The Graceful Movements of Kung Fu & Modern Dance Revealed in Stunning Motion Visualizations

in Animation, Art, Dance, Technology | November 3rd, 2016

When I first saw what was then the height of motion cap­ture in 1999—The Matrix’s “bul­let time” and kung fu sequences—I was suit­ably impressed, and yet… the extreme manip­u­la­tion of the real (which couldn’t have hap­pened in a more appro­pri­ate film, grant­ed) also seemed a lit­tle like a cheat. In the days before com­put­ers ren­dered 99% of spe­cial effects, part of the fun of watch­ing an effects film was spot­ting the seams. The short “Kung Fu Visu­al­iza­tion” above, from Ger­man dig­i­tal artist Tobias Gremm­ler, deft­ly com­bines both of these aes­thet­ic inclinations—the love of arti­fice and the awe of liq­uid-smooth dig­i­tal motion—in rustling, swirling, shim­mer­ing ani­mat­ed art that para­dox­i­cal­ly shows us the seams of flu­id move­ment.

Recall­ing Mar­cel Duchamp’s famous nude or the dynam­ic sculp­ture of Umber­to Boc­cioni, Gremm­ler ani­mates these mod­ernist dreams using grace­ful motions cap­tured from two Kung Fu mas­ters. Each sin­u­ous mar­tial arts rou­tine is ren­dered with a dif­fer­ent mate­r­i­al tex­ture, with accom­pa­ny­ing sound effects and dra­mat­ic music. “Visu­al­iz­ing the invis­i­ble is always fas­ci­nat­ing,” writes Gremm­ler, “and motion visu­al­iza­tions have been cre­at­ed even in pre-dig­i­tal times with light, pho­tog­ra­phy, cos­tumes or paint­ings.” (Nor­man McLaren’s 1968 “Pas de deux” offers a strik­ing his­tor­i­cal exam­ple.) Gremm­ler’s stun­ning ani­ma­tion was com­mis­sioned for a Hong Kong Kung Fu exhi­bi­tion and “focus­es on the lega­cy of Hak­ka mar­tial arts in Hong Kong.”

Gremmler’s film may show us process in motion, but he remains coy about his own tech­no­log­i­cal means (unless, pre­sum­ably, you buy his book.) Anoth­er motion cap­ture mas­ter­piece, “Asphyx­ia,” above, uses hum­ble, yet high­ly advanced meth­ods unimag­in­able in 1999, “two inex­pen­sive Xbox One Kinect sen­sors,” writes This is Colos­sal, “to cap­ture the move­ments of dancer Shi­ho Tana­ka.” Film­mak­ers Maria Takeuchi and Fred­eri­co Phillips then “ren­dered the data inside a near pho­to-real­is­tic envi­ron­ment,” mak­ing cre­ative use of low­er-res tics and glitch­es. Com­bined with a love­ly elec­tron­ic score from Takeuchi, the result­ing video’s visu­al poet­ry is impos­si­ble to ade­quate­ly con­vey in words.

What “Asphyx­ia” does show us is a scal­ing back of tech­ni­cal wiz­ardry that reveals a deep lev­el of ges­tur­al sophis­ti­ca­tion under­neath. “The project,” write the film­mak­ers, “is an effort to explore new ways to use and/or com­bine tech­nolo­gies… with­out many of the com­mer­cial lim­i­ta­tions. The per­for­mance is cen­tered in an elo­quent chore­og­ra­phy that stress­es the desire to be expres­sive with­out bounds.” Although “Asphyx­ia” is obvi­ous­ly a lower-quality—digitally speaking—work than Gremmler’s Kung Fu Visu­al­iza­tion, it is none the worse for it. Both use motion cap­ture tech­nol­o­gy in inno­v­a­tive ways that fore­ground the artistry, rather than the mim­ic­ry, of dig­i­tal ani­ma­tion. (Some­what like the much-praised dig­i­tal stop-motion Kubo and the Two Strings.) If you want to see how the mak­ers of “Asphyx­ia” cre­at­ed their exper­i­ment, watch their mak­ing-of film below.

via This is Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Soft­ware Used by Hayao Miyazaki’s Ani­ma­tion Stu­dio Becomes Open Source & Free to Down­load

