History of Animation Part 3

Stop motion is used everywhere and anywhere, TV programmes, films, advertisements, music videos and even idents. An example of a TV programme that uses stop motion animation would be Bill and Ben The Flower Pot Men. This is a children's television show about the adventures of two flower pot men called Bill and Ben. All of which takes place in a small garden. Although it is a children's show the stop motion animation used in this is actually very good and also very professional.

Films also use stop motion animation and possibly one of the biggest and most well known films involving stop motion animation would be the Wallace and Gromit films. This is one of the last remaining films that uses stop motion animation and claymation completely without any computer animation. When working on Wallace and Gromit they like to leave slight fingerprints in the clay, the reason for this is to show that they are proud that they still do stop motion animation and they get a buzz when seeing their fingerprints on the clay.

Stop motion is also used in everyday advertisements. Xbox used a stop motion animation advertisement which I think was not only very clever but also very effective. Known for its games and computer graphics i feel as if they have taken it back to basics by using stop motion animation here and I think that it works really well.

Some music videos also use stop motion animation and it can have a huge effect on the audience. Although its costly and takes a long time many music videos are now using if not stop motion animation in their videos some sort of animation.

Idents are also popular to use stop motion animation as normally they're not very long and they don't take as long as films or TV shows take. I feel as if stop motion can be aimed at anyone and everyone, for example Pingu, who doesn't like Pingu? Of course certain things are aimed at certain audiences like Bill and Ben is clearly aimed at children where as the White Stripes music video is aimed at a more mature audience, however is there a market for stop motion animation anymore?

With technology always expanding the same effects and results can be used by doing it with computer graphics and its less time consuming and basically a whole lot easier. The creators of Wallace and Gromit are trying to keep stop motion animation alive however in my personal opinion, the digital age has been apon us for a long time now and as its easier to create basically the exact same thing by doing it on a computer, stop motion animation only has a limited life span left. Although some will try and keep the beauty of it alive the death of stop motion animation is getting ever closer.