Many feared that the inception of 3D animation would eliminate stop-motion animation in some day. While animation stop-motion animation still shines with its unique charm and the help of stop motion software that simplifies the process of making stop-motion animation.
- Istopmotion 3 5 – Create Stop Motion Animated Movies Full
- Istopmotion 3 5 – Create Stop Motion Animated Movies Free
- Istopmotion 3 5 – Create Stop Motion Animated Movies List
- Istopmotion 3 5 – Create Stop Motion Animated Movies Coming Soon
But what exactly is stop-motion animation?
Get Stop Motion Studio, the world's easiest app to get you into stop motion moviemaking today! With it's easy to use interface Stop Motion Studio lets you create beautiful animated movies. Stop Motion Studio is a powerful, full-featured movie editor with a whole host of features:. A simplistic, easy-to-use interface. Overlay mode showing the differences between frames. Animation. Create stopmotion videos, animations, and claymations! Just setup your scene, shoot a frame, adjust and repeat. Once you're done this app will automatically string together all the frames into a.mov movie that you can export to your Gallery or play in VLC. Note: This is the Lite version, which only supports the lowest resolution. For higher quality, consider purchasing the full version of.
Best Stop Motion Software for Mac: Boinx's iStopMotion software is a very powerful and user-friendly app that is useful in producing time-lapse movies or stop motion animation on your iPhone, iPad or Mac.
Stop motion, also referred to stop-frame animation, is a kind of animation technique that objects are photographed with a small amount of movement between each frame, and the whole series of photos are finally combined and played continuously.
You might hear of representative works of the world-class stop motion animation company, such as Chicken Run, Wallace & Gromit, Shaun the Sheep by Aardman Animations; Coraline, ParaNorman by Laika. And this article has collected 7 best stop motion software that help you make stop motion animation like a pro. Without further ado, let's dive in!
#1. Dragonframe
Platform: Windows, macOS, Linux
Dragonframe is full-fledged and professional stop motion software that has the tools needed for the highest quality stop-motion animation production, and is ideal for projects aimed for digital cinema, television broadcast, and commercials.
When shooting and editing stop motion animation with Dragonframe, there are lots of helpful tools available. It can provide a video assist for animator to ensure whether you are doing right with movements, lights and others, but you need to have a camera, webcam, or smart phone that comes with Live View capabilities. If you're unhappy with camera settings made previously, you can regulate ISO, shutter speed, exposure, temperature, etc. directly from the program. More so, you can view the change between frames in real-time using the onion skin feature.
Key Features:
- It uses Live View and onion skin as a video assist for shooting stop motion.
- Frame-based timeline editing. You can reshoot frames in the middle, restore deleted frames, and move frames to any position with ease.
- Animation tools include chroma key, drawing tools, playback/looping marker, configurable hotkeys, etc.
- Rotoscope layer help you yield a better result.
- Export stop motion animation using MOV, MP4, AVI and other formats.
#2. iStopMotion
Platform: macOS
iStopMotion by Boinx is one of the best stop motion software out there. It does not cost too much and requires a low system to run, which is the perfect balance between power and ease of use. A core benefit with iStopMotion is that it makes it possible to have your iPhone /iPod as the cameras and iPad as the controller, so that you can easily switch one camera source from another on your iPad and photograph objects with multiple camera angles. That makes iStopMotion well worth the investment. It should be noted that it is still not available to macOS Catalina currently, which might be prohibitive to some.
Key Features:
- It works with stop motion animation as well as time-lapse videos.
- Compatible with a wide range of cameras, such as Nikon DSLRs, Canon DSLRs, WiFi Cameras, Firewire Cameras and many more.
- Instant playback allows you to watch your projects anytime you want.
- Tight integration with Final Cut Pro X and iMovie. You can export your projects and retouch in other video editing software.
![Istopmotion 3 5 – create stop motion animated movies online Istopmotion 3 5 – create stop motion animated movies online](https://i.vimeocdn.com/filter/overlay?src0=https%3A%2F%2Fi.vimeocdn.com%2Fvideo%2F408671964_1280x720.jpg&src1=https%3A%2F%2Ff.vimeocdn.com%2Fimages_v6%2Fshare%2Fplay_icon_overlay.png)
#3. MonkeyJam
Platform: Windows
MonkeyJam is a Windows-exclusive and free stop motion software that lets you capture still images separately from your camera and compiles them into a stop motion movie. What you need to do is to hook up a camera to your Windows PC through a cable, to launch MonkeyJam and set up video as well as camera settings. And you are good to start capturing stop motion. Though it doesn't have onion skin to compare the movement changes between two frames, the limitation, to be honest, isn't a deal-breaker for me as it's completely freeware.
Key Features:
- Easy to use and sheet-driven interface.
- Images are captured in BMP, JPG, or lossless PNG with or without color.
- Customizable FPS rate.
- Export videos as AVI formats.
#4. Stop Motion Pro
Platform: Windows, macOS
Stop Motion Pro is a tool developed for creating stop-motion animation and other forms of animated movies. A host of cameras can be used with Stop Motion Pro, including webcams from Microsoft or Logitech, Canon DSLRs, as well as Nikon DSLRs. Of course, you can either use supported capture cards, scanners, video cameras to shoot the images you want to animate. When it comes to its editing features, you can use drawing tools to create many special effects, or use multiple sound tracks to make your movie vivid.
Key Features:
- Onionskinning adds a transparent overlay of your previous frame so that you can get the movement right.
- The focus tool lets you check focus of your camera easily and accurately.
- Erase wires, supports, holders with amazing rig removal tools.
- Customizable shortcuts let you fly through your workflow.
#5. iKITMovie
Platform: Windows
iKitMovie is not a one-trick pony in terms of creating stop motion animation. It has a powerful sound library which contains 2200 high quality sound effects, such as Motors, Explosions, Forest Ambiences, Earthquakes, Clocks, Coins and many more. This way, you can totally rely on iKITMovie's built-in sound library and don't need to pay for copyrighted sound effects anymore. You are allowed to record voice-overs for your animation via headsets or microphone in iKITMovie as a matter of course. If you want to turn your stop motion Lego, claymation into a blockbuster, iKitMovie is a good choice.
Must have apps for macbook pro. Key Features:
- Onion skin is a must.
- Green screen/blue screen. It can replace your backdrop in a click.
- Enhance your stop-frame animation with various sound effects and visual effects.
- Export your image sequences to various movie video formats needed.
#6. Zu3D
Platform: Windows, macOS
Having Zu3D stop-motion animation software gives you the opportunity to get pretty good results with your stop action movies. Not only does it allow you to photograph still images of an object, it also provides a variety of tools to enhance your animation. Moreover, it uses a very simple operation philosophy so you'll likely feel comfortable pretty quickly even as a new-comer.
Istopmotion 3 5 – Create Stop Motion Animated Movies Full
One other important tidbit to know is that it can remotely control webcams, mobiles, and tablets to capture images, which is useful when you've got your hand full.
Key Features:
- Support unlimited video tracks and audio tracks.
- You can add texts, speech bubbles, and credits to your movies.
- Emulate the lip-sync effect with drawing tools.
- Remove unwanted strings, wires, supports with the rig-removal tool.
#7. qStopMotion
Platform: Windows, Linux
Let's say would like to make high quality stop-motion movies with the help of a piece of decent stop motion software, yet you might have a tight budget to spend on professional stop motion software. You can go out with qStopMotion. Once you've experienced this free stop motion software, you will find that qStopMotion to not just complete, but surpass some paid programs in both simplicity and flexibility. It packs with features like onion skin, Live View, camera controls and more.
Key Features:
- Create stop motion animation videos by importing images from a camera live or your hard drive.
- It's possible to control your camera settings in the program.
- Basic editing tools like adding, inserting, deleting, previewing, etc.
- Helpful keyboard shortcuts to help you navigate the program.
Stop Motion Software | Rating | Pricing | Onion Skin |
---|---|---|---|
DragonFrame | $295 | ||
iStopMotion | $19.99 https://ceif.over-blog.com/2021/02/office-mac-serial.html. | ||
MonkeyJam | Free | ||
Stop Motion Pro | $18/month | ||
iKITMovie | $69 | ||
Zu3D | $24.99 | ||
qStopMotion | Free |
Final Words
Every character, every expression, every scene in a stop motion animation video needs to be fabricated and built according to a certain ratio, which is time-consuming and has huge labor costs. The good is that the development of stop motion software brings convenience to stop motion animation photographing. It would be challenging to make effective creative decisions for your projects if without stop motion software. Then go and choose one needed from this article.
This technique has been used since the dawn of cinema to bring objects to life and manufacture magical worlds. Before the days of CGI, it was a primary way to produce special effects, in classics from King Kong, to Jason and the Argonauts, to Star Wars. It's called stop-motion.
It's rumored that the legendary cinema pioneer Georges Melies accidentally discovered it when his camera jammed once, and upon restarting it he noticed how everything slightly changed. Soon after, stop-motion films began appearing in Europe. What started as a novelty turned into an art form when artists with unique skill and vision began making their films utilizing it.
Most commonly, it's associated with puppet, but over the course of cinema development other mediums were used as well-figures made of clay (claymation), puppetoons (ready-made figurines), silhouettes. The final results are often fascinating, but the process is traditionally painstaking.
To make the character move, the filmmaker has to take a picture, adjust the figure, take another, and so on. As there are 24 frames in a second of film, it can take hours to shoot each second. That's especially true for more advanced works, with multiple characters.
Istopmotion 3 5 – Create Stop Motion Animated Movies Free
With the advent of CGI, stop-motion is considered passé. But it's still alive and well, with new interesting works coming out almost every year. Much like each painter has a unique brush stroke, each animator creates a uniquely looking work, as the creation of characters and scenes is literally a hands-on experience here. Stellar phoenix jpeg repair 4 0 0 download free.
This list consists of a variety of films made using stop-motion, and was compiled in order to best illustrate this unique art form.
1. The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926). Dir. by Lotte Reiniger. Germany.
Recognized as the first animated feature ever made, this silhouette marvel has retained its capacity to enchant and mesmerize. The cutout puppets resemble those of Chinese shadow theatre, but the technique used to bring them to life is stop-motion.
With the help of the legendary avant-garde filmmaker Walter Ruttman and another original and highly creative animator, Bertold Bartosch, Reiniger created a fantastic tale that combined the stories of Prince Achmed and Aladdin from '1,001 Nights' into a kaleidoscopic adventure with flying horses, raging elements, grotesque demons, and magical backgrounds. The changing color tints and depth of background still looks impressive today.
Other works: Lotte Reiniger only made shorts for the duration of her long career, most in the same silhouette style. Of those, the most impressive are Papageno (1935), The Frog Prince (1961), Aucassin and Nicolette (1975).
2. New Gulliver (1935). Dir. by Alexander Ptushko. USSR.
This film is ripe for rediscovery as a cult classic. A mid-30's Soviet reimagining of the Gulliver stories, it has a typical Communist kid dream of himself as a Gulliver in the land of the reactionary Lilliputian monarchy. The hero is played by the real child actor, but is surrounded with a cast of thousands of puppet Lilliputians.
Istopmotion 3 5 – Create Stop Motion Animated Movies List
The Lilliputian land is filled with dozens of hilarious anachronisms-the nobility is dressed in wigs and XVIIIth century clothes but rides in limousines, the soldiers wear medieval armor but also have tanks and gas masks. Of hilarious note is the song 'My Little Lilliput Girl', performed as a parody of bourgeoisie culture. The film is a dazzling mix of advanced (for its time) stop-motion, political propaganda, fantasy, and sci-fi.
Other works: Ptushko is legendary in Russia as the director of fairy-tale films, most of the live-action. Of a special note is he production design and creation of fantastic creatures for a cult horror Viy (1967).
3. The Tale of the Fox (1937). Dir. by Ladislas Starevich. France.
The original fantastic fox. The first puppet feature ever made, by the artist who virtually created and enormously popularized the technique. Though completed in 1930, its release was delayed due to technic problems associated with transition to sound and funding.
Taking Goethe's adaptation of the medieval legend as the source, Starevich created a world of talking human-like animals that still amazes. For facial expressions, for instance, he used sometimes hundreds of tiny masks. It works-the puppets come to life.
Other works: Starevich was one of the inventors of puppet animation, and has many original works that are still rewarding. To mention a few : Cameramen's Revenge (1911), The Insects Christmas (1912), The Frogs Who Wanted a King (1922), Fetiche (1933).
4. Alice in Wonderland (1949). Dir. by Dallas Bower. Puppets by Lou Bunin. UK.
This adaptation of Carroll's legendary work is an artistic curio that suffered from shaky distribution. Made in Britain, its release was sabotaged by a lawsuit from Disney Studios, which were releasing their own animated version at the time. That contributed to this interesting film sinking into obscurity. Undeservedly-it has much to offer.
Combining live actors with the Wonderland populated by puppets, it has a unique visual style. Puppets were created by a well-known artist and puppeteer Lou Bunin (whose prior experiences include marionettes and painting murals with Diego Rivera). The film was well-shot by Claude Renoir, the nephew of the legendary director.
5. The Emperor's Nightingale (1948). Dir. by Jiri Trnka. Czechoslovakia.
First of several Czechs on this list. For a reason-surrealism in general, and puppetry in particular were and still are integral parts of Czech culture. Of the famous Czech puppeteers, Jiri Trnka is the first to achieve international recognition. He began as an illustrator and theatre set designer, though he's been making puppets since childhood.
This adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale is his first feature, and it won him international acclaim. Giving his Chinese puppets a porcelain-like look, and making all the sets himself as well, he created a unique and surreal world.
Other works: many worthy ones. Best features are Prince Bayaya (1950), Old Czech Legends (1953), The Good Soldier Svejk (1955), and A Midsummer's Night Dream (1959). Shorts not to be missed are Story of a Bass (1949), Western parody A Song of The Prairie (1949), the cut-out A Merry Circus (1951), and, especially, the darker political allegory The Hand (1965).
6. Inspirace (1948). Dir. by Karel Zeman. Czechoslovakia.
Another Czech master. This 10 min. short is a feel-good one, as Zeman uses glass figurines skating and allegorizing on shimmering ice surfaces. Glass, water, and ice tend to shine and shimmer when lit, and this one shines brightly.
Other works: many shorts, and a few very influential features (on Terry Gilliam and Wes Andersen, among others).
In features such as The Fabulous World of Jules Verne (1958), The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (1961), and Krabat (1977), Zeman uses cutouts and Victorian-era illustrations together with drawn animation and puppets to create unique worlds.
7. Neighbours (1952). Dir. by Norman McLaren. Canada.
This 1952 Oscar-winner (for documentary!) uses stop-motion in an entirely different way-to animate human actors. This process is called pixilation, and it's exactly as quirky as it sounds. Here, McLaren tells a cautionary anti-war story of two neighbors destroying each other over a flower that grows between their properties. Funny, poignant, strange.
Other works: Norman McLaren IS experimental animation. Over the course of his long career, in addition to establishing the animation program at the National Film Board of Canada, he made dozens of innovative and artistic shorts, with methods ranging from scratch on film, to pixilation, to optical printers, to stop-motion. A few musts: Begone Dull Care (1949), A Phantasy (1953), Blinkity Blank (1955), Pas de Deux (1968).
8. The Nose (1963). Dir. by Alexandre Alexeieff. France.
A different kind of stop-motion altogether, in fact almost a different art form. Alexeieff, a Russian-born French artist and illustrator par excellence, have created a device to make his haunting illustrations come to life. It's called a pinscreen, and consists of a screen with hundreds of thousands of pins in it.
Istopmotion 3 5 – Create Stop Motion Animated Movies Coming Soon
By pushing certain sections out and lighting them, Alexeieff was able to create animated films of incredible texture. The process is tedious, but the results are amazing to look at. This film is a 10 minute adaptation of Nikolai Gogol's phantasmagoric story of a nose running away from its owner, and it looks like amazing series of illustrations that suddenly begin to move. A unique experience.
Other works: see all of them. Because of the painstaking work involved and the need to make income by doing graphic design, illustrations, and advertisement films, Alexeieff only made 5 shorts in his long career: Night on the Bald Mountain (1933), En passant (1943), Pictures at an Exhibition (1972), and Three Themes (1980), in addition to The Nose.
