stop motion animation

I found this video really fun to watch and thought I’d write a little bit about it. It’s called stop motion animation and is used in a number of different mediums. Children shows like Gumby, and others use this technique to make inanimate objects appear to move and do things. Recently movies like Wallace and Gromit have used this same technique. The original South Park short used stop motion animation, by having paper cut out characters appear to move against a background. My first experience with this type of video making was in high school. I took a video production class that introduced us to different types and styles of film making. One project we did was a stop motion short film. I had a lot of fun with this project, and ended up with a Scooby Doo like chase sequence where the main character would go into one door and come out of another across the hallway. In the end the main character was melted with laser beams from my eyes, but that’s neither here nor there. Stop motion can create some very interesting effects when real people are the focus of the filming. It can be used to create seemingly impossible situations or incredible looking feats of agility or strength. I think it is just as fun to see inanimate objects seem to have a mind of their own. I recall a commercial recently where spare change from all over came together to form an object. If my memory serves me correctly it was for some bank that put your spare change from credit card purchases into a savings account.