Investigation Blog Post 6

Introduction: 

For this weeks blog post I wanted to look into the art of stop motion movies. Some of my favorite movies to watch when I was little where stop motion movies. I liked stop motion movies because of Tim Burton. Stop motion takes a lot of time and skill, its a really fun and amazing genre of movies. Stop motion can be mostly clay, but there are a lot of different types like: Claymation- moving clay (which I already mentioned), object-Motion- moving or animating object, pixilation- moving or animating people, or cutout-Motion- moving paper/2D material, puppet Animation- moving puppets, and silhouette Animation- backlighting cutouts. Some of my favorite movies as a kid where stop motion of some sort. We would watch a Claymation Christmas almost every Christmas and other Claymation's for holidays and its very fun and creative. I went around my moms apartment and I looked at all of the Claymation movies we had to just have a grasp at all the Claymation movies I've seen.

Inspiration:

Here is a list of Claymation movies I found around the house, I don't think these are all of the movies I've seen, but this is the general list: 

Coraline, The Corpse Bride, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and The Giant Peach. Frankenweenie, Chicken Run and The Wallace and Gromit Movies. Here comes Peter Cottontail, The Easter Bunny is Comin’ to Town, Mad Monster Party, and of course Claymation Christmas (featuring Halloween and Easter short movies too).

 There's quite a few in the list and that's what inspired me to do this blog post. While I was researching Claymation movies I found out that the The first feature-length, theatrically-released clay animation film was Chicken Run, but the art of stop motion movies, or Claymation dates back to 1897. The first Claymation animation film that’s survived is called The Sculptor’s Nightmare from 1908. The short film follows members of a political club arguing about who will replace Theodore Roosevelt as president and whose bust they will need to put up next. The short film combines elements of live action with Claymation. Another film that utilizes full Claymation is a film from the 1926’s called Long Live the Bull from Joseph Sunn. It tells the story of a young man willing to fight a bull to impress and win over his beloved. Then in 1955, the world would be introduced to Gumby, a clay-animated, humanoid figure that was quite popular. Claymation takes time and a lot of effort. Here's more information: About Claymation and More Claymation

Brainstorming/Experimentation: 

My mom used to make figures out of clay for me and my brother to play with. I always thought it was so cool and then watching Claymation movies as a kid it was amazing to see clay being able to move like that. I don't know if I’d ever try and make my own Claymation. Claymation takes a lot of skill and time, I would probably at least like to work to make one, but not the Claymation itself. To make a Claymation its almost like making a film, but instead of human actors the characters are made put of clay. Depending on how long the film is, the Claymation could take years. A film that I would use as inspiration to create a Claymation would probably be Claymation Christmas since it has multiple stories in one and you could work on each places separately over the span of awhile. Its also difficult to work with clay unless you have a lot of practice with it and I applaud the people that make these beautify and creative art pieces with clay. It truly is an amazing form of film and you don't see it often in theatres, but when you do it truly is amazing to watch.

Reflection: 

Looking at Claymation's this week was very fun and creative. Claymation's are very fun to watch, but are very time consuming to make. I enjoyed looking into them and the stop motion genre. The stop motion genre is pretty incredible to watch and to learn about. Tim Burton is the probably the reason why I like Claymation in the first place. Movies like the Corpse Bride or The Nightmare Before Christmas inspired my liking for Claymation's. Stop motion can be easy to create depending on what it is and you could create anything. Claymation is the one I focused on the most during this blog post. That's the one I've also seen the most as well. I've also seen puppet ones like with Jim Henson and the Muppets and all that. It’s an amazing art form and its very creative. It also gives artists an opportunity to be creative with clay and stop motion in all. 

Work Log: For this I worked on scheduling a time for me and my cousin to film and I got all my costumes together and ready. I'm also making sure that I have a sure location when and where we are going to film. Its been difficult, but hopefully this film will be filmed by the end of the week.