History & Development of Animation

Part 1: Pioneers & Technology

Part 2: Developers

George Pal

     Pal was a fantasy and science fiction animator, using toys to create stop motion films. He was born in Hungary, but migrated to the USA. Throughout his career he was nominated for multiple Academy Awards, and received an honorary award in 1944 for his animated series Puppetoons. At the start of the next decade, he moved into live action film making as well. Watch 'Tulips Shall Grow' (1942)

Willis O'Brien

     O’Brien began working with stop motion due to his fascination with dinosaurs, animating marble models which led to his creation of The Dinosaur and the Missing Link (1915). From this he was noticed by Thomas Edison, who hired him to produce several short stop motion films. Later in life, he incorporated live action with stop motion, most famously on King Kong (1933).

Ray Harryhausen

     Harryhausen started animating with marionettes and string puppets, experimenting to recreate sequences from O’Brien’s King Kong. In his late teens he began creating and using model dinosaurs in his work, meeting O’Brien and later working with George Pal to produce 13 Puppetoons. During the war he made many propaganda films, and after the war he worked with models to produce his Mother Goose series, which was distributed to schools. Later he worked on mixing live action and animation together, notably in Jason andthe Argonauts (1963). During this time he developed the Dynamation technique to split live action and stop motion. 

Phil Tippett

     Tippett is a model animator, who was inspired by Harryhausen's work from a young age. He is most famous for animating the stop motion miniature chess scene in the first Star Wars film, and helping to bring dinosaurs to life in Jurassic Park. Despite claiming he had "become extinct" as a Stop Motion animator when CGI was being developed, Tippett has worked on films incorporating the two. This has included Starship Troopers (1997) and My Favourite Martian (1999).

Otmar Gutmann
     Gutmann is most well known for creating and animating children's television show Pingu (1986-2000). He animated Pingu and his family of penguins using claymation at Trickfilmstudio in Switzerland. After Gutmann's death, multiple other series were produced of Pingu for broadcast on the BBC and around the world.

Tim Burton & Henry Selick

     Burton and Selick have worked together on a number of animation films, including The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) and Corpse Bride (2005). Selick is usually mainly responsible for the stop motion animation - with Burton in the producing role - which is created using large puppet-like models. In addition, Selick has worked on Coraline (2009) and now works for Disney where he is said to be working on a number of projects in a directing role.

Adam Shaheen
     Shaheen founded his company Cuppa Coffee Studio in 1992, with the purpose of making animation in both stop motion and 2D animation. He has produced animations for over 200 commercials for Disney and Nickelodeon amongst others.  He has also animated for several TV series including the 5th series of Celebrity Deathmatch (2006-07), a claymation animation, and Henry's World (2002-2007). Shaheen has also worked as a television producer and screenwriter.

The Brothers Quay
      Stephen and Timothy Quay started animating together after studying film and illustration respectively. They founded a company called Koninck with Keith Griffiths, a film producer, in 1980 and began creating often creepy animations, using partly assembled old dolls and toys in gloomy dark settings. Examples of their work include Street of Crocodiles (1986) and music videos such as Are We Still Married.

Nick Park
     Park is a British animator known for his work in claymation stop motion animation working for Aardman since 1985. His most famous animations are centred on the Wallace and Gromit characters, in four short films: A Grand Day Out (1990), The Wrong Trousers (1993), A Close Shave (1995) and A Matter of Loaf and Death (2010). Other shorts include Creature Comforts and children's TV programme Shaun the Sheep. He has also worked on several feature length films including Chicken Run (2000), Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were Rabbit (2005) and Flushed Away (2006) which was actually animated by computers - but made to look like clay models - due to difficulty in animating water.

Part 3: Media Platforms & Audiences

TV Shows

• Shaun the Sheep: Claymation by Aardman. Created by Nick Park. Targeted at children due to the simplicity of story lines, short length of episodes, and large amounts of comedy and mischief.
  

• Robot Chicken: Stop Motion Animation of toys and models. Created by Seth Green and Matthew Senreich. Aimed at an older adult audience due to celebrity references, adult humour and frequent violence.

Advertisements

• Cravendale Advertisements: Stop Motion Animation of model toys. Created by Vincent Patar and Stephane Aubier. Targeted at anyone who use milk because that's what it is advertising, but specifically those in the general age range of 20-35 because of the humour used. 

• Doritos Tribe: Stop Motion Animation of Doritos crisps. Created by Matt Bowron and John Addis. Aimed an audience of 18-35 because that is the rough target audience of the product, and it features a man of this age range in the animation.

NOTE: Other examples are coming! They're typed up in Word and I've ran out of time to finish converting and embedding! D: