when they go to the shops next time, to buy this product. In evaluating this advert, i have come to the conclusion that adverts that use stop motion are more innovative and fun than an average shot video of someone drinking Guinness. It puts the child like humour and gives it to adults and it works very well at making them laugh and hooked in buying a product. To further add to this, Coinstar had a very interesting advert geared towards people who want to save money. A found objects stop motion was made of coins found around the house peering out forming a high heel. This is to aim to the adult demographic who want to save money towards a nice pair of shoes for instance. It adds a sense of mystery throughout as we find coins coming out of the drawers and the couch. This intrigues the audience and makes them watch further. By the end they want to save money with Coinstar. There is this mix of humour and mystery with quirky characters and interesting activity. This adult audience is as easy to capture as the child audience as everyone has child like curiosity. This child like curiosity to how people make such animations intrigues them even further and entices a lot of the adult audiences.

Stop motion animation now has reached a penultimate level of detail and precision, with technology helping us frame and create the greatest content. Anyone can create a brilliant stop motion animation with the right equipment and level of detail in planning and execution. The audience has massively changed as now everyone has grown up with animation, and it allows the audience to enjoy it, no matter the age. However, we must never forget that this all stemmed from a weary lantern in the 1650′s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsOaTEouwpA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSg5mgBgdvc

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pingu

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebrity_Deathmatch

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laika_(company)

https://www.laika.com/

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0432283/

https://www.youtube.com/user/onlinekidsgames

#stop motion

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