Laika, Kubo, Vinton- Icons of Stop motion and Claymation

Posted on by victoriacourchesne

-Major post 1

written by Victoria Courchesne

After completing the first project for our course, you might be curious about stop motion as an animation medium. What we know as Claymation today closely corresponds with the stop motion animation style of the 1900’s. One of Claymation’s most talented animators was a man named Will Vinton. In the 1970’s Vinton created his own animation studio he named after himself, Will Vinton Studios, in Portland Oregon. One of the studios most famous animations was the commercial they did for the Caifornia Raisins. The studio later became Laika studios, which has been nominated for four Oscars. The purpose of mentioning Laika is because they are my favorite Stop motion studio. Kubo and the two strings is a masterpiece of story, color, and music that has won the adoration of millions around the world. Even though the film was “ Stop motion”, the film used 3D modeling programs to create many of their assets, including Kubo’s face and the Giant Skeleton. It is interesting to compare the California Raisin ad’s Claymation style to the stop motion style the studio later adopted.

Sources:

https://area.autodesk.com/life-in-3d/5-fast-facts-on-kubo-and-the-two-strings-by-laika/

https://www.cartoonbrew.com/tag/will-vinton-studios

Some of the parts for Kubo’s face were modeled in Autodesk Inventor because of their size.

Major Post 1: Svankmajer

Posted on by LeAnn Schmitt

Jan Svankmajer is a Czech surrealist puppeteer and animator who was born in 1934. He uses a mix of both stop motion animation and live action to accomplish a very unsettling storytelling aesthetic. A lot of his work appears to be inspired by early animators such as George Melies who used stop motion as a way to create trick films. You do not need to watch a lot of Svanmajer’s work to see that this same idea of tricking the audience by making strategic cuts and using stop motion elements. However, I will say that his techniques are much more advanced and hold up much better than Melies’s.

             Svanmajer’s most famous piece of work is a three-part short film called Food that features 3 distinct shorts examining the relationship with humans. The whole film is a combination of stop motion, videos, and claymation. Most of the clay is only used for a few frames to create very scary wild expressions that can make the viewers skin crawl by how uncanny and how abrupt they are.

LeAnn Schmitt