Claymation VS Human pixelation

Claymation 

Claymation, or as it is sometimes called clay animation, is one of a variety of forms of animation where each character or background is made of a malleable substance and shot in frames. Each individual piece is sculpted from clay or any other malleable material, around a wire skeleton known as a armature, then the figures are arranged on a set where each individual movement is done by hand and photographed at every step. When the sequence is put together and watched, the viewer can see the collection of images as a movement. To do this technique to a professional standard, a consistent shooting environment is needed to create the illusion of continuity and all objects must be consistently placed and lit with the same lighting; but most importantly, the work has to be done in a calm environment because any small movement could dramatically impact the scene.



Producing a Claymation can become extremely tedious, normal films run at roughly 24 frames per second and when shooting in twos 12 changes will be made for one second of movement. If you were to shoot a movie that was half hour long, you would need to make approximately 21,600 stops. Additionally, shooting a 90 minuet long film would take roughly 64,800 stops but this may take longer if some scenes were to be shot in ones. 

Claymation films were first produced in American in 1908, when Edison manufacturing released a short silent film which was titled 'The sculptors welsh rarebit dream'. In 1961 claymation started to become a trend, the east coast artist known as Helana Smith Dayton and west coast animator Willie Hopkins, created a range of claymation films on a variety of subjects. Dayton began experimenting with clay animation in 1916, she made 16 poses for the figures which she had sculpted, this would mean that each reel of film would 16,000 seperate poses. Later in 1917, Dayton realeased her addaption of William Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Julliet', which is thought to be one of the first stop motion films in history.  Willie Hopkins was a prolific animator, he produced over 50 clay animated for the weekly release of   'universal screen magazine' . However, by the 1920's cartoon animations that used cels or the 'slash system' became established as the dominant technique when producing animations. 


Despite claymation being driven into obsecurity, in 1921 clay animation was used in a film titled 'modelling' which was an out of the inkwell film produced by the newly created Fleischer brother studios, founded as inkwell studios by brothers Max Fleischer and Dave Fleischer form the begging until its parent company Paramount Pictures bought ownership. 'Modelling' used clay in eight shots and it was one of the exceptional uses of clay animation in short films during the 1920's. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyetrAePLTA



A varition of clay animation began to be developed by Craig 
Bartlett, which can clearly be seen in his series titled 'Arnold'. The animator used clay painting techniques, however he als0
built up clay images to elevate from the flat platform he used, 
giving a slight 3d look to his stop motion films 

Claymation can come in a variety of forms -

• 'Freeform' claymation usually describes the process where the shape of the clay changes drastically as the animation progresses.

• Another variation of claymation is known as 'strata-cut animation', which is when a long 'bread-like' loaf of clay is packed with varying images on the inside and sliced into thin sheets. The camera takes an image at the end of every cut, which shows the movement of the internal images inside the clay.

• Another claymation technique is described as 'clay painting' and it is supposedly able to blur the distinction between traditional flat animation and stop motion. 'Clay painting' is when clay is placed on a flat surface and moved as if it were wet oil paints, and it will produce any style of an image with a slight clay look to it. 

• There is a variation of claymation that is casually known as 'clay melting' and this is when any heat source is applied above or bellow clay which causes it to melt, whilst a camera is filming on a time lapse setting to film the process as it happens. 

The use of the term 'hot set' is used by animators in the production process. The clay figures will be placed into the perfect position and the animator can continue shooting. If an animator calls their set a 'hot set', then it means that nobody is allowed to touch the set or the shoot may destroy the production. Some scenes might have to be shot quickly, if a scene is unfinished and the weather becomes humid for example, the characters will have an obvious difference as they can become deformed. 

Some of the most well known claymation include 'The PJ's' ,an American stopmotion TV series produced by Eddie Murphy. The series portrayed life in an urban public housing, based on the Cabrini-green housing project in Chicago. Fourty Four episodes of the series were aired over the space of two years and each episode took roughly two months too shoot. The show began extremely popular however it was cancelled due to its high budget and declining ratings, however it did win three Emmy awards and an Annie award. Other notable clay animations might be 'craeture comforst' which was produced by the highly popular Aardman studios. 'Creature comforts' was a stop motion comedy mockumentry, orginating from the short film with the same title. The film used animated animals with a soundtrack of people talking, making it sound like it was the animals were being interviewed, adding to comical value. Other popular animations made by Aardman studios might include the highly popular and well loved 'Wallace and Grommit', 'Shaun The sheep' and   most recently 'Early man'.

                                                                     Pixilation

Pixilation is a stop motion technique when actors are used as a frame by frame subject for an animated film, this is done repeatedly posing while the frames are being taken one shot at a time with a camera, so the actor almost becomes a human puppet. The technique is often used as a way to combine live action with computer generated characters, which can often be seen in the work of Pes in such animations as 'Western speghetti' and 'Fresh guacamole'. Pixilation has become extremely popular, it can be seen in films and shorts, adverts and music videos.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNJdJIwCF_Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBjLW5_dGAM

Pixilation has been around since the start of early film processing, and it can be seen in its earliest form dating back to 1910 but it didn't become a popular form of animation untill the 50's. Norman Mclaren made pixilation popular with the film 'neighbours' and it could be argued as the most famous pixilation film. The film displays ant war themes through two arguing neighbours, and it uses pixilation to create a more dramatised version of the real world. Mclaren created the soundtrack for the film by scratching the edge of the film, creating lines and triangles which the projector would read as sound. The film could also be through of as one of the most controversial films NFB had ever made, with its strong political message.  Mclaren said "I was inspired to make neighbours by a stay of almost a year in the  peoples republic of China. Although i only saw the beggings of the Mao revoloution, my faith in human nature was reinvigorated. Then i came back to Quebec and the Korean war began. I decided to make a really strong film about anti-materialism and against war"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-o9dYwro_Q

One of the most famous uses of pixilation can be seen in Peter Gabreiles 'sledgehammer' video ,and similarly to Pes, it combines traditional stop motion techniques with pixilation. The video was commisioned by Tessa Watts at Virgin Records, it was directed by Stephan R Johnson and produced by Adam Whittaker. The Brother Quay and Aardamn animations created the Pixilation, claymation and stop motion techniques that gave the songs video life. Two dead, featherless chickens are shown dancing in the middle of the song, they were animated by Nick park, who works for Aardaman animations, and he was working to refine his work with plasticine at the time. Gabriel had to lay under a sheet of glass for sixteen hours whilst the video was being shot one frame at a time, he said it took alot of hard work and he remebered a time when he though to himself "if anyone wants to copy this video, good luck to them". The video won nine MTV music video awards in in 1987, making it the most awards a single has ever won; it was also ranked number four on MTV's 100 greatest music video's ever made.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g93mz_eZ5N4



Pixilation is a stop motion technique that uses humans rather than figures such as claymation, however it uses a very similar technique. Instead of making an armature and photographing every slight movement, you would take photos of a person doing small movements each time. These techniques would probably take almost the same filming time, however using pixilation offers a more surreal view of the real world, whereas claymation allows artists to explore their imaginations by making the figures and set that they film, and is often used in
films largely for childrens entertainment however it has been seen to entertain adults too. Comparitivley, Pixilation can be used in almost anything, TV, film, music videos etc.