He also made pinscreen title sequences to Orson Welles's The Trial, as well as several of the most achingly artistic advertisement films ever. See also Mindscape (1976) by the Canadian artist Jacques Drouin, which was made using the pinscreen.
9. Mad Monster Party? (1967). Dir. by Jules Bass, written and produced by Arthur Rankin. USA.
The Rankin/Bass used stop-motion to firmly occupy the holidays. Rudolf, Frosty, The Year Without Santa Clause-those need no introduction. With this feature, they take on Halloween. This being 1967, there is no short supply of psychedelia.
A true monster's ball-retiring count Von Frankenstein throws a bash and invites who's who of pop culture monsters-Frankenstein's monster and his bride, Werewolf, Dracula, The Mummy, Quasimodo, The Invisible Man, Creature from the Black Lagoon-they're all there, with an awesomely skeletal band providing the entertainment.
This film is considerably more sophisticated in design and execution than the Rankin/Bass TV specials (characters are a particular riot, thanks to the creative artistry of Mad Magazine cartoonist Jack Davis). Add to that the voice work of Phylis Diller and Boris Karloff. A lesser know production of the studio, but very influential and a true cult classic.
Other works: you won't miss the specials even if you try. For features, see Willie McBean and his Magic Machine (1965), Hans Christian Andersen stories adaptation The Daydreamer (1966), as well as some of their drawn films-especially, The Last Unicorn.
10. Cheburashka (1972). Dir. by Roman Kachanov. USSR.
The popularity of the title character endures well beyond Russia (he's huge in Japan), helped recently by it being the unofficial mascot of 2014 Winter Olympics.
This merchandise dynamo is a little creature resembling a walking koala bear with huge round ears. He is friends with Gena the crocodile (who works in a zoo… as a crocodile, and plays one mean accordion), and is usually opposed by the wonderfully antisocial and cantankerous old lady/hooligan Shapoklyak (though they usually make peace and even team up).
![Istopmotion Istopmotion](https://tinkerlab.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/DSC04598.jpg)
#3. MonkeyJam
Platform: Windows
MonkeyJam is a Windows-exclusive and free stop motion software that lets you capture still images separately from your camera and compiles them into a stop motion movie. What you need to do is to hook up a camera to your Windows PC through a cable, to launch MonkeyJam and set up video as well as camera settings. And you are good to start capturing stop motion. Though it doesn't have onion skin to compare the movement changes between two frames, the limitation, to be honest, isn't a deal-breaker for me as it's completely freeware.
Key Features:
- Easy to use and sheet-driven interface.
- Images are captured in BMP, JPG, or lossless PNG with or without color.
- Customizable FPS rate.
- Export videos as AVI formats.
#4. Stop Motion Pro
Platform: Windows, macOS
Stop Motion Pro is a tool developed for creating stop-motion animation and other forms of animated movies. A host of cameras can be used with Stop Motion Pro, including webcams from Microsoft or Logitech, Canon DSLRs, as well as Nikon DSLRs. Of course, you can either use supported capture cards, scanners, video cameras to shoot the images you want to animate. When it comes to its editing features, you can use drawing tools to create many special effects, or use multiple sound tracks to make your movie vivid.
Key Features:
- Onionskinning adds a transparent overlay of your previous frame so that you can get the movement right.
- The focus tool lets you check focus of your camera easily and accurately.
- Erase wires, supports, holders with amazing rig removal tools.
- Customizable shortcuts let you fly through your workflow.
#5. iKITMovie
Platform: Windows
iKitMovie is not a one-trick pony in terms of creating stop motion animation. It has a powerful sound library which contains 2200 high quality sound effects, such as Motors, Explosions, Forest Ambiences, Earthquakes, Clocks, Coins and many more. This way, you can totally rely on iKITMovie's built-in sound library and don't need to pay for copyrighted sound effects anymore. You are allowed to record voice-overs for your animation via headsets or microphone in iKITMovie as a matter of course. If you want to turn your stop motion Lego, claymation into a blockbuster, iKitMovie is a good choice.
Must have apps for macbook pro. Key Features:
- Onion skin is a must.
- Green screen/blue screen. It can replace your backdrop in a click.
- Enhance your stop-frame animation with various sound effects and visual effects.
- Export your image sequences to various movie video formats needed.
#6. Zu3D
Platform: Windows, macOS
Having Zu3D stop-motion animation software gives you the opportunity to get pretty good results with your stop action movies. Not only does it allow you to photograph still images of an object, it also provides a variety of tools to enhance your animation. Moreover, it uses a very simple operation philosophy so you'll likely feel comfortable pretty quickly even as a new-comer.
Istopmotion 3 5 – Create Stop Motion Animated Movies Full
One other important tidbit to know is that it can remotely control webcams, mobiles, and tablets to capture images, which is useful when you've got your hand full.
Key Features:
- Support unlimited video tracks and audio tracks.
- You can add texts, speech bubbles, and credits to your movies.
- Emulate the lip-sync effect with drawing tools.
- Remove unwanted strings, wires, supports with the rig-removal tool.
#7. qStopMotion
Platform: Windows, Linux
Let's say would like to make high quality stop-motion movies with the help of a piece of decent stop motion software, yet you might have a tight budget to spend on professional stop motion software. You can go out with qStopMotion. Once you've experienced this free stop motion software, you will find that qStopMotion to not just complete, but surpass some paid programs in both simplicity and flexibility. It packs with features like onion skin, Live View, camera controls and more.
Key Features:
- Create stop motion animation videos by importing images from a camera live or your hard drive.
- It's possible to control your camera settings in the program.
- Basic editing tools like adding, inserting, deleting, previewing, etc.
- Helpful keyboard shortcuts to help you navigate the program.
Stop Motion Software | Rating | Pricing | Onion Skin |
---|---|---|---|
DragonFrame | $295 | ||
iStopMotion | $19.99 https://ceif.over-blog.com/2021/02/office-mac-serial.html. | ||
MonkeyJam | Free | ||
Stop Motion Pro | $18/month | ||
iKITMovie | $69 | ||
Zu3D | $24.99 | ||
qStopMotion | Free |
Final Words
Every character, every expression, every scene in a stop motion animation video needs to be fabricated and built according to a certain ratio, which is time-consuming and has huge labor costs. The good is that the development of stop motion software brings convenience to stop motion animation photographing. It would be challenging to make effective creative decisions for your projects if without stop motion software. Then go and choose one needed from this article.
This technique has been used since the dawn of cinema to bring objects to life and manufacture magical worlds. Before the days of CGI, it was a primary way to produce special effects, in classics from King Kong, to Jason and the Argonauts, to Star Wars. It's called stop-motion.
It's rumored that the legendary cinema pioneer Georges Melies accidentally discovered it when his camera jammed once, and upon restarting it he noticed how everything slightly changed. Soon after, stop-motion films began appearing in Europe. What started as a novelty turned into an art form when artists with unique skill and vision began making their films utilizing it.
Most commonly, it's associated with puppet, but over the course of cinema development other mediums were used as well-figures made of clay (claymation), puppetoons (ready-made figurines), silhouettes. The final results are often fascinating, but the process is traditionally painstaking.
To make the character move, the filmmaker has to take a picture, adjust the figure, take another, and so on. As there are 24 frames in a second of film, it can take hours to shoot each second. That's especially true for more advanced works, with multiple characters.
Istopmotion 3 5 – Create Stop Motion Animated Movies Free
With the advent of CGI, stop-motion is considered passé. But it's still alive and well, with new interesting works coming out almost every year. Much like each painter has a unique brush stroke, each animator creates a uniquely looking work, as the creation of characters and scenes is literally a hands-on experience here. Stellar phoenix jpeg repair 4 0 0 download free.
This list consists of a variety of films made using stop-motion, and was compiled in order to best illustrate this unique art form.
1. The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926). Dir. by Lotte Reiniger. Germany.
Recognized as the first animated feature ever made, this silhouette marvel has retained its capacity to enchant and mesmerize. The cutout puppets resemble those of Chinese shadow theatre, but the technique used to bring them to life is stop-motion.
With the help of the legendary avant-garde filmmaker Walter Ruttman and another original and highly creative animator, Bertold Bartosch, Reiniger created a fantastic tale that combined the stories of Prince Achmed and Aladdin from '1,001 Nights' into a kaleidoscopic adventure with flying horses, raging elements, grotesque demons, and magical backgrounds. The changing color tints and depth of background still looks impressive today.
