James

Essay: comparing animation and stop motion

            There are many kinds of movies that fall under two types of image connection. They are animation and stop motion. They both are very similar to one another so they can be hard to tell apart.

            Animation is combining images to give them the illusion of movement while stop motion is very similar. In animation you take an image like in a Stykz program, a computer program that allows a person to create an animation with stick figures, and move it a little bit each scene until it looks like it is moving when it is played. Stop motion is very similar because it takes multiple shots and combines them together with a very small transition time so it looks like the movement seems to be really happening.

            Both of them are very similar with very small differences. It is because of the differences that they can be called different things. In animation you do not need to really worry that the camera angle is the same at every shooting. You also do not always need to worry if the camera man is not around when the scenes are being created because animation is not always made using a camera. It is most often used with a computer but can be made using pictures. Animation is also created for things like video games and movies using a green screen. Some video games and movies have things that are put in to be a joke or something to laugh at called an Easter egg. Animation also can be less time consuming for a beginner if they just stick to avoiding the simple movements like a leg moving at the knee or an arm at the elbow. The more precise the director is in the animation the longer that it would take to make the movie because the movements, even just kicking a can, take a lot of scenes to just move the leg back and even more to move the leg forward and to move the can after it has been kicked.

In stop motion you have to make sure that the camera angle is correct and that the camera angle is either at the exact spot or very similar or the shot could be ruined and the entire project would have to be adjusted or restarted because there is very rarely a backup for a stop motion project like there is for an animation. Stop motion also takes a lot of frames to equal a minute while an animation does not take as many. Stop motion can be time consuming especially if the shooting for the project takes course over multiple days or longer. A movie that was created using stop motion that took a long time would be The Nightmare Before Christmas. May not have had to be restarted if any of the people working in the same room accidently bumped the little model that they were using to shoot the movie because they may have been using things to indicate where everything was.

All in all animation and stop motion are very similar and often time consuming. Although they have a very little transition they seem to be moving very fast when the movie of it is playing. Both can be equally entertaining to people watching them.