In the song "Rods and Cones" by the Blue Man Group, they explain how animation is possible.
Persistence of vision, the basis behind animation, was discovered by Ptolemy, the Greek astronomer in 130 AD. This refers to the phenomenon where the retina retains an image a split second after the image was actually seen, this makes the illusion of motion possible as when you see images in a closely timed sequence we don't notice the gaps inbetween the images as the persistance fills in the microscopic moments of blindness and makes the motion appear seamless.
Object Manipulation Animation
The earliest form of stop-motion animation is Object Manipulation, it's time consuming but is one of the easiest forms of stop motion. The process itself involves photographing an object, then moving it by a small amount and then photographing it again. This quickly becomes complicated when dealing with many objects and creating several paths and events for each of the objects.
The first example of object manipulation and stop-motion animation was the 1898 short film by Albert E. Smith and J. Stuart Blackton called The Humpty Dumpty Circus. The short film consisted of Blackton using some of his son's circus toys, photographing them moving frame by frame. Unfortunately the film has been considered lost and only information about it exists today. The next surviving example is the short film Fun in a Bakery Shop directed by Edwin S. Porter and released in 1902 by Thomas A. Edison.
On a side-note, Thomas A. Edison didn't actually invent the light bulb, but he rather improved upon a 50 year old idea. He's actual achievement was inventing a light bulb safe and practical for home use.
This short combines object manipulation and stop action photography, where filming is stopped and something is changed in the short before the filming resumes.
A more up-to-date example of object manipulation is this brickfilm, which is a film made using lego or other similar plastic construction toys.
Object animation is usually mixed with other types of animation techniques to give a more realistic effect and give more depth to the characters. Which brings me to Robot Chicken a television series created by Seth Green and Matthew Senreich. The show itself focuses on mocking pop culture, referencing toys, films, television, and popular fads. As well as using object manipulation it also uses other animation techniques such as; claymation and Puppet animation.
A personal favourite of object manipulation is the stop-motion animation version of 'Bad Apple' by Touhou that uses stylized shadow art.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=240Vq6tIxio
(computer taking too long to process videos so...clicky clicky time \o/ )
Direct Manipulation Animation
This process is similar to standard animation but rather than changing each image only a portion of the image is erased or added to each frame. One of the earliest pieces of animation using this technique was J.Stuart Blackton's Humorous Phases of Funny Faces, and yes, it's the same person I mentioned previously in the Object Manipulation technique. It features chalk faces being animated frame by frame and is considered to be the 'World's First Animated Film' and Blackton was dubbed of being the 'Father of American Animation'.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dRe85cNXwg
Puppet Animation
Soon after Object Manipulation appeared people decided to experiment with using different forms of objects that were easier to manipulate. A solution to this was puppets, though technically still objects they were easier to animate and personify, without this technique animators like The Brothers Quay and Jan Švankmajer would never have existed.
The Brothers Quay's 'Street of Crocodiles'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gIb0bTWj6w
Jan Švankmajer's 'Alice'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5wHMgTPF-s
Is it just me or does the rabbit look cute and adoreable?
Next to hit the spotlight is Willis O'Brien, he helped pioneer special effects by utilizing stop motion animation. He initially used clay at first, but later moved on to creating full armature skeletons and then putting rubber skin and fur over them. This then lead on to creating the iconic scene of King Kong atop the Empire State Building.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuRQH_hLcTw
O'Brien's work inspired his young assistant Ray Harryhausen who followed in his footsteps and developed films that further blended stop motion with live action. In 1963 the sequence in Jason and the Argonauts that featured seven skeletal warriors was one of his best pieces of work, they were all animated via stop motion animation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yYeZMx1Y7U
ahhh...childhood...good times, good times.
His last stop motion work was in 1981 with Clash of the Titans.
These two short films are made by Animus Films, whom I personally admire, I just love the creepiness of it all.
The Cat With Hands
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvOL6qXs-Vg
The Man in the Lower-Left Hand Corner of the Photograph
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNiZCrdTnUM
Pixilation
Pixilation is a live action form of stop motion where it uses real people being posed frame by frame rather than inanimate objects or drawings. The earliest known example of this is Jobard Cannot See the Women Working from 1911. A feature film was made in 1993 by the Bolex Brothers using this technique called The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3YKBOkfmbU
Another filmmaker who used this technique is Mike Jittlov who created the pixilation short film The Wizard of Speed and Time in 1979. Mike Jittlov had previously made an animated short for Walt Disney in 1978 called Mouse Mania which used the object manipulation technique. Ten years later Jittlov animated a feature film version of The Wizard.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42nkkPCuA0o
I feel like I'm on LSD...
Claymation
Claymation is probably the most famous and well known technique of stop motion. It's been around since 1908 with the short film The Sculptor's Nightmare, four years after that came Modeling Extraordinary. Claymation films appeared more and more due to the fact that in 1897 a English Art teacher invented plasticine, a non-drying form of clay that was easy to shape and held its form. Due to it being easy to manipulate animators found themselves using it rather than animating inanimate objects.
Eventually animators started using wire-armature skeletons and then placing the plasticine over it, this made it easier for them to move their models around.
Claymation is actually a registered word held by filmmaker Will Vinton who created the anthropomorphic raisins. He copyrighted the term in 1978 to refer to his films. Nowadays it's recognised as the generic term to refer to plasticine or clay animation.
In the 70's claymation became more popular when Vinton and Aardman started producing short claymation films, which in the 80's gave us The Adventures of Mark Twain.
My favourite part in the animation is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBGGAjMg9vw
The 80's also saw the appearance of Wallace and Gromit for the first time, where they featured in a series of shorts, but finally had their feature film debute with Curse of the Were-Rabbit in 2005. Although, prior to that Aardman created Chicken Run in 2000 and was Aardman and Dreamworks' first feature length claymation film. Nick Park from Aardman did the stop motion claymation animation for Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer in 1986, which featured Pixilation, Claymation, Object Manipulation and Direct Manipulation techniques.
Wallace and Gromit: The Wrong Trousers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUEoLn2NWcM
Peter Gabriel's 'Sledgehammer'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_E0bvOPTRg
So where does that leave us now?
Well Animation itself is becoming more famous and is happily blending into the live action crowd. Wherever we look there's always an Animation that's just been released or one that's in the making, like the upcoming Toy Story 3.
I cannot wait to see the cameo of Totoro, the mascot for Studio Ghibli and also from the Hayao Miyazaki film My Neighbour Totoro.
As for stop motion, there's still the occassional feature film thats born, like Coraline, which was the first stop motion film shot in 3D, and a brilliant adaption of one of Roald Dahl's books, Fantastic Mr. Fox.
Unfortunatly most films created nowadays is CGI which I love, but I prefer the creepiness that stop motion gives. Whenever I animate something using stop motion, when I watch the animation itself I can't help but turn back into a young child that's fascinated by the fact that it looks like I've experianced Toy Story in real life.
Now, after all that talk of animation you may want to watch something to take your mind off the information overload...well, lucky for you I have the perfect video...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7jpz_55EdM
If that doesn't work, Hakuna Matata! I still have one more up my sleeve...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_yohVlVbEA
