Present Animators

 

Aardman and Tim Burton

Aardman and Burton are two of the most iconic names in animation, pioneers of the art form and each infuse their own unique style into their work. Timothy Walter commonly known as Tim Burton is an American film producer and director. He is also a writer and an artist. He was born on 25th August 1958 in California, but is currently basedin Bristol. He studied at Burbank high school and California Institute of the arts. He is famous for his gothic movies like 'Ed Wood' and 'Sleepy Hollow'.

During Tim Burton's various animations, he has used very many different techniques, but mainly uses Rotorscoping and Claymation. Rotorscoping involves drawing over film footage of live actors, and claymation involves having clay models slowly being moved whilst pictures get taken to seem as if they are moving. Both of these techniques were used in the making of 'The Nightmare Before Christmas'.Dreamworks then paired up with Aardman, is they hadn;t of paired up, Aardman wouldn';t have been able to cope finanically. They then created huge and succesfull films, of the likes of 'Chicken Run', 'Flushed Away' and the huge 'Wallace & Gromit'. 'Chicken Run' was one of the highest grossing stop motion animation of all time. This film was mainly produced by Claymation. Claymation is when models get made out of clay, or plasticine, then slightly moving each character whilst inbetween taking a photograph, to then get a sequence to give the impression that the model is moving. This film was hugely succesful, many queried whether it was computer generated, as the animation looked so clean. This film fits into the genre of comedy, stop motion, animation and fantasy. All of Aardmans creations have all got the likes of comedy, and family friendly.Both men are iconic, but Burton seemed to have a slightly different style.

Tim Burton

Tim Burton is a film director, born in America, who is a animator and artist, who creates animation in particulary surrealism and horror. He famously produced A Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride within years of each other. He then went on to produced a film, commissioned by Disney, called 'Frankenweenie', but was never put into cinemas as Disney didn't approve, and said it was too dark and scary for the audience. Tim Burton has a similar style to the Brothers Quay - dark and sinister also similarly taking inspiration from David Lynch and Jan Svankmajer. All of his style in work was all pretty bizarre and weird, and very dark. He has won numerous awards for his work, and has carried on to making surrealist films.

The Brothers Quay Stephen & Timothy Quay are twin brothers, who go by the name The Brothers Quay, or Quay Brothers. They are influential stop-motion animators, who are originally from the United States, but live in England. Their animations have mainly been created with puppets and dolls, creating a bizarre and surreal sequence. Most of the animations have no dialogue, but just sounds which creates more of the theme of 'surrealism'.

 

How has stop motion animation changed in the last 20 years?

Stop motion has changed a lot over the past years, due to the amount of new technology that has been created to reform the art of stop motion. When stop motion first came about, it was constructed by just using one camera and taking 24 shots per second. Now, new technology has been achieved, and diferent ways of making it. This has improved it, by making the finished prodcuts much cleaner and smoother, to create high quality stop motions.