Present animators

The Brothers Quay

Stephen and Timothy, are influential stop-motion animators. They create films that are surreal and usually involve inanimate objects coming to life. One of their influences includes Jan Svankmajer, whereby they named one of their films after him, The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer.
Most of their animation films feature puppets, often partly disassembled and shot in a dark atmosphere, for a surrealist effect. Their best known work is 'Street of Crocodiles', which was selected as of the 10 best animated films of all time.
I think there work is effective because they have made their work unique and one of the 10 best animated films of all time eventhough they do surrealist stop motion animation, which was the same genre as Jan Svankmajer.

Here is a short clip from the animated film 'Street of Crocodiles':

Tim Burton

Tim is a film director and producer. The sucess of his short film 'Stalk of the Celery Monster' attracted the attention of Walt Disney Productions animation stuido, who offered him an apprenticeship. He worked on films such as, The Fox and the Hound and Tron. However, he chose to work on solo projects rather than with Disney as his choice of style clashed with them.

One of his first films was a 6 minute stop motion animation called, 'Vincent' and one of the latest films is a remake of his 1984 short film Frankenweenie released in October 2012. This film in 1984 was said to be "too quirky and scary for mainstream appeal". However, 28 years later the same film is being released. This shows the development of stop motion animation, that in this context, earlier Disney did not allow 'scary' and 'quirky' films to be released. However, nowadays it's allowed to be released.

The film 'The Nightmare Before Christmas', which was written and produced by Tim, was said to have helped to generate a new interest in stop-motion animation. This film was in production for 3 years, due to the time it took to film the stop motion. I think that it was worth being in production for 3 years because it's a creative piece of stop-motion and an excellent film.
In the film Mars Attack, Tim used puppets that in order for it to look real, hundreds of face models were produced with different expressions. Tim may have been influenced by the animator, George Pal who used this technique in his 1940s TV series.

'Vincent'

Aardman Animations

Aardman Animations is an animation studio known for films made using clay animation, particularly those for Wallace and Gromit.
After making a segment called 'Greeblies' in 1975 using clay animation. This became the inspiration for creating the well known clay character, Morph.
In 2000, they created Aardman's first feature film, Chicken Run and in 2005, they created their first computer-animated film feature, Flushed Away.
Aardman made 12 short stop motion animation films using Flipnote Studio from Nintendo DSi.
A technique the Aardman tean used was called pixilation. This was used in Peter Gabriel's 'Sledgehammer' music video. Whereby there is the effect that he becomes a human puppet by holding poses while each frame was shot and moving slightly between each shot. Also this technique was used on a series of short films for BBC Three.
Lots of Aardman Animation films were targetted at children, and because of their intricate and realistic character models I think that that is one of the main reasons their films are so popular.
Wallace and Gromit are made from moulded clay on metal armatures. From my research I have noticed that metal armatures are a very popular model design for stop motion animation. This is because they help the shape and structure of the model to make it look more realistic.
Nick Park is part of the Aardman Animations team and has directed a range of popular films. These include, The Wrong Trousers, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) and Creature Comforts. Nick has won several academy awards for best animation. His work is mainly targetted at children.
As a child I watched Nick Park's and Aardman Animation's stop motion films and really enjoyed them, especially Wallace and Gromit. Only since I've started this BTEC Media course have I found out that some of my favourite childhood films had been made using this incredibly creative technique of stop motion animation. It makes me appreciate the time and effort they put into making these films.

Here is a link showing how Nick Park and Aardman animations did the animation for Wallace and Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnkqlNPDu1E

The Amazing Adventures of Morph: How it all began: