Back in the Spring of 2022, I watched on my iPhone 13 this documentary Reel on Facebook talking about the Nostalgic Impact that Stop-Motion animation had on British Children growing up during the Cold War era....
Or more specifically, during between the early 60s to the early 90s.
Wallace and Gromit actually count as debuting during the Cold War since their programme
first started in 1989, Two years before the fall of the Soviet Union...
It got me curious.
So working with what I watched years ago from that Reel, I will try to piece together what I remember from that documentary and pinpoint what part of that Impact that made it so.
What made STOP MOTION animation in the UK preferred over the 2D Cel Animated stuff that we got in the United States(and Canada) probably has something to do with things like climate, preferences, landscapes, etc.... though I really don't know what's the true meaning behind why back in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and after the turn of the Millennium, the British Animation Sector preferred Stop Motion over 2D or even 3DCG.
I think it has something to do with the origins of Animation in general and how grounded to reality most of Stop Motion is due to the fact that's it's physical models, often made with Clay or Plasticine held together by rod armatures, that you can manipulate and film frame by frame with any camera you have at your disposal.
I've seen that the Documentary mentioned that the choice might have something to do to appeal to British children while at the same time, reintroduce children to the Good-Old Days..
And when I mean GOOD-OLD-DAYS, I mean before Industrial Machinery took over things like Farming, Agriculture, etc.
You have to understand that a lot of these older Stop Motion animations were made by people who half are long since dead or retired.
If you ever seen such gems like THE WOMBLES, POSTMAN PAT, WINDY MILLER, etc., those often have rural settings in them to help children understand the importance of pre-industrial agriculture.
Anyhow, the part of Stop-Motion being more grounded-to-reality isn't the only reason why Stop-Motion is so prevalent in the United Kingdom.
Others include the need to take advantage of meta-references to reality as well as take advantage of all the imperfections with things like limited framerates, smudges on the plasticine, character's mouths not moving if they don't utilize it in the model, etc.
For example, in Pingwings, there are some aspects of the episodes where the characters take advantage of their TOY appearance such as this one piece of dialogue....
which I for the life of me, I can't find photos so imagine this via this script play:
MR. PINGWING is seen hanging on a clothes line, still damp from the laundry
PINGWING JR.
*Looking up towards MR. PINGWING*
"Papa!!! Papa!!! Come down at once!!!"
MR. PINGWING
"I can't cub. Can't you see I've just been washed and I haven't dried yet."
If you remember watching an episode of Postman Pat or Fireman Sam on wherever they were on tv in the UK or whatever station in America picked up the rights for,
You'll notice that these characters mouths don't move whenever they speak,
probably due to issues related to either budget or the way the plasticine rig was molded.
Others like those from Nick Park are more flexible on this but even then, his earliest work was far from perfect in terms of Construction and the plasticine he used.
You'll notice things like the image above from A GRAND DAY OUT where Wallace's face not only lacks his trademark smile or wide grin but also, his plasticine is full of finger smudges and fingerprints.
You have to understand that this film took almost an entire decade to be made.... more like 7 years to be exact.
Nick Park started the film when Graduating from College in 1982 but didn't finish it until 1989 when it made it's debut.
So as a result, most of the footage which was from his own input before joining Aardman, had characters that were modeled and armatured using his own resources.
This gave a rather crude look to his early work on A GRAND DAY OUT which resulted in things like Wallace lacking his cheeks
To Gromit looking rather emaciated looking on the face compared to his more familiar rounded look later on.
Gromit before joining Aardman
Gromit after joining Aardman.
Nowadays, you don't see this type of Stop-Motion animation that much anymore regardless if film or digital cameras are used because Executives, even in the UK, think that CGI should be the only way to go due to the conveniences offered by the software compared to plasticine or plastic.
Yeah, I see where this is going.
One thing that the computer offers is that all the models are made using Vertices, Polygons, etc, all stored in their own Binaries associated with the software of choice.
Also, compared to plasticine, You really couldn't animate faces or mouths with relative ease which explains how in those behind the scenes photos, the heads or faces had to be interchangeable in order to get around the limitations of Clay.
Speaking about Clay, Plasticine is finite in supply while in CGI, you can have as many polygons as you want with the only limiting factor being your Computer's RAM Configuration.
Compared to my 32GB DDR5 Ram Configuration, that's nothing compared to the 128GB or more that studios use with their workstations.
Also, compared to Stop-Motion which is entirely Straight-ahead in terms of shooting the poses from start-to-finish,
CGI gains Pose-to-Pose so if you're not satisfied with a certain pose, then you can always look back in your graph editor and fix whatever the balls was wrong with that pose on the fly.
Ok Ok.
So the above paragraphs made it look like I'm praising CGI for having all these conveniences that you couldn't get in STOP-MOTION, probably because of my Art School Education.
