Stop motion is an animated filmmaking technique in which objects are physically manipulated in small increments between individually photographed frames so that they will appear to exhibit independent motion or change when the series of frames is played back. Any kind of object can thus be animated, but puppets with movable joints or plasticine figures are most commonly used. Puppets, models or clay figures built around an armature are used in model animation. Stop motion with live actors is often referred to as pixilation. Stop motion of flat materials such as paper, fabrics or photographs is usually called cutout animation.
Aardman Animations Limited is a British animation studio based in Bristol, England. It is known for films and television series made using stop-motion and clay animation techniques, particularly those featuring its plasticine characters from Wallace and Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, and Morph. After some experimental computer-animated short films during the late 1990s, beginning with Owzat (1997), Aardman entered the computer animation market with Flushed Away (2006). As of February 2020, it had earned $1.1 billion worldwide, with an average $135.6 million per film.
Cinderella is a 1950 American animated musical fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by RKO Radio Pictures. Based on Charles Perrault's 1697 fairy tale, it features supervision by Ben Sharpsteen. The film was directed by Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske, and Clyde Geronimi. The film features the voices of Ilene Woods, Eleanor Audley, Verna Felton, Rhoda Williams, James MacDonald, and Luis van Rooten.
Charles Henry Selick Jr. is an American filmmaker and clay animator, best known for directing the stop-motion animated films The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), James and the Giant Peach (1996), Monkeybone (2001), Coraline (2009), and Wendell & Wild (2022). Selick is also known for his collaborations with the late voice actor and artist Joe Ranft.
Alice is a 1988 surrealist dark fantasy film written and directed by Jan Švankmajer. Its original Czech title is Něco z Alenky, which means "Something from Alice". It is a loose adaptation of Lewis Carroll's first Alice book, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865), about a girl who chases a white rabbit into a bizarre fantasy land. Alice is played by Kristýna Kohoutová. The film combines live-action with stop-motion animation, and is distinguished by its dark production design.
The history of Russian animation is the visual art form produced by Russian animation makers. As most of Russia's production of animation for cinema and television were created during Soviet times, it may also be referred to some extent as the history of Soviet animation. It remains a nearly unexplored field in film theory and history outside Russia.
Charles Robert Band is an American film producer and director, known for his work on horror comedy movies.
Happily N'Ever After is a 2006 animated fantasy adventure comedy film directed by Paul J. Bolger, produced by John H. Williams, and written by Rob Moreland. It is inspired by fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen and loosely based on the 1999 animated German television series Simsala Grimm. The title is the opposite of a stock phrase, happily ever after; the name is contracted with an apostrophe between the N and the E. The film stars the voices of Sarah Michelle Gellar, Freddie Prinze, Jr., Andy Dick, Wallace Shawn, Patrick Warburton, George Carlin, and Sigourney Weaver. This film was one of Carlin's final works before he died.
Barbie in the Nutcracker is a 2001 animated fantasy film co-produced by Mainframe Entertainment and Mattel Entertainment, and distributed by Artisan Home Entertainment.
Hoffmaniada is a 2018 Russian stop motion-animated feature film from Soyuzmultfilm. The film is one of the first full-length puppet animated film in the recent history of the animation studio. The concept and the art design was done by Mikhail Shemyakin and is directed by Stanislav Sokolov.
Christiane Cegavske is an American artist and stop motion animator.
The Cat Who Walked by Herself is a 1988 Soviet animated feature film directed by Ideya Garanina and made at the Soyuzmultfilm studio. It is based on Rudyard Kipling's short story "The Cat that Walked by Himself". Like the earlier Soviet animated feature Adventures of Mowgli, the film retains the dark, primal tone of Kipling's work. The production includes almost all types of animation technologies.
The Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale has often been adapted, and into a wide variety of media.
Nutcracker Fantasy is a Japanese-American stop motion animated film produced by Sanrio, very loosely based on Tchaikovsky's 1892 ballet The Nutcracker and E.T.A. Hoffmann's 1816 story "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King". It is directed by Takeo Nakamura and written by Shintaro Tsuji, Eugene A. Fournier and Thomas Joachim. It was officially released in Japan on March 3, 1979 and later in the United States on July 6, 1979. The film was nominated for the 1980 Saturn Award for Best Fantasy Film and the 1980 Young Artist Award for Best Motion Picture featuring youth and won the 1980 Young Artist Award for Best Musical Entertainment.
The Nuttiest Nutcracker is a 1999 animated direct-to-video Christmas film loosely based on the 1892 ballet The Nutcracker. The film was directed by Harold Harris and starred the voices of Jim Belushi, Cheech Marin, and Phyllis Diller. This film follows a group of anthropomorphic fruits and vegetables. Their goal is to help the Nutcracker's army get a star to the top of a Christmas tree before midnight and stop a rodent army from destroying Christmas. The film was released on home video by Columbia TriStar Home Video in 1999. The film aired on CBS December 4, 1999, in addition to being shown on cable.
Shrek is a 2001 American animated fantasy comedy film loosely based on the 1990 children's picture book of the same name by William Steig. Directed by Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson and written by Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio, Joe Stillman, and Roger S. H. Schulman, it is the first installment in the Shrek film series. The film stars Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, and John Lithgow. In the film, an embittered ogre named Shrek (Myers) finds his home in the swamp overrun by fairy tale creatures banished by the obsessive ruler Lord Farquaad (Lithgow). With the help of Donkey (Murphy), Shrek makes a pact with Farquaad to rescue Princess Fiona (Diaz) in exchange for regaining control of his swamp.
Windfalls is a British stop motion-animated children's television series created, written, and directed by Jenny Kenna. The Windfalls stories teach children about reading signs in nature, herbal medicine, and the plants of the British countryside. All of the animated characters are real leaves, grasses, and pressed flowers.
Strange Magic is a 2015 American animated jukebox musical fantasy film directed by Gary Rydstrom and produced by Lucasfilm, with feature animation by Lucasfilm Animation and Industrial Light & Magic. The film's screenplay, by Rydstrom, David Berenbaum, and Irene Mecchi, is based on a story by George Lucas inspired by William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. The film stars the voices of Alan Cumming, Evan Rachel Wood, Elijah Kelley, Meredith Anne Bull, Kristin Chenoweth, Maya Rudolph, Sam Palladio and Alfred Molina. It follows the leader of the Dark Forest Bog King (Cumming) who hates the notion of love and ordered the destruction of all primroses, but he begins to change his mind upon meeting with a feisty fairy princess Marianne (Wood) whose heart was broken by a philandering fiancé Roland (Palladio) to find her sister Dawn (Bull). Meanwhile, Sunny (Kelley) makes his way to the Dark Forest to collect enough primrose petals for a potion of his own.
Boris Pavlovich Stepantsev was a Soviet and Russian animation director, animator, artist and book illustrator, as well as a vice-president of ASIFA (1972–1982) and creative director of the Multtelefilm animation department of the Studio Ekran (1980–1983). Honored Artist of the RSFSR (1972).
