Willis O'Brien was a famous stop motion animation and special effects pioneer. He is mostly famous for his work on the original King Kong using the medium of stop motion animation. Now days stop motion animation is very common so it has less of an impact on its audience, back when King Kong was created in 1933 it had a large impact on the audience. This is because it was extremely unique for a long length film with highly detailed characters to be created in those times. It was something new and that had never been seen before. In the original film the model of King Kong weighed around 10 pounds and had a height of 18 inches, a steel skeleton was used similar to an armature. This may have been where armatures were developed because the models used in king kong are very similar to those used in some modern stop motion animation. When Willis O'Brien was in his teens he was very interested in drawing cartoons however in later life he turned his attention to sculpturing. He would create models in which he would add rubber onto to give them more characteristics as well as movement. Together with his partner he would create small models and this is how the roots of stop motion animation were created. From then on he went on to produce some of the most amazing films using special effects that were to be developed later on and he proved to be inspirational to other film makers and animators. The format for most of Willis O'Brien's animation was film, he created many films using the stop motion technique and produced some of the most amazing sculptures. Ray Harryhausen
Ray Harryhausen is known as one of the greatest stop motion animators in history, he was inspired by Willis O'Brien by watching the famous King Kong at the age of about 5 or 6. He was a frequent viewer at the Grauman's Chinese Theatre so he was able to watch many films that inspired him to go on and create his own. As soon as he got his own camera he begn creating his own stop motion animation films by designing clay dinosaurs. He concentrated on his studies and looked into the world of photography whilst going to university and learning to be an art director. He also completed a course in editing and from then on came up with his own idea to create a film. This shows how much learning needs to be done in order to achieve your best and to succeed in the film industry. The film he wanted to create was about a weird creature from Jupiter However this work went unrecognised. After the fail of his first film he went on to create a film called evolution,this film featured dinosaurs as one of its main aspects and although it was filmed in a garage it still looks well animated. George pal a stop motion pioneer recognised Rays work and hired him to create puppetoons, he also worked with another developer called Willis O'Brien. Ray worked on numerous films and a film called The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms apparently brought sci-fi to life. He then brought out another film called Earth vs Flying Saucers, this created an outline for many modern flying saucers used in today's films. This may have inspired Tim Burton in his films and his visions of certain things. Ray Harryhausen also created a film called "Clash of the Titans" by creating the creatures using stop motion animation, this film has been recreated for modern times in 2010. This highlights how the developers of stop motion animation has inspired the modern world of film alongside the development of ideas. He was a very succesful film maker and he won the academy award for the film "Mighty Joe Young". Due to his succesful work Ray Harryhausen is considered to be one of the greatest stop motion animators and although he doesn't make films anymore he still goes to Aardman Animation Studios to speak about stop motion. One of the genres he commonly used was sci-fi alongside the format of film. Although he mainly did films he also did work on TV aswell, this highlights how the use of stop motion animation has spread to be used in TV. Some of his films were shorts so he did a range of full length alongside shorts.
Jan Svankmajer
Jan Svankmajer is a czech film maker who creates very unique and strange stop motion animation films. His work is exremely surreal, imaginative and in some cases shocking. The clip is a snipet of one of Jan's stop motion animation films and it is based around the theme of food. He is one of the more recent developers of stop motion aniamtion because it is a very new style of film. Jan Svankmajer was inspired when he was a child because someone brought him a puppet theatre and from then on his imagination developed. Jan worked for a number of different theatres in his time and this inspired him in some of his films. Theatre is one of the things that is often included in his stop motion animation films. Jan married a women who was a surealist painter, ceramacist and writer and therefore Jan collaborated with her in order to make some of his films. Jan Svankmajer apparently had a bad experience with food when he was younger so this is why so many of his films surround this theme. The sound effects are overexagerated and the representation of the food is sometimes disgusting and foul. Jan is known as one of the most experimental animators in the world and this is proven through much of his work. Some of the most famous films he has created are, Alice, Faust and Conspiritors of Pleasure, his most recent film is Surviving Life which was created in 2010. His work may have inspired animators to be more experimental with their work and to think of more original things that are also entertaining for the audience. He is realeasing a new film called Insects that is set to be out in 2015. I think the audience for Jan's work is young adults and upwards because I don't think children would fully understand his work and it may confuse them, therefore it is targeted at an older audience. The genre of his work is surreal and experimental and the format he creates most of work in is short films. I think as stop motion animation has developed the surreal genre has become more and more popular which is why we see it much more often.
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