History of Animation Part 2

Tim Burton

Born in California in 1958. Burton would make short films in his back garden on Evergreen Street using crude stop motion animation techniques, filmed without sound.
Examples of his work:
Nightmare Before Christmas
James and The Giant Peach
and Sleepy hollow however only certain scenes in the film
Henry Selick
Born November 30th 1952 and is an American stop motion director, producer and writer who has worked with Tim Burton in the past. He is best known for:
Nightmare Before Christmas
James and the Giant Peach and most recently Coraline
Burton is known for his Gothic and dark style of stop motion. He was a big fan of Vincent Prince and Edward Gorey and the cartoon look in his films probably comes from working with Disney early on in his career also several of his films are actually based on drawings from his childhood. Although having a pretty normal up bringing Tim Burton spent most of his time crafting very twisted and imaginative drawings some of which would bring inspiration to bring some of his most popular film characters to life such as Edward Sissorhands and Jack.


Nick Park was born on 6th December 1958 and is an English film maker of stop motion animation and is best known for Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep. Park was nominated 6 times for an Academy Award and won 4 times. Park's films always have some sort of machine that plays a major part in the films climax and his characters have upper and lower jaws with differing curvature. When knitting is featured its done properly with the correct movements and stitching. He was also very interested in animation at a very young age and spent most of his time doodling and drawing, thinking of ideas. He is famous for using Plasticine in his films and they also like to show this, none of it is done using computers and they even like to leave the finger prints of the people working on it in the Plasticine. Park got his inspiration from Dennis the Menace and Lord Snooty etc. This inspired him to pick up the pen and copy out the adventures and there are clear parallels between the world inhabited by Wallace and Gromit.

Otmar Gutmann was born on 24th April 1937 and died on October 13th 1993. He was a German television producer and animator. He is known for the creation of Pingu. Pingu is a BAFTA award winning stop motion, clay mated children's television series which was created by the Pygos group and Track Film studio. It was originally made for Swiss television and ended up becoming a massive hit around various parts in the world.





Phil Tippett
Born 1951 and is a director/producer. At the age of just 7 Phil was inspired by Ray Harryhausen's The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad. Phil completed a bachelors degree at a university in California and went on to work at the animation studio Cascade Pictures in Los Angeles. A huge turning point in Tippett's career was in 1975 when George Lucas hired Phil and John Berg to create a stop motion miniature chess scene for Star Wars: A New Hope. Phil also had a role in many of the Star Wars films, including modelling and casting alien heads and limbs for the busy Cantina scene in the first scene. By 1978 Phil lead the animation team at Industrial Light and Magic that would launch his career bringing life to the sinister Imperial Walker and the Hybrid Tauntaun for The Empire Strikes Back. Tippett also worked on Jurassic Park as one of the Dinosaur supervisors. Another popular movie he has worked on is Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Tippett has received many awards including an Oscar in 1994 for best effects visuals in Jurassic Park, The Special Achievement Award in 1984 for Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi and a BAFTA Award in 1994 also for Jurassic Park.

George Pal:
Born in 1908 and died May 2nd 1980.
George Pal was one of the pioneers of stop motion animation, his works influenced many of the stop motion artists today. At the age of 20 he graduated from the Budapest Academy of Arts in 1928 and after this he began making films for Hunnia Films of Budapest. He patented his technique of stop motion as Pal-Doll. The Puppetoons was a patented technique and also the name of the series he created including Jasper and The Haunted Mansion and Tubby the Tuba. He also created a cartoon called Tulips Shall Grow, this was nominated for an Academy Award for best short Subject, Cartoon and is generally recognized as an allegory about the conquest of Holland by the Nazi's.

The Brothers Quay:

These brothers are in fact identical twins and they were born on June 17th 1947. They are said to be 2 of the worlds most original film makers with award winning classic films. They were born in Pennsyvania where they studied illustration before moving on to the Royal College of Art in London. They began producing animated shorts in the 70's and they are not only directors but screenwriters, cinematographers and animators. As said before their work is completely unique, surreal and often called dark as it mainly consists of puppets and dolls coming to life. "Their work is mind-boggling in its richness; and the history of its growth, from deep roots in the rural United States through design and illustration to filmmaking". This was quoted from the MoMA curator Ron Magliozzi in an email to Wired. Some examples of their work: The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer and The Comb (From the Museums of Sleep) and Street of Crocodiles.

Adam Shaheen (and Cuppa Coffee):
Adam Shaheen is a British animator, television producer and screen writer and is the original founder of Cuppa Coffee Studios which is Canada's oldest, privately owned animation studio. Shaheen gained a BA (Hons) in photography and went to the London College of Printing. Some of his work is similar to some of the work of Thunder Birds. He uses claymation and uses clay and Plasticine to create his characters. Shaheen has created various amounts of animations including Celebrity Deathmatch, Bruno and Little People are just a few pieces of his work. Shaheens most experience includes: animation, film, visual effects and character animation are just a few to mention.

Willis O' Brien:
Born in Oakland, California and left home in 1897 at just 11. He created his first movie The Dinosaur and The Missing Link: Prehistoric Tragedy in 1915 with a budget of just $5000. He managed to secure an animation role in Harold H.Hoyts The Lost World. In 1933 he made the hightlight of his career with the mega hit King Kong which mixed live action footage with stop motion creatures which turned into an unforgettable classic in cinema history. He had a selection of animatronic puppets which he would glue animation of in time with footage of actors and actresses in real life. His influence to stop motion animation is massive and the Lost World is said to have inspired one of the huge greats in animation Ray HarryHausen. King Kong has gone on to be remade not only once but twice and has been a box office smash on both occasions. Over the next 70 years stop motion went from strength and is still used in motion pictures today.

Ray Harryhausen:
Born 29th June 1920 in LA. His passion was for dinosaurs and anything that involved fantasy. Ray used to recreate images from films like King Kong by using marionettes or string puppets, he searched around to try and find out how they made King Kong look 'alive' and found out they used something called stop motion animation. In 1938 when Ray was just 18 he began to plan an ambitious project called evolution of the world in which he planned to visualise the dawn of the planet to the end of the age of the dinosaur. The project however was too ambitious. Within a few years HarryHausen was known across the world for his films involving stop motion animation. Jason and the Argnonauts is generally seen as one of his best pictures HarryHausen said "everything seemed to fit and work so well". Ray 'retired' from dimensional animation in 1984 although he did indulge himself occasionally. Ray was seen as the Father of stop motion animation and he called Willis O'Brien the Grandfather.