The stop-motion technique uses a stage set that serves as a backdrop, as in a theater, and puppet “actors.” To create the illusion of movement, the poses of the characters are slightly altered by photographing them frame by frame, and then the whole thing is turned into a movie. This animation was created together with the classical cinema. The famous scene in the movie Journey to the Moon, where a spaceship hits an Earth satellite right in the eye, is also stop-motion.
Puppet animation films are always a special story in the world of animation. They don’t become big franchises (that’s not possible due to the complexity of the production) and aren’t particularly successful commercially. However, there is a special magic in this way of bringing static to life.
These cartoons offer the possibility of creating volume, which is not possible in classic cartoons, and also offer details without having to draw anything – it is enough to place objects in the picture. However, this is not so easy. The backdrops for puppet cartoons are created by hand, and it’s really a hell of a job.
To depict a Sakura in the movie “Coraline in the Land of Nightmares”, pink painted popcorn was used.
Each flower on the toy trees was created by the animation artists and placed according to the requirements of the scene. In “Kubo. Legend of the Samurai,” the monkey fur is made of tiny silicone shreds, each of which was glued to the character. All of these things have to be thought through beforehand, because if the object has already been created in the material, you can’t undo it. When dubbing a puppet animation, each movement of the actor’s lips is created separately, with facial expressions synchronized to the soundtrack. Today, many parts are printed with a 3D printer, and yet it is still a one-time job.
Puppet animation has already surpassed computer animation in terms of the complexity and naturalness of the characters’ movements. Today, however, CG technology has evolved, and computer-generated characters are just as good as their puppets, and in many ways even better than them.
Over time, the elaborate production and time-consuming stop-motion animation lost popularity. Oddly enough, it has benefited. Works in this genre dare only ideological directors who know exactly what they want to tell and have an original style. For example, Tim Burton with his famous films about singing skeletons and dead pets, or Wes Anderson with The Incomparable Mr. Fox.