13 Van Gogh’s Paint­ings Painstak­ing­ly Brought to Life with 3D Ani­ma­tion & Visu­al Map­ping

Take a Free Online Course on Mak­ing Ani­ma­tions from Pixar & Khan Acad­e­my

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Spike Jonze’s Stop Motion Film Hauntingly Animates Paris’ Famed Shakespeare and Company Bookstore

in Animation, Books | October 26th, 2016

Since his break­out ear­ly days direct­ing com­mer­cials and music videos for the likes of Fat­boy Slim, Weez­er, Daft Punk, and the Breed­ers, Spike Jonze has honed a quirky visu­al sen­si­bil­i­ty that trans­lat­ed almost seam­less­ly to fea­ture film. But even at his quirki­est, Jonze hasn’t been about quirk for quirk’s sake. His characters—highly emo­tion­al robots, dog-head­ed men with bro­ken legs, tor­ment­ed pup­peteers, enthu­si­as­tic ama­teur dance troops—are under­dogs, weirdos, fig­ures on the fringes who make us ques­tion what it means to be peo­ple: to be lone­ly, in love, cre­ative­ly obsessed, and emo­tion­al­ly scram­bled.…

There is a para­dox inher­ent in Jonze’s films and videos. Their odd­ball plots and char­ac­ters cut through the cyn­i­cal veneer of cool that keeps us from ask­ing hard ques­tions about our emo­tion­al lives, but they do so in styl­is­tic exer­cis­es that in some cas­es them­selves become emblems of pop-cul­ture cool. Not so the short film “Mourir auprès de toi” (“To Die by Your Side”), which takes its title from one of the most aching­ly heart­break­ing of Smiths’ songs. This is a love sto­ry for the book­ish and the crafty, set in Paris’ famed Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny book­store and fea­tur­ing ani­mat­ed book cov­ers made from embroi­dered felt cutouts.

Co-writ­ten and with a look inspired by design­er Olympia Le-Tan, the short is “an absolute­ly beau­ti­ful stop-motion ani­ma­tion for book-lovers that’s part This Is Where We Live, part Going West, part cre­ative mag­ic only Spike Jonze can bring.” So writes Maria Popo­va at The Atlantic, sum­ma­riz­ing the ups and downs of the plot and allud­ing to a “hap­pi­ly-ever-after end­ing” that “comes only after an appro­pri­ate­ly dark and grim twist.”

Watch “To Die by Your Side” at the top of the post, then, just above, see a short behind-the-scenes teas­er video. “You just start with what the feel­ing is,” Jonze told Now­ness in an inter­view, “Me and Olympia both want­ed to make a love sto­ry.… It evolved nat­u­ral­ly and it all just start­ed with the feel­ing. From there you enter­tain your­self with ideas that excite you.” The quote explains why Jonze’s films and videos—for all their visu­al inven­tive­ness and imag­i­na­tive whimsy—nearly always stay ground­ed in can­did emo­tion­al real­ism. How­ev­er far and wide Jonze’ cin­e­mat­ic and nar­ra­tive  imag­i­na­tion takes us, his films always start with the feel­ing.

“Mourir auprès de toi” (“To Die by Your Side”) first appeared on our site in Octo­ber, 2011.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Spike Jonze and Beast­ie Boys, Togeth­er Again

Spike Jonze’s Imag­i­na­tive TV Ads

Col­lab­o­ra­tions: Spike Jonze, Yo-Yo Ma, and Lil Buck

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Stephen Fry Narrates 4 Philosophy Animations On the Question: How to Create a Just Society?

in Animation, History, Philosophy | October 25th, 2016

How do we cre­ate a just soci­ety? 50,000 years or so at it and human­i­ty still has a long way to go before fig­ur­ing that out, though not for lack of try­ing. The four ani­mat­ed videos of “What Is Jus­tice?”—a minis­eries with­in BBC Radio 4 and the Open Uni­ver­si­ty’s larg­er project of ani­mat­ing the ideas of philoso­phers through­out his­to­ry and explain­ing them in the voic­es of var­i­ous famous nar­ra­tors—tell us what John Rawls, Hen­ry David Thore­au, and the Bible, among oth­er sources, have to say on the sub­ject of jus­tice. Stephen Fry pro­vides the voice this time as the videos illus­trate the nature of these ideas, as well as their com­pli­ca­tions, before our eyes.

Imag­ine you had to cre­ate a just soci­ety your­self, but “you won’t know what kind of a per­son you’ll be in the soci­ety you design.” This thought exper­i­ment, first described by Rawls in his 1971 book A The­o­ry of Jus­tice as the “veil of igno­rance,” sup­pos­ed­ly encour­ages the cre­ation of “a much fair­er soci­ety than we now have. There would be exten­sive free­dom and equal­i­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ty. But there would­n’t be extremes of high pay, unless it could be shown that the poor­est in soci­ety direct­ly ben­e­fit­ed as a result.” An intrigu­ing idea, but one eas­i­er artic­u­lat­ed than agreed upon, let alone real­ized.

Much ear­li­er in his­to­ry, you find the sim­pler prin­ci­ple of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” an “ancient form of pun­ish­ment known as lex tal­io­n­is, or the law of retal­i­a­tion.” Any read­er of the Bible will have a strong sense of this idea’s impor­tance in the ancient world, though we’d do well to remem­ber that back then, it “was a way of encour­ag­ing a sense of pro­por­tion — not wip­ing out a whole com­mu­ni­ty in retal­i­a­tion for the killing of one man, for exam­ple.” While harsh pun­ish­ment could, in the­o­ry, deter poten­tial crim­i­nals, “severe legal vio­lence can cre­ate mar­tyrs and increase soci­ety’s prob­lems.” The rule of law, nat­u­ral­ly, has every­thing to do with the cre­ation and main­te­nance of a just soci­ety, though not every law fur­thers the cause.

But you’ve no doubt heard of one that has: habeas cor­pus, the legal prin­ci­ple man­dat­ing that “no one, not even the pres­i­dent, monarch, or any­one else in pow­er, can detain some­one ille­gal­ly.” Instead, “they need to bring the detainee in ques­tion before a court and allow that court to deter­mine whether or not this per­son can legal­ly be held.” Yet not every author­i­ty has con­sis­tent­ly imple­ment­ed or upheld habeas cor­pus or oth­er jus­tice-ensur­ing laws. At times like those, accord­ing to Thore­au, you must engage in civ­il dis­obe­di­ence: “fol­low your con­science and break the law on moral grounds rather than be a cog in an unjust sys­tem.” It’s a dirty job, cre­at­ing a just soci­ety, and will remain so for the fore­see­able future. And though we may not all have giv­en it as much thought as a Rawls or a Thore­au, we’ve all got a role to play in it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A The­o­ry of Jus­tice, the Musi­cal Imag­ines Philoso­pher John Rawls as a Time-Trav­el­ing Adven­tur­er

Jus­tice: Putting a Price Tag on Life & How to Mea­sure Plea­sure

Free: Lis­ten to John Rawls’ Course on “Mod­ern Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy” (Record­ed at Har­vard, 1984)

47 Ani­mat­ed Videos Explain the His­to­ry of Ideas: From Aris­to­tle to Sartre

What is the Self? Watch Phi­los­o­phy Ani­ma­tions Nar­rat­ed by Stephen Fry on Sartre, Descartes & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu in Anime: A First Glimpse

in Animation, Literature | September 28th, 2016

Mark it on your cal­en­dars. 2018 will bring an ani­me adap­ta­tion of the pop­u­lar card game Force of Will. An omnibus col­lec­tion of six ani­ma­tions, the film will include one short cre­at­ed by Shuhei Mori­ta, whose 2013 ani­ma­tion “Pos­ses­sions” already earned him an Acad­e­my Award nom­i­na­tion. Mori­ta’s next task–to bring to life H.P. Love­craft’s “Cthul­hu.” We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly high­light­ed Love­craft’s 1934 draw­ings of the mon­ster to which he gave lit­er­ary life in 1928. (See “The Call of Cthul­hu.”) Above, catch a very first glimpse of Mori­ta’s take on the gigan­tic octo­pus. Below, in the Relat­eds, find a good deal of mate­r­i­al on Cthulhu–drawings, radio drama­ti­za­tions and much more.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Kotaku

Relat­ed Con­tent

H.P. Lovecraft’s Mon­ster Draw­ings: Cthul­hu & Oth­er Crea­tures from the “Bound­less and Hideous Unknown”

H.P. Lovecraft’s Clas­sic Hor­ror Sto­ries Free Online: Down­load Audio Books, eBooks & More

Hear Drama­ti­za­tions of H.P. Lovecraft’s Sto­ries On His Birth­day: “The Call of Cthul­hu,” “The Dun­wich Hor­ror,” & More

