The Art of Stop-Motion Animation by Ken Priebe

My first impression was “Wow! This book is thicker than the other two combined…more like a textbook…and wow! higher quality color images!” I also recognized, by flipping through the book, several puppets from the student work that was posted on YouTube. I was happy to know that I would be able to see the puppets that were used to create such high quality student work broken down within the text. As compared to Brierton’s work, I could tell this was a more professionally crafted resource but I did find the thickness a bit daunting.

The overall practical content of the book was almost exactly the same as that of the Brierton books combined. There were more examples and pictures of each idea or technique and the content was a bit more detailed and in-depth, but after looking through it all I could see that the Brierton books held their own.

This book would be a good textbook resource (~$30 from Amazon.com) for a class on stop-motion animation because it includes all of the necessary information from basic art principles to specific creative techniques in addition to some history and interviews. The overall scope of this book makes it a more complete resource. Unlike the Brierton books, the references Priebe uses are more universal (less specific to one area of the country). I found the overall organization of this book to be very successful. The chapter-to-chapter progression was very logical. Within the chapters I particularly appreciated the supply lists which were accompanied by pictures of all the supplies even ones that most people would know without a visual reference. The inclusion of those pictured supplies demonstrated to me a thorough coverage of the topic; that the author is doing his job to clearly present the subject matter.

There are several interview chapters interspersed throughout the technical chapters which add another dimension to the book. I found the inclusion of the perspectives of real life animators besides the author to be very beneficial. These interviews encouraged me to go beyond the pages of the book into my own mind for ideas as opposed to the one-way, local-store picture presented in Brierton’s books. I feel that Priebe expects more creative freedom and deviation from the text on the part of the reader. It is as if he has approached the task of creating a stop-motion animation resource from his teacher perspective in full appreciation and anticipation of the inevitable differences of his students/readers.

The last chapter which talks about making the film itself shows original storyboard images alongside corresponding frames from a finished movie. This provides a perfect illustration of the need to think about everything in depth prior to turning the camera on. With proper planning, you are free to simply follow the directions you have written for yourself. When your directions are good, you are able to come full circle.

From this book I take away:

• I need to plan, plan, plan, plan, plan, and then execute.
• MagpiePro is definitely an important tool.
• I can add epoxy putty to the armature wire in areas which should never bend, effectively creating epoxy bones and wire joints.
• I can use the computer to help after filming, for example to edit out puppet supports used during filming.

The text could be larger and the pictures smaller for easier reading, but overall this book is a well-crafted and considerate exploration of the art of stop-motion animation. The author’s love and knowledge of the process are apparent in his writing and translate into the success of his students as well. This resource alone would have taught me everything I needed to know about my stop-motion project and I know it will prove to be worth every penny.

Stop-Motion Filming and Performance by Tom Brierton

This book is meant to be a guide to cameras, lighting, and dramatic techniques. Even though it was copyrighted in 2006, two years after the other book I read, there was no noticeable improvement in the image quality or writing consistency. Again, the detail provided and overall image content was enough to clearly convey the author’s point.

The first three chapters provide some background information useful for any filmmaking process: story construction, cameras, and lighting. I did not gain anything new from these first few chapters having learned their contents previously in school or from books and because most everything seemed commonsense. However the following four chapters presented very practical information related to animation movie-making specifically. The first, fundamentals of animation acting, detailed the creation of an animation sequence which can be basically reduced to anticipation-action-reaction. Paying careful attention to the anticipation of the action and reaction to it will make the action itself more believable on film. Brierton also introduces a software program MagpiePro which breaks down audio by frame so that the animator knows at least what position the puppet’s mouth should be in for each frame. Key frames or key poses are also introduced which act as markers for bigger divisions of the action which are to be separated by a certain number of frames whose smaller movements will make the sequence of the action feel continuous.

Replacement animation is one technique that Brierton explained. He mentioned that it is often used for eye blinks (replacement eyelids) but can be used for dialogue (replacement mouths) and large expressions (replacement heads) as well. This technique is an alternative to animating the actual clay of the head of the puppet and was news to me. The replacement features are created from a rigid material and, compared to sculpting for each new frame, they would provide a relatively narrow range of expressions.

The final chapter which talked in detail about the MagpiePro software exposure sheets was the most helpful to me. By writing the words of the audio alongside frame numbers and breaking the audio down further by syllable, the dialogue animation process becomes a matter of following the road map you have created for yourself. This chapter was very exciting for me because I am most concerned about lining up the audio to make believable dialogue sequences.

What I took away from this book:

• Remember to include the anticipation of and reaction to the action being animated.
• Choose the animation technique that best fits your vision.
• Take advantage of software that can dramatically improve dialogue sequencing.

I am very glad to have learned of MagpiePro from this book; it was worth reading for that valuable knowledge alone. For basic ideas and a freely available material, I would recommend it to other students considering stop-motion animation projects.

