Animation is a method by which still figures are manipulated to appear as moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Today, many animations are made with computer-generated imagery (CGI). Computer animation can be very detailed 3D animation, while 2D computer animation can be used for stylistic reasons, low bandwidth, or faster real-time renderings. Other common animation methods apply a stop motion technique to two- and three-dimensional objects like paper cutouts, puppets, or clay figures.
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 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 $134.7 million per film.
Jean-Pierre Jeunet is a French film director, producer, and screenwriter. His films combine fantasy, realism, and science fiction to create idealized realities or to give relevance to mundane situations.
Stephen and Timothy Quay are American identical twin brothers and stop-motion animators who are better known as the Brothers Quay or Quay Brothers. They received the 1998 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Set Design for their work on the play The Chairs.
Antz is a 1998 American computer-animated adventure comedy film produced by DreamWorks Animation and Pacific Data Images and released by DreamWorks Pictures. It was directed by Eric Darnell and Tim Johnson from a screenplay by Todd Alcott, Chris Weitz, and Paul Weitz. The film features the voices of Woody Allen, Sharon Stone, Jennifer Lopez, Sylvester Stallone, Christopher Walken, Dan Aykroyd, Anne Bancroft, Danny Glover and Gene Hackman. Some of the main characters share facial similarities with the actors who voice them. The film involves an anxious worker ant, Z (Allen), who falls in love with Princess Bala (Stone). When the treacherous scheming of the arrogant officer General Mandible (Hackman) threaten to wipe out the entire worker population, Z must save the ant colony from the flooded tunnel and strives to make social inroads.
William Gale Vinton was an American animator and filmmaker. Vinton was best known for his Claymation work, alongside creating iconic characters such as The California Raisins. He won an Oscar for his work alongside several Emmy Awards and Clio Awards for his studio's work.
Michel Gondry is a French filmmaker noted for his inventive visual style and distinctive manipulation of mise en scène. Along with Charlie Kaufman, he won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay as one of the writers of the 2004 film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a film he also directed.
Mainframe Studios is a Canadian computer animation company owned by Wow Unlimited Media and based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Founded in 1993 as Mainframe Entertainment Inc. by Christopher Brough, Ian Pearson, Phil Mitchell, Gavin Blair and John Grace, the company established itself as a leading contributor to the introduction of computer-generated imagery (CGI) in animation, film and television.
Cutout animation is a form of stop-motion animation using flat characters, props and backgrounds cut from materials such as paper, card, stiff fabric or photographs. The props would be cut out and used as puppets for stop motion. The world's earliest known animated feature films were cutout animations, as is the world's earliest surviving animated feature Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed (1926) by Lotte Reiniger.
Aleksandr Konstantinovich Petrov is a Russian animator and animation director.
Pacific Data Images (PDI) was an American computer animation production company based in Redwood City, California, that was bought by DreamWorks SKG in 2000. It was renamed PDI/DreamWorks and was owned by DreamWorks Animation.
Bob Sabiston is an American film art director, computer programmer, and creator of the Rotoshop software program for computer animation. Sabiston began developing software as an undergraduate and then graduate researcher in the MIT Media Lab from 1986 to 1991. While at MIT, and also after moving to Austin, Texas, in 1993, Sabiston used his 2D/3D software to create several short films, including God's Little Monkey (1994), "Beat Dedication" (1988), and "Grinning Evil Death" (1990). "Grinning Evil Death" was widely seen on the first episode of MTV's "Liquid Television" show. "God's Little Monkey" won the Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica award for 1994.
Lennon Legend: The Very Best of John Lennon is a DVD that was released in November 2003, alongside the album of the same name. It features a series of remastered, remixed, and new videos with Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound audio mixes.
Jordan Galland is an American filmmaker and musician based in New York City, and operates Slush Puppy Music, a record label, as well as his own film production company, Ravenous Films.
Chris Bailey is an American animator and film director.
I Met the Walrus is an animated film directed by Josh Raskin and produced by Jerry Levitan. It stars Levitan and John Lennon. The film's pen illustration is by James Braithwaite and computer illustration is by Alex Kurina.
Pankuj Parashar is an Indian film and television director. Among his most-known are police-thriller Jalwa (1987) starring Naseeruddin Shah, ChaalBaaz (1989), and television detective series Karamchand (1985). He also makes television commercials, corporate films and documentaries.
Jan Nickman is an American film and television director, producer, cinematographer and writer. As the co-founder of Miramar Images, Inc. and Sacred Earth Pictures, Nickman's career in film and television spans three decades.
Marco Nguyen is a French animator, known for his work on French feature films, as well as for his short film Lisa, which served as the pilot for an unproduced television series, and for his award-winning student film Le Building. He directed the music video for Tryo's song "Greenwashing", served as an animation director on the 2011 French film The Rabbi's Cat, and served as an assistant director on the 2019 French film The Swallows of Kabul. In 2017, he received an Annie Award nomination in the Character Animation category for The Big Bad Fox & Other Tales. Nguyen also developed cutscenes for the 2018 video game Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom.