Down­load Issues of “Weird Tales” (1923–1954): The Pio­neer­ing Pulp Hor­ror Mag­a­zine Fea­tures Orig­i­nal Sto­ries by Love­craft, Brad­bury & Many More

23 Hours of H.P. Love­craft Sto­ries: Hear Read­ings & Drama­ti­za­tions of “The Call of Cthul­hu,” “The Shad­ow Over Inns­mouth,” & Oth­er Weird Tales

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Watch the Surrealist Glass Harmonica, the Only Animated Film Ever Banned by Soviet Censors (1968)

in Animation, Art, Film | September 21st, 2016

The Sovi­et Union’s repres­sive state cen­sor­ship went to absurd lengths to con­trol what its cit­i­zens read, viewed, and lis­tened to, such as the almost com­i­cal removal of purged for­mer com­rades from pho­tographs dur­ing Stalin’s reign. When it came to aes­thet­ics, Stal­in­ism most­ly purged more avant-garde ten­den­cies from the arts and lit­er­a­ture in favor of didac­tic Social­ist Real­ism. Even dur­ing the rel­a­tive­ly loose peri­od of the Khrushchev/Brezhnev Thaw in the 60s, sev­er­al artists were sub­ject to “severe cen­sor­ship” by the Par­ty, writes Keti Chukhrov at Red Thread, for their “’abuse’ of mod­ernist, abstract and for­mal­ist meth­ods.”

But one oft-exper­i­men­tal art form thrived through­out the exis­tence of the Sovi­et Union and its vary­ing degrees of state con­trol: ani­ma­tion. “Despite cen­sor­ship and pres­sure from the Com­mu­nist gov­ern­ment to adhere to cer­tain Social­ist ideals,” writes Pol­ly Dela Rosa in a short his­to­ry, “Russ­ian ani­ma­tion is incred­i­bly diverse and elo­quent.”

Many ani­mat­ed Sovi­et films were express­ly made for pro­pa­gan­da purposes—such as the very first Sovi­et ani­ma­tion, Dzi­ga Vertov’s Sovi­et Toys, below, from 1924. But even these dis­play a range of tech­ni­cal vir­tu­os­i­ty com­bined with dar­ing styl­is­tic exper­i­ments, as you can see in this io9 com­pi­la­tion. Ani­mat­ed films also served “as a pow­er­ful tool for enter­tain­ment,” notes film schol­ar Bir­git Beumers, with ani­ma­tors, “large­ly trained as design­ers and illus­tra­tors… drawn upon to com­pete with the Dis­ney out­put.”

Through­out the 20th cen­tu­ry, a wide range of films made it past the cen­sors and reached large audi­ences on cin­e­ma and tele­vi­sion screens, includ­ing many based on West­ern lit­er­a­ture. All of them did so, in fact, but one, the only ani­mat­ed film in Sovi­et his­to­ry to face a ban: Andrei Khrzhanovsky’s The Glass Har­mon­i­ca, at the top, a 1968 “satire on bureau­cra­cy.” At the time of its release, the Thaw had encour­aged “a cre­ative renais­sance” in Russ­ian ani­ma­tion, writes Dan­ger­ous Minds, and the film’s sur­re­al­ist aesthetic—drawn from the paint­ings of De Chiri­co, Magritte, Grosz, Bruegel, and Bosch (and reach­ing “pro­to-Python-esque heights towards the end”)—testifies to that.

At first glance, one would think The Glass Har­mon­i­ca would fit right into the long tra­di­tion of Sovi­et pro­pa­gan­da films begun by Ver­tov. As the open­ing titles state, it aims to show the “bound­less greed, police ter­ror, [and] the iso­la­tion and bru­tal­iza­tion of humans in mod­ern bour­geois soci­ety.” And yet, the film offend­ed cen­sors due to what the Euro­pean Film Phil­har­mon­ic Insti­tute calls “its con­tro­ver­sial por­tray­al of the rela­tion­ship between gov­ern­men­tal author­i­ty and the artist.” There’s more than a lit­tle irony in the fact that the only ful­ly cen­sored Sovi­et ani­ma­tion is a film itself about cen­sor­ship.