Other works: Lotte Reiniger only made shorts for the duration of her long career, most in the same silhouette style. Of those, the most impressive are Papageno (1935), The Frog Prince (1961), Aucassin and Nicolette (1975).
2. New Gulliver (1935). Dir. by Alexander Ptushko. USSR.
This film is ripe for rediscovery as a cult classic. A mid-30's Soviet reimagining of the Gulliver stories, it has a typical Communist kid dream of himself as a Gulliver in the land of the reactionary Lilliputian monarchy. The hero is played by the real child actor, but is surrounded with a cast of thousands of puppet Lilliputians.
Istopmotion 3 5 – Create Stop Motion Animated Movies List
The Lilliputian land is filled with dozens of hilarious anachronisms-the nobility is dressed in wigs and XVIIIth century clothes but rides in limousines, the soldiers wear medieval armor but also have tanks and gas masks. Of hilarious note is the song 'My Little Lilliput Girl', performed as a parody of bourgeoisie culture. The film is a dazzling mix of advanced (for its time) stop-motion, political propaganda, fantasy, and sci-fi.
Other works: Ptushko is legendary in Russia as the director of fairy-tale films, most of the live-action. Of a special note is he production design and creation of fantastic creatures for a cult horror Viy (1967).
3. The Tale of the Fox (1937). Dir. by Ladislas Starevich. France.
The original fantastic fox. The first puppet feature ever made, by the artist who virtually created and enormously popularized the technique. Though completed in 1930, its release was delayed due to technic problems associated with transition to sound and funding.
Taking Goethe's adaptation of the medieval legend as the source, Starevich created a world of talking human-like animals that still amazes. For facial expressions, for instance, he used sometimes hundreds of tiny masks. It works-the puppets come to life.
Other works: Starevich was one of the inventors of puppet animation, and has many original works that are still rewarding. To mention a few : Cameramen's Revenge (1911), The Insects Christmas (1912), The Frogs Who Wanted a King (1922), Fetiche (1933).
4. Alice in Wonderland (1949). Dir. by Dallas Bower. Puppets by Lou Bunin. UK.
This adaptation of Carroll's legendary work is an artistic curio that suffered from shaky distribution. Made in Britain, its release was sabotaged by a lawsuit from Disney Studios, which were releasing their own animated version at the time. That contributed to this interesting film sinking into obscurity. Undeservedly-it has much to offer.
Combining live actors with the Wonderland populated by puppets, it has a unique visual style. Puppets were created by a well-known artist and puppeteer Lou Bunin (whose prior experiences include marionettes and painting murals with Diego Rivera). The film was well-shot by Claude Renoir, the nephew of the legendary director.
5. The Emperor's Nightingale (1948). Dir. by Jiri Trnka. Czechoslovakia.
First of several Czechs on this list. For a reason-surrealism in general, and puppetry in particular were and still are integral parts of Czech culture. Of the famous Czech puppeteers, Jiri Trnka is the first to achieve international recognition. He began as an illustrator and theatre set designer, though he's been making puppets since childhood.
This adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale is his first feature, and it won him international acclaim. Giving his Chinese puppets a porcelain-like look, and making all the sets himself as well, he created a unique and surreal world.
Other works: many worthy ones. Best features are Prince Bayaya (1950), Old Czech Legends (1953), The Good Soldier Svejk (1955), and A Midsummer's Night Dream (1959). Shorts not to be missed are Story of a Bass (1949), Western parody A Song of The Prairie (1949), the cut-out A Merry Circus (1951), and, especially, the darker political allegory The Hand (1965).
6. Inspirace (1948). Dir. by Karel Zeman. Czechoslovakia.
Another Czech master. This 10 min. short is a feel-good one, as Zeman uses glass figurines skating and allegorizing on shimmering ice surfaces. Glass, water, and ice tend to shine and shimmer when lit, and this one shines brightly.
Other works: many shorts, and a few very influential features (on Terry Gilliam and Wes Andersen, among others).