But I do respect that there are people out who despise the mandated CGI approach and actually champion the limitations that Stop-Motion Offers compared to the advantages offered with software packages like MAYA or Blender.
Amongst directors who prefer Stop-Motion instead of CGI include:
The Aforementioned Nick Park
Others include TIM BURTON
especially for such films of his like
The Nightmare before Christmas(1993)
Burton was only the producer of this film.
The director really was Henry Sellick but Disney preferred to market it as a Tim Burton Product.
Corpse Bride(2005)
Frankenweenie(2012)
Others include Wes Anderson
while WES is more known for his live-action works, he's still known for his stop-motion animation works such as
FANTASTIC MR. FOX(2009)
&
ISLE OF DOGS(2018)
And of course most recently,
Guillermo Del Toro
Though right now, he's only done Pinocchio which released in 2022 on Netflix after spending many years in development hell
But I heard he's working an adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's THE BURIED GIANT but only time will tell when that's completed as Del Toro's still hard at work finishing up the editorials on his latest Live-Action film FRANKENSTEIN.
The Facebook reel mentioned the differences between the two styles offered by either Burton and Anderson.
TIM BURTON prefers to have absolute fluidity on his ARMATURES for his animation so his animation often has smooth actions for the characters when they move.
Let's not forget the heavy emphasis on CG VFX too.
Things like smoke, lighting, fire, all those things,
they use CGI to generate that.
WES ANDERSON on the other hand would rather take the more meta/limited approach.
At times, he likes to keep things like fur at a more flowing feel rather than rigid, as exemplified by the fur boil on FANTASTIC MR. FOX.
And things like VIOLENCE CLOUDS
like the ones used by the dogs in ISLE OF DOGS,
instead of generating a CGI FLUID CLOUD on Maya or Blender,
WES preferred to use Cotton to generate the Violence Clouds.
Kind of like this GIF shown below.
Another Studio that specializes in Stop-Motion is...
Born from the Ashes of WILL VINTON Studios after years of using only CGI for the M&Ms commercials before losing the rights to said Advertising as well as closing their doors in 2005, this studio reemerged in a bid to continue on the tradition of making Stop-Motion films thought due to EXECUTIVES, CGI had to be snuck in but the studio made good on their promise to keep the CGI at an absolute minimum.... to things like VFX and Color Correction.
One of the very first efforts by this BRAND SPANKING NEW studio was...
CORALINE in 2009.
Compared to all the other studios who made their models with clay, plastic, etc.
LAIKA actually used CG Tools to construct the models but rather than animate with MAYA, they studio used 3D Printing to print out their models.
This includes the Limbs, the heads,
The facial expressions,
pretty much the anatomy of what makes these models unique.
See what I mean about interchangeable faces?
Studios that prefer Stop-Motion over CGI have to create different models for the faces due to the solidity of Clay or Plastic.
But compared to Aardman who uses Modeling Clay,
LAIKA first use CGI Software and then 3D-Prints the various assets into actual physical models.
The models, anatomy, etc.
are then painted, rigged with their armatures, dressed in clothing, attached to the various parts of the rigs, etc.,
before they're taken to the set to get their frames shot via their 35MM film or Digital ARRI Cameras.
LAIKA used these techniques for subsequent films like Paranorman, Box Trolls, KUBO, Missing Link, just to name a few.
One thing that's used by modern Filmmakers even if they prefer stop motion is that Editorial is done on the Computer using Non-Linear Software instead of a Moviola or Flatbed Editor.
And it's been like that since 1992 when AVID Media Composer took over film editing.
I will admit, I haven't touched AVID before but I've used ADOBE PREMIERE PRO so judging by the photos of an editor's timeline I've seen on Social Media, I'm sure using AVID will be a cinch.
After all, Compared to Premiere Pro or Davinci Resolve,
AVID will forever remain the industry standard for film editing.
But I don't know how my PC will handle AVID.
I'm sure it will work like a charm but...
I'm currently running an AMD Ryzen 9 7900x3D with a GIGABYTE EAGLE RTX 4080,
32GB of DDR5 Corsair Vengeance RAM,
and working with a 512GB Silicon Power SSD for my Operating System,
1TB Samsung 980 SSD for Data and programs,
2TB Lexar NM710 for my Games,
and 18TB Western Digital easystore for my Long-term Storage.
So my PC looks solidly built for AVID but I think If I invest in my Tax Returns,
I could buy a new GIGABYTE AERO D Motherboard and a Threadripper CPU to move all my stuff to that new PC but I think for 2025, I'll just stick to this current PC with the only upgrades being my Graphics Card and my CPU.
I'm waiting till AMD releases the Ryzen 9 9950x3D 16-Core CPU though I'll have to update my motherboard's BIOS in order to utilize the new CPU.