The cen­tral char­ac­ter is a musi­cian who incurs the dis­plea­sure of an expres­sion­less man in black, ruler of the cold, gray world of the film. In addi­tion to its “col­lage of var­i­ous styles and a trib­ute to Euro­pean painting”—which itself may have irked censors—the score by Alfred Schnit­tke “push­es sound to dis­turb­ing lim­its, demand­ing extreme range and tech­nique from the instru­ments.” (Fans of sur­re­al­ist ani­ma­tion may be remind­ed of 1973’s French sci-fi film, Fan­tas­tic Plan­et.) Although Khrzhanovsky’s film rep­re­sents the effec­tive begin­ning and end of sur­re­al­ist ani­ma­tion in the Sovi­et Union, only released after per­e­stroi­ka, it stands, as you’ll see above, as a bril­liant­ly real­ized exam­ple of the form.

The Glass Har­mon­i­ca will be added to our list of Ani­ma­tions, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sovi­et Ani­ma­tions of Ray Brad­bury Sto­ries: ‘Here There Be Tygers’ & ‘There Will Come Soft Rain’

Watch Dzi­ga Vertov’s Unset­tling Sovi­et Toys: The First Sovi­et Ani­mat­ed Movie Ever (1924)

Watch Inter­plan­e­tary Rev­o­lu­tion (1924): The Most Bizarre Sovi­et Ani­mat­ed Pro­pa­gan­da Film You’ll Ever See

The Bizarre, Sur­viv­ing Scene from the 1933 Sovi­et Ani­ma­tion Based on a Pushkin Tale and a Shostakovich Score

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Essence of Linear Algebra Explained with Animations

in Animation, Math | September 15th, 2016

Fyi: Grant Sander­son has a knack for math and cod­ing. So he cre­at­ed a tool that has helped him explain “the essence of lin­ear alge­bra” in a “visu­al­ly-dri­ven man­ner.” And he post­ed the result, a series of 13 videos, to YouTube. You can watch the col­lec­tion, called “The Essence of Lin­ear Alge­bra,” above. Top­ics cov­ered include: Vec­tors, what even are they?; Matrix mul­ti­pli­ca­tion as com­po­si­tion; Dot prod­ucts and dual­i­ty; and more.

You can also find com­plete uni­ver­si­ty cours­es on Lin­ear Alge­bra in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Math course, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Metafil­ter

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Eadweard Muybridge’s Motion Photography Experiments from the 1870s Presented in 93 Animated Gifs

in Animation, Photography | September 9th, 2016

Muybridge_horse_gallop_animated

When a horse trots, do all four of its hooves ever leave the ground at once? At one time, we not only had no answer to that ques­tion, we had no way of find­ing out. But in 1872, when the mat­ter piqued the curios­i­ty of Leland Stan­ford, tycoon, for­mer gov­er­nor of Cal­i­for­nia, co-founder of Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, and race-horse own­er, it did so at just the right time. Hav­ing made a bet on the answer, Stan­ford called on an Eng­lish pho­tog­ra­ph­er named Ead­weard Muy­bridge, known for his work in such then-cut­ting-edge sub­fields as time-lapse and stere­og­ra­phy, and tasked him with fig­ur­ing it out. Using a series of cam­eras acti­vat­ed by trip wires as the horse trot­ted past, Muy­bridge proved that all four of its hooves do indeed leave the ground, win­ning Stan­ford the wager.

480px-Phenakistoscope_3g07692a

But that only began his ground­break­ing work in motion pho­tog­ra­phy, which made it so, in the words of the Library of Con­gress, “view­ers of the late 19th cen­tu­ry were able to see in a sequence of pho­tos every step tak­en by a horse at full gal­lop, the sleek move­ments of a cat run­ning and each flap of the wings of a bird in flight.”

Cat_trotting,_changing_to_a_gallop

He lat­er devel­oped what he called the Zooprax­is­cope: “One insert­ed a disc with images around the edge into the device, which rotat­ed and pro­ject­ed the images onto a screen. The discs were usu­al­ly paint­ed glass based on Muybridge’s pho­tographs. The effect was to give the audi­ence an impres­sion of move­ment, bring­ing Muybridge’s work to life.” Imag­ine how that would have looked to some­one who’d nev­er seen — who’d nev­er even imag­ined — organ­ic-look­ing move­ment in man­made art?

