Filmmaker Magazine: Remember stop-motion, that venerable technique of animated films ranging from old-time children’s classics by Rankin/Bass to sword-and-sandals epics by Ray Harryhausen? Given the success of Pixar’s movies, Minions and other computer-animated features, you might have thought that 2D, hand-drawn, and traditional stop-motion has been relegated to the dust bin of history. Well, if you are a fan of these styles, don’t lose hope just yet. Opening just before the New Year was Charlie Kaufman’s much-anticipated directorial follow up to 2008’s Synecdoche, New York, Anomalisa. Directed by Kaufman and Duke Johnson, it’s being touted for its unique amalgam of animation processes that combine puppetry with CG, and the use of 3D-printed stop-motion animation.
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Having watched Anomalisa twice so far, the craft on display is something that is truly unrivaled in the film world so far. The protagonist is afflicted with the Fregoli delusion, which involves believing that everyone is one person, and that person is out tog et you. I had no idea watching the film that the puppets are 3D printed, which adds a whole new layer to the message of the film. As the article states, 3D printing is hardly a perfect science, and the finished products have gradations and a plasticky look to them, which works perfectly with the film's messages. LAIKI is also a film company at the forefront of this science, with many of the trailers for "The Boxtrolls" showing the animators swapping out the 3D printed parts on the figures to simulate the motion of the characters, which the article also delves into. By switching out pieces, the illusion that the characters are living and breathing is a masterful choice of medium, and allows filmmakers to do things claymation never allowed. Here's to art imitating life.
Stop-motion animation has always been a mystery to me because I could never understand how someone could possibly make a film that required so much detail and precision for just a simple second-long clip. That being said, I agree with the author in that the films themselves have a tactile quality that no 3D animation can replicate and am a big fan of movies that use these techniques. I've never seen this movie before but this article made me very interested in the effectiveness of 3D printing as a medium. While it sounds like it fits very well for the plot and theme of the movie, I wonder if it will continue to be as effective for other movies. The other stop-motion movies it mentions, like Coraline (along with TV shows like Shaun the Sheep or Pingu) in my opinion wouldn't feel the same if they were modeled digitally and then printed on a machine. For me, part of the charm of these movies is seeing the individuality of the characters through the hand-made aspect of the materials. I looked up the trailer for Anomalisa and the characters have a very specific aesthetic much different from the stop-motion movies I'm used to. However, maybe the mixing of 3D printing and traditional handcrafting (like in the Boxtrolls which I haven't seen) will turn out to be the future of stop-motion animation as the article seems to predict.
I grew up watching “Wallace and Gromit” claymation movies and was enchanted in the miniature worlds constructed for those films, as well as the original “Thomas and Friends” TV series (which, although it isn’t stop-motion, lives in a similar category). The miniature scale and realistic-material feel of these types of production (stop-motion / claymation, and the use of live-action scale models) has a very specific feel that seems to draw you in. Attention to detail in stop-motion work is what I think makes it so intriguing. Many people are also just naturally drawn to miniature things, so when a show or film has that “feel,” it can make for very satisfying viewing.
Like Lucy mentions in her comment, I’m not sure if the highly-digitized process used to create Anomalisa maintains the same elements as original stop-motion films. Aside from Anomalisa’s merits as a film, one can’t deny that the work is very different from past stop-motion work, and seems to have an aesthetic quality lost somewhere between stop-motion and 3D computer animation. For me, the character’s faces look air-brushed, and stand out from the rest of the work. The film looks artificial in ways fully animated work doesn’t, and I’m as confused by that statement as you may be. The combination for me just feels off. Some may argue as Jacob points out that this can work to serve the film, but with regard to the development of stop-motion as form of create film, I’m not convinced that this new process maintains enough of what made original stop-motion great. While I am glad that this new technology is giving stop-motion a greater chance of survival into the highly-digital age, is stop-motion really living on? Or has it evolved into something else? I would argue that the heavy use of computers has created a new form of stop-motion animation, which I unfortunately do not find nearly as engaging.
Usually I love everything 3D printed, but in this case I honestly don’t know what to think. Maybe it’s just because Anamolisa left all the striations and joins visible, but the 3D printed characters are off-putting in a way that you don’t really get with current stop motion. I really love the hand sculpted quality of stop motion- of puppets literally made from the ground up and then animated. The idea of just printing them out seems… wrong. I know the article says there has to be a lot of work still done after they are printed to sand down the striations and to color them, but it just isn't the same. Looking at Jake’s comment I can see how the 3D quality would work well for this movie considering I have never seen it, but the process is so different that it’s hard to accept it as the same as all other stop motion movies and to accept that this might become the status quo for stop motion in the future.
I have always loved stop-motion, mostly because it is always apparent that the resultant films were made painstakingly and imperfectly, and it gives them a quality that other films (and especially those produced with animation or CGI) lack. I didn't know that LAIKA used a digital process to cover the seams and smooth animation in their films, but I don't think that the 3D printed characters detract from the handmade quality of the films. In Boxtrolls, the characters still seem as alive and real as if they were made purely from clay as they were in Wallace and Gromit: and in Anomalisa it seems to work extremely well. I watched the trailer, and it seems like the open nature of the 3D printed stop motion video absolutely adds to the film rather than detracting from it. So maybe the seams are visible, and the striations of the plastic are visible in some shots, but it fits in the world of the story. I do hope that other stop motion films make sure that this process is the right one for their storytelling venture before they commit to making everything the same way as it was done in Anomalisa.
I personally cannot wait to see this film. I love the director and the addition of stop motion is so interesting. I recently read an interview with Wes Anderson, who has directed numerous live action films, as well as the stop-motion Fantastic Mr. Fox. In the interview he said that he loves stop motion, because here are physical actors, yet he has the capability to have the most precisely directed performance possible because they move and express themselves only in his intended ways, without the variability of a human actor.
In that way sometimes it derives a more adept story. And without the variability of just human crafted.. well clay, and instead 3D printing, this has the potential to be a truly fantastic movie.
I had never thought of the idea of using 3D printing in this way, but it makes so much sense. this is a thousand times easier (but its still not easy) than creating each person, body part, and object by hand. i think I'm going to watch the film this week, and I will watch for the aspects described in here.
I think it’s official I post on every single 3D printing article. I find it far to interesting to not explore. The possibilities are truly endless and every single I article I read proves that to be true. I was waiting for the 3D printing wave to hit the film industry and it’s finally true. On Tuesday I walked into my roommate watching this movie (because of this article) and although I only watched a few minutes of it I did find it very interesting. I did give it a head turn when I first saw it but when I found out that it was all 3D printed characters i was much more interested. I’m still not 100% sure about how the filmmakers showed expressions and movement with the limbs and other parts of the character, but I suppose that is why they don’t pay me the big bucks. Over all, this entire article does a really good job of explaining how 3D printing is incorporate in the film and the basic idea and principles of how it works.
I think that how 3D printing is so versatile completely amazing. I didn’t realize how much could really be done with it. I also didn’t know that the move Anomalisa was made using 3D printing. This is a movie I already want to see, but now, the fact that it was 3D printed makes me want to see it even more. I think that there is a big future in 3D printing in the entertainment industry. It can allow you to design pretty much whatever you want, and have it in your hands hours later.I think that 3D printers can be used in more than just stop-animation, but in the world of theatre as well. This is such an interesting trend, on I hope to learn more about in the future. I hope that 3D printing will continue to grow and make great things.
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