In features such as The Fabulous World of Jules Verne (1958), The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (1961), and Krabat (1977), Zeman uses cutouts and Victorian-era illustrations together with drawn animation and puppets to create unique worlds.
7. Neighbours (1952). Dir. by Norman McLaren. Canada.
This 1952 Oscar-winner (for documentary!) uses stop-motion in an entirely different way-to animate human actors. This process is called pixilation, and it's exactly as quirky as it sounds. Here, McLaren tells a cautionary anti-war story of two neighbors destroying each other over a flower that grows between their properties. Funny, poignant, strange.
Other works: Norman McLaren IS experimental animation. Over the course of his long career, in addition to establishing the animation program at the National Film Board of Canada, he made dozens of innovative and artistic shorts, with methods ranging from scratch on film, to pixilation, to optical printers, to stop-motion. A few musts: Begone Dull Care (1949), A Phantasy (1953), Blinkity Blank (1955), Pas de Deux (1968).
8. The Nose (1963). Dir. by Alexandre Alexeieff. France.
A different kind of stop-motion altogether, in fact almost a different art form. Alexeieff, a Russian-born French artist and illustrator par excellence, have created a device to make his haunting illustrations come to life. It's called a pinscreen, and consists of a screen with hundreds of thousands of pins in it.
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By pushing certain sections out and lighting them, Alexeieff was able to create animated films of incredible texture. The process is tedious, but the results are amazing to look at. This film is a 10 minute adaptation of Nikolai Gogol's phantasmagoric story of a nose running away from its owner, and it looks like amazing series of illustrations that suddenly begin to move. A unique experience.
Other works: see all of them. Because of the painstaking work involved and the need to make income by doing graphic design, illustrations, and advertisement films, Alexeieff only made 5 shorts in his long career: Night on the Bald Mountain (1933), En passant (1943), Pictures at an Exhibition (1972), and Three Themes (1980), in addition to The Nose.
He also made pinscreen title sequences to Orson Welles's The Trial, as well as several of the most achingly artistic advertisement films ever. See also Mindscape (1976) by the Canadian artist Jacques Drouin, which was made using the pinscreen.
9. Mad Monster Party? (1967). Dir. by Jules Bass, written and produced by Arthur Rankin. USA.
The Rankin/Bass used stop-motion to firmly occupy the holidays. Rudolf, Frosty, The Year Without Santa Clause-those need no introduction. With this feature, they take on Halloween. This being 1967, there is no short supply of psychedelia.
A true monster's ball-retiring count Von Frankenstein throws a bash and invites who's who of pop culture monsters-Frankenstein's monster and his bride, Werewolf, Dracula, The Mummy, Quasimodo, The Invisible Man, Creature from the Black Lagoon-they're all there, with an awesomely skeletal band providing the entertainment.
This film is considerably more sophisticated in design and execution than the Rankin/Bass TV specials (characters are a particular riot, thanks to the creative artistry of Mad Magazine cartoonist Jack Davis). Add to that the voice work of Phylis Diller and Boris Karloff. A lesser know production of the studio, but very influential and a true cult classic.
Other works: you won't miss the specials even if you try. For features, see Willie McBean and his Magic Machine (1965), Hans Christian Andersen stories adaptation The Daydreamer (1966), as well as some of their drawn films-especially, The Last Unicorn.
10. Cheburashka (1972). Dir. by Roman Kachanov. USSR.
The popularity of the title character endures well beyond Russia (he's huge in Japan), helped recently by it being the unofficial mascot of 2014 Winter Olympics.
This merchandise dynamo is a little creature resembling a walking koala bear with huge round ears. He is friends with Gena the crocodile (who works in a zoo… as a crocodile, and plays one mean accordion), and is usually opposed by the wonderfully antisocial and cantankerous old lady/hooligan Shapoklyak (though they usually make peace and even team up).
Together, they appear in 4 films made in Russia, as well as the Swedish TV series and recent Japanese and South Korean productions.
Other works: in addition to the four Cheburashka films, Kachanov made many more Russian animated classics. Of note are Mitten (1967), an inventive and heartwarming short, and an hour-long drawn animated film The Mystery of the Third Planet (1981), which dazzles to this day with psychedelic universes and fantastic creatures.