Animation is an audiovisual and artistic medium in which the illusion of movement is achieved without the use of real actors, although the two can overlap. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets (cels) to be photographed and exhibited on film. Animation has been recognized as an artistic medium, specifically within the entertainment industry. Many animations are either tradtional animations or computer animations made with computer-generated imagery (CGI). Stop motion animation, in particular claymation, has continued to exist alongside these other forms.
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.
The Academy Award for Best Animated Feature is given each year for the best animated film. An animated feature is defined by the academy as a film with a running time of more than 40 minutes in which characters' performances are created using a frame-by-frame technique, a significant number of the major characters are animated, and animation figures in no less than 75 percent of the running time. The Academy Award for Best Animated Feature was first awarded in 2002 for films released in 2001.
Arthur Clokey was an American animator, director, producer, screenwriter and voice actor, he was pioneer in the popularization of stop-motion clay animation, best known as the creator of the character Gumby and the original voice of Gumby's sidekick, Pokey. Clokey's career began in 1953 with a film experiment called Gumbasia, which was influenced by his professor, Slavko Vorkapich, at the University of Southern California. Clokey and his wife Ruth subsequently came up with the clay character Gumby and his horse Pokey, who first appeared in the Howdy Doody Show and later got their own series The Adventures of Gumby, from which they became a familiar presence on American television. The characters enjoyed a renewal of interest in the 1980s when American actor and comedian Eddie Murphy parodied Gumby in a skit on Saturday Night Live.
Charles Henry Selick Jr. is an American filmmaker and animator. He is known for his gothic horror films and 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.
Sérgio Santos Mendes was a Brazilian musician.
The Squawkin' Hawk is a 1942 Merrie Melodies cartoon directed by Chuck Jones. The short was released on August 8, 1942, and is the first to star the young Henery Hawk. It was animated by Phil Monroe and was written by Michael Maltese, the latter being his first collaboration with Jones.
Anima Mundi is a competitive Brazilian video and film festival devoted exclusively to animation, held every July in the cities of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, Brazil.
Laika, LLC is an American production company specializing in stop-motion animation and forthcoming live-action feature films, commercial content for all media, music videos, and short films. The studio is best known for its stop-motion feature films Corpse Bride, Coraline, ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls, Kubo and the Two Strings, and Missing Link. It is owned by Nike co-founder Phil Knight and is located in Hillsboro, Oregon, part of the Portland metropolitan area. Knight's son, Travis Knight, acts as Laika's president and CEO.
Arnaldo Angeli Filho, more commonly known as Angeli, is one of the best-known Brazilian cartoonists.
Jiří Barta is a Czech stop-motion animation director. Many of his films use wood as a medium for animation. Among his notable films are the 1986 film The Pied Piper.
United Kingdom Animation began at the very origins of the art form in the late 19th century. British animation has been strengthened by an influx of émigrés to the UK; renowned animators such as Lotte Reiniger (Germany), John Halas (Hungary), George Dunning and Richard Williams (Canada), Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton have all worked in the UK at various stages of their careers. Notable full-length animated features to be produced in the UK include Animal Farm (1954), Yellow Submarine (1968), Watership Down (1978), and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005).
Sérgio Machado is a Brazilian film director and screenwriter. His film Cidade Baixa was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.
Mark "Thurop" Ashton Van Orman is an American cartoonist, animator, writer, producer, director, and voice actor. He worked with Cartoon Network to create and produce the animated series The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack (2008–2010), in which he voices the titular character. He made his directorial debut with The Angry Birds Movie 2 (2019).
Case of the Naves Brothers is a 1967 Brazilian drama film directed by Luis Sérgio Person. Based on the João Alamy Filho novel of the same name, it tells the story of Joaquim and Sebastião Naves, who were arrested during the Estado Novo dictatorship and after being tortured confessed to a crime they had not committed. The film was entered into the 5th Moscow International Film Festival. It was also selected as the Brazilian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 40th Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee.
Bobby Yeah is a British stop motion adult animated body horror short film written, directed and animated by Robert Morgan. It was made independently and completed in 2011, and later uploaded on Robert's YouTube Channel in HD in 2017.
Adam is a 1992 British stop-motion clay animated short film written, animated and directed by Peter Lord of Aardman Animations. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short and the BAFTA Film Award for Short Animation in 1992, and won two awards at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival in 1993. The film, which was distributed by Aardman, is based on the beginning of the Book of Genesis.
The Early Worm Gets the Bird is a 1940 Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies cartoon supervised by Tex Avery. The short was released on January 13, 1940. The name is a play on the adage "The early bird gets the worm."
