iKITMovie Blog

We really need to give more examples of replacement stop motion on our site. The recent examples we gave to some of our customers got a very positive response. Replacement Stop motion is a technique where each frame (or sequence of frames) uses a different object in place of the previous object. It was originally used in professional work by the very famous animator “George Pal”. One of his most famous stop motion sequences was in the 1962 “The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm” He used a a new hand-carved wooden puppet for each frame of film. It is said that they had over 1,000 puppets for one 4 minute sequence.  The example we give on our site is a little more modest that 1,000 hand carved puppets, nonetheless the result for those new to stop motion is very satisfying. With just 5 small pieces of clay moulded in to specific shapes a very impressive stop motion sequence can be achieved.

For new animators abstract shapes work best. It is a far more skilled job to have to create dozens of characters with small differences between each one. The human eye (your audience) is far more likely to amused by abstract shape shifting objects rather than picking holes in characters that are not quite the same between sequences. The other real advantage of using replacement techniques when starting out is that you get to know and become expert at “onionskinning”.  This is the most powerful yet easy to use feature for any animator to use.

So refer to our site homepage for the first example we give.