Replicating Creature Stop-motion in Maya

3. The history of Creature Stop-Motion

Initially I would like to inform about the veterans and innovators who not only pioneered stop motion, but also laid the cornerstone for modern day Creature FX which influenced the modern day giants of filmmaking, the likes of Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson, George Lucas, Tim Burton and Co.

British born pioneer “James Stuart Blackton” was the very first to introduce stop-motion animation.

James Stuart Blackton

His short was called The Humpty Dumpty Circus (1898) which included animated wooden toy animals borrowed from Blackton's daughter. This coincided with the unearthing of fossilised skeletons across the world where people initially believed them to belong to dragons, only to be corrected to be giant prehistoric reptiles known as Dinosaurs. Gertie the Dinosaur (1914- by Winsor McCay) was an animated short and also was the first piece of film to introduce dinosaurs into the motion picture industry.

Animator Winsor McCay interacted with an on-screen dinosaur, Gertie, projected behind him on the stage. McCay and Gertie inspired an entire generation of animators. Not until the collaborative projects of Disney Studios in the 1930s was McCay's artistry rivaled in such films as Snow White. — Source: The Gertie Project

Animator Winsor McCay, whose work influenced the greats of the 1930s and 1940s, including Walt Disney and Walter Lantz.

                                                                This documentary clearly shows how creature stop-motion started as slapstick comedy.---> Documentary depicting on how Creature Stop-Motion originated as slapstick comedy.
  
Willis O'Brien also included dinosaurs into stop-motion animation in the film

Dinosaur and the missing link (1914), where he emphasises “Slapstick comedy” to all the characters in it. Both Gertie the Dinosaur and the Missing link showed more comical nature to the characters and as said before, included more “Slapstick comedy”.

O'Bie working on a model for The Lost World.

O'Brien working on Kong

It wasn’t until “World War 1”, that several reforms were reinforced into the factions shaping stop motion animation. “Willis O'Brien” now showed a more aggressive nature to his characters in the movie Ghost of Slumber mountain (1918), where Dinosaurs fought for survival similar to that of wild animals in nature. This movie visually produced a haunting appearance to its audiences, as the Dinosaurs were savage and living in a complete uncivilised world, and as for the clumsy comical slapstick feel, it was long gone.

Similar to this style, Willis O'Brien later introduced Lost World (1925), where the puppets were rigged of metal armatures and covered with stuffing and foam rubber in contrast to the puppets from “Missing link” which were made of augmented clay. With metal armatures the puppets tend to look more realistic because of the weight and the movement of the dinosaurs. As for the visual side Charles R. Knight envisioned the look of Dinosaurs as if he travelled through time and had a glance of these prehistoric creatures. On the animation side Willis O'Brien did a remarkable job by adding fine details of how real animals behaved in the wild. For example in the part where a dinosaur called Agathaumas seen in battle with a “Tyrannosaurus Rex”, there was a pause between the two dinosaurs after their first confrontation. This is similar to real wild life footage (a pack of hyenas fighting each other would suddenly pause to assess the opponents next move). When King Kong (1933) was released it became the most renowned work of Willis O'Brien, as he focused more on Kong, giving both an aggressive and soft sided nature.

Charles R. Knight working on Stegosaurus in 1899.

 

                                Some of the dinosaurs from Lost World (1925) including the battle between “Tyrannosaurus Rex” and "Agathaumas" (2:34 - 3:16).-->
The dinosaurs from Lost World (1925). The clips also includes the epic battle between “Tyrannosaurus Rex” and "Agathaumas" (2:34 - 3:16).

Kong armature.

A rig of a creature from the film King Kong (1933)

“The stop-motion models are also at their best, and in this film, they actually interact almost completely convincingly with the human actors... In Creation, the interactive scenes were but a test for this, and in The Lost World, there never was any real interaction. King Kong is as much a triumph of art and filmmaking as it is a ripping good yarn of 1930's adventure cinema “ [lost world website].