Stop-Motion Puppet Sculpting by Tom Brierton

It was immediately apparent, with the crackling of the spine upon opening, that I was the first person to ever check this book out. Flipping through it I noticed there were several pictures on every page, a good sign for a how-to book. Many of the pictures were low-quality and pixelated however which I found a bit disconcerting but I figured the book probably had a lot of practical information for me nonetheless. I was fairly certain that I would get useful up-to-date information based on the copyright date of 2004 and the subtitle “A Manual of Foam Injection, Build-up, and Finishing Techniques”. From all indications, the book had a straightforward goal. The preface states that the book “synthesizes the author’s 30-plus years of puppet-making experience as it applies to the magical art form of stop-motion puppet animation”. I was expecting, based on the quality of the pictures and the author’s background, a book full of practical knowledge written by someone who knew about animation but not about writing books.

The book begins with introductory/background information on research, design, sketching and sculpting, followed by a chapter focusing on the sculpting process specifically. Much of this information was basic and would be common knowledge to any art student, but it did provide the foundation work for the remaining chapters. The following chapters were more detailed accounts of the construction techniques, foam injection and foam build-up. I found the progression to be logical and felt like the directions were detailed enough that I could reproduce Brierton’s results given the same materials.

All the pictures are black and white. Because there are so many of them and they absolutely need to accompany the text, the low quality of the images became a distraction. I also found numerous typos throughout the book. The general ideas presented came through despite the shortcomings mentioned. I learned that the exact techniques that the author uses are largely impractical for in-home use, i.e. very high oven temperatures, toxic fumes, and specialty supplies. Acquiring all the materials needed would be very costly for a startup project (Brierton includes a list at the back of the book with suppliers from all over the country for 8 different necessary specialty supplies). One frustration I had was that Brierton often references the stores he shops at in his hometown. The inclusion of those references assured me of the reality of his knowledge but also distanced me from his processes. It was like I knew he was giving good directions but they were too specific for me to be able to follow them exactly.

I learned that being able to control all of the technical processes of the foam injection technique pays off with the result of a very professional, durable puppet. However I also learned that simply utilizing mattress foam from a craft shop to build up body mass on a wire armature would be effective enough to suit my purposes. I understand the importance of not using modeling clay or plasticine for the entire puppet because of the difficulties arising from the cumulative weight of the clay, something I had not considered before reading it. Foam is a good lightweight filler material. Brierton uses a latex skin to finish the puppets made with the build-up method. Latex however poses many of the same in-home problems as the foam injection method does.

The level of detail provided by the author convinced me of the validity of the techniques presented in this book. However, some shortcomings with the writing and pictures made it hard to fully absorb everything. In general what I got from this book is:

• There are a variety of puppet sculpting methods to consider-each with its own advantages and disadvantages.
• The structural integrity of the armature is crucial for a successful puppet.
• Weight of the puppet should be minimized.
• Finishing materials should be flexible enough to allow for motion without causing defects or damage that will show up on film.
• Taking time and making careful considerations during the puppet-building stages can save you from big headaches during filming.

Overall, I am happy to have had this book be my formal written introduction to stop-motion animation. It showed me that my project really needs to be a labor of love because the process is tedious even before actual animation begins. I would recommend this book for a basic introduction to understanding the general ideas of stop-motion animation especially because it is a free library resource.

1. research

I began my research on YouTube…appropriate first because I will be posting the finished product on YouTube and second because it’s totally free. There are a lot of short stop-motion videos on YouTube many of which are done by amateurs like me. It is always important as an artist to know what has been done and what is currently being done in your field of interest. Because I believe the hardest part of this process will be making the characters look like they are actually saying and singing the attached audio, I did a search for “stop-motion dialogue”. This turned up a series of videos of student work posted by an animation teacher Ken Priebe from VanArts in Vancouver. Achieving the quality level of these videos will be my goal. They are charming because they are obviously homemade but they are also technically very well executed. They also depict a couple of different techniques for animation dialogue which I am interested in trying for myself. A link to the first video of this series is below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7MBrKb2ECQ

In the “More Info” section Ken Priebe advertises his book. The quality of his students’ work was enough to convince me that I needed to buy his book. In the meantime I decided to check out the books available at the UK Library. I was able to find a couple:

• Stop-Motion Puppet Sculpting by Tom Brierton
• Stop-Motion Filming And Performance by Tom Brierton

I also checked out some movies which I had not already seen that utilized some form of stop-motion animation from the A/V department in the library and the local video store:

• Return to Oz
• Corpse Bride
• Coraline

I read the books from the library, watched the movies, and ordered Ken Priebe’s book to begin soaking up as much animation knowledge as I could. Following will be my reviews of the books and comments about the movies.