You can see 93 of Muy­bridge’s mov­ing pho­tographs, zooprax­is­cope discs, and oth­er exper­i­ments in decod­ing the move­ment of liv­ing things and grant­i­ng it to images at Wiki­me­dia Com­mons. “Although Ead­weard Muy­bridge thought of him­self pri­mar­i­ly as an artist, he encour­aged the aura of sci­en­tif­ic inves­ti­ga­tion that sur­round­ed his project,” says the site of Freeze Frame, the Nation­al Muse­um of Amer­i­can His­to­ry’s exhi­bi­tion of his work. It makes sense that Muy­bridge, who qual­i­fied as an eccen­tric as well as a genius, would occu­py the space between art and sci­ence, inquiry and cre­ation, real­i­ty and illu­sion — and it makes sense to view the fruits of his labors as ani­mat­ed GIFs, their tech­no­log­i­cal descen­dants that also looked pret­ty impres­sive, so I recall, when first we laid eyes on them.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Was a 32,000-Year-Old Cave Paint­ing the Ear­li­est Form of Cin­e­ma?

The His­to­ry of the Movie Cam­era in Four Min­utes: From the Lumiere Broth­ers to Google Glass

Watch the Films of the Lumière Broth­ers & the Birth of Cin­e­ma (1895)

One Tril­lion Frames Per Sec­ond: The Sci­ence of Cap­tur­ing Light in Motion

Thomas Edison’s Box­ing Cats (1894), or Where the LOL­Cats All Began

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The History of Stop-Motion Films: 39 Films, Spanning 116 Years, Revisited in a 3‑Minute Video

in Animation | September 7th, 2016

With the release of Kubo and the Two Strings, Vugar Efen­di, a film­mak­er in the UK, cre­at­ed The Evo­lu­tion of Stop-Motion, a mon­tage that brings togeth­er scenes from 39 stop-motion films, span­ning 116 years. Although some trace the begin­nings of stop-motion ani­ma­tion back to the 1898 film, The Hump­ty Dump­ty Cir­cus, Efendi’s mon­tage takes The Enchant­ed Draw­ing (1900) as its start­ing point. Soon enough, we encounter Ladis­las Stare­vich’s insect-filled film, The Cam­era­man’s Revenge (1912). And then onward we go, hurtling through time, even­tu­al­ly reach­ing a more famil­iar set of films (Beetle­juice, Wal­lace and Gromit, etc.). Find a com­plete list of films used in the mon­tage below. And enjoy the ride.…

‑The Enchant­ed Draw­ing (1900)
‑Fun at the Bak­ery Shop (1902)
‑El Hotel Elec­tri­co (1905)
‑Humor­ous Phas­es of Fun­ny Faces (1906)
‑The Cam­era­man’s Revenge (1912)
‑The Night before Christ­mas (1913)
‑Häx­an (1922)
‑The Lost World (1925)
‑The Tale of Fox (1930 ver­sion)
‑King Kong (1933)
‑The New Gul­liv­er (1935)
‑The Beast from 20,000 Fath­oms (1953)
‑It Came Beneath The Sea (1955)
‑Earth vs Fly­ing Saucers (1956)
‑The Sev­enth Voy­age of Sin­bad (1958)
‑Jason and the Arg­onauts (1963)
‑Closed Mon­days (1975)
‑Star wars IV: A New Hope (1977)
‑Star Wars V: Empire Strikes Back (1980)
‑Clash of the Titans (1981)
‑The Ter­mi­na­tor (1984)
‑Robo­cop (1987)
‑Beetle­juice (1988)
‑Wal­lace and Gromit: A grand day out (1990)
‑The Secret Adven­tures of Tom Thumb (1993)
‑The Night­mare Before Christ­mas (1993)
‑James and the Giant Peach (1996)
‑Chick­en Run (2000)
‑Corpse Bride (2005)
‑Cora­line (2009)
‑Mary and Max (2009)
‑Fan­tas­tic Mr.Fox (2009)
‑The Pirates! In an Adven­ture with Sci­en­tists! (2012)
‑Para­nor­man (2012)
‑Franken­wee­nie (2012)
‑Star Wars VII: The Force Awak­ens (2015)
‑The Lit­tle Prince (2015)
‑Anom­al­isa (2015)
‑Kubo and the Two Strings (2016)

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Spike Jonze Presents a Stop Motion Film for Book Lovers

Going West: A Stop Motion Nov­el

Watch The Amaz­ing 1912 Ani­ma­tion of Stop-Motion Pio­neer Ladis­las Stare­vich, Star­ring Dead Bugs

4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

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