Unlike Willis O'Brien his predecessor Ray Harryhausen worked on animated shorts for children such as “Mother goose stories” and “Fairy tales”  and later extended his courier on Creature flicks. Ray Harryhausen was unique as he  animated on different types of creatures ranging from quadrupeds, bipeds, multipeds to birds and even flying saucers. He was the master of creature stop-motion and the main influence for me to approach this project. On a personal note, the best stop motion characters he had ever conceived were the group of skeletons from Jason and the Argonauts and the mythical beast the Medusa. Medusa especially, since the character itself was composed of several different components (e.g. snakes, Medusa, tail) and each component appears to have a life of its own and acts according to the scenario.

Characters from "Mother Goose stories".

Medusa and the skeleton warrior from Jason and the Argonauts.

In a video featuring John Landis & Ray Harryhausen (for winning the Bradford animation festival award for lifetime achievement), Ray talks about Talos from the film Jason and the Argonauts where he incorporated jerky animation to the creature since it doesn't appear to be made of flesh and bones. As for the movement, the creature’s legs drop down quicker (showing the heaviness), and the upper body along with the arms sway around sluggishly. At the time, he was still criticised for the jerky nature of the animation and the metal creak noise Talos made. But in the present, his efforts have made him a revered being among the pantheon of animation masters.

                                                           Interview featuring John Landis & Ray Harryhausen for the Bradford animation festival award.

Ray Harryhausen once said “The snow ball rolls on”. Meaning that Ray was inspired by O'Brien and then later came Phil Tippet who was inspired by Ray. Phil tippet bridged the gap between SFX (special effects) and VFX (visual effects) by introducing “Go-motion”. There is a scene in Star Wars Episode five: Empire strikes back (1980) where Tippet designed and animated the creature called TaunTaun which holds an important place in stop-motion history. Because the TaunTauns had to move quickly, Phill wanted to replicate “Motionblur” which is normally attributed to live action scenes involving fast moving objects. When compared with traditional stop motion, each shot was taken with the figure being “still in motion”, thus the overall footage consists the figure with fine edges resulting in a strobing characteristic stop-motion effect. For the Tauntaun shots the puppet was moved along a motion controlled track with each opening of the camera shutter. This first use of motion blur with stop motion animation, involved only the forward momentum of the puppet's body. In Tippet's next film Dragon slayer (1981) a complex motion controlled system was used to add motion blur to all the puppets movement, the process was so successful it gave rise to a new term, “Go-motion”.

Hatches are used to pop in and animate the "AT-AT's" from The Empire Strikes Back.

Phil sets up a shot for the TaunTaun sequence.

                                                                                                Go-motion test for T-Rex in Jurassic Park.

There is a subtle difference between the techniques used in Empire strikes back and Dragon slayer. For the Tauntaun's motion it was achieved entirely with practical, frame-by-frame manipulation of physical models, and optically composited into miniature and live action settings, while for Dragon slayer (1981), which gave Tippet his first Oscar nomination and showcased the computer-assisted stop-motion technique 'Go-motion' (technology that enabled computerized rod puppets to be moved mechanically, then manipulated by hand in-between frames). Developed for animating Tauntauns and used throughout the 1980s, the process allowed animators to manipulate puppets via servo-driven rods, producing frame by frame motionblur that eliminated the strobing of traditional stop-motion. With traditional stop motion, artists tend to make up there key-frames as they went along animating, but with Go-motion artists would have to pre-visualise everything which was very convoluted. [article from phil tippet]

Then came Jurassic Park (1993) which opened a new gateway to the FX industry and almost made Tippet and his crew go “extinct”. But luckily in the end Spielberg still required Tippet’s expert animation skills. Steven Spielberg was about to greenlight Go-motion, when the Industrial Light and Magic crew came with an alternative approach. The same Go-motion approach was used, but only this time the animators were using a dinosaur input device (essentially an armature hooked up to a workstation) and animating the wires connected to the puppet. Even though this movie was revolutionary for it's ground breaking visual effects, it couldn't have been possible without Phil tippet and his Go-motion crew who did a splendid job on the animation side.

                                                             This documentary video clearly shows how Stop-motion (& Go-motion) gave rise to CG animation.--> Documentary depicting on the rise of CG animation from its humble Stop-motion (& Go-motion) origins.