puppet animation

Puppet animation is a development from object animation where instead of using objects, puppets are used. Puppet animation is a development of stop-motion animation, rather than using objects in different frames puppets were introduced due to their human like quality’s so directors can move the puppet freely and more easily to show different movements.  It works by taking pictures and moving the puppet in different frames. 

The film ‘The Humpty Dumpty Circus’ (1908) created by J. Stuart Blackton and Albert smith receives credit as the first stop-motion animation film that features puppets.  

The history of puppet animation then carries on with the pioneer puppet animator from Russia, Ladislas Starewitch who was a film maker who created ‘The Cameraman’s Revenge’ (1912) and later produced his feature length puppet animation ‘Le Roman de Renard’ (1929-1930) which translates as ‘The Tale of the Fox’. The story was based on the 11^th century tale of ‘Reynard the fox’.

These days puppet animation is most commonly used in children’s cartoons and films.  An example of puppet animation used in cinema is in the film King Kong (1933).  The writer/director Tim Burton often uses puppet animation in his work for example, Corpse Bride (2005) which is a stop motion animated horror musical.  The Nightmare before Christmas (1993) is an American stop motion musical fantasy horror film directed by Henry Selick.  It used 227 puppets to represent the characters in the film and also 400 heads were used to allow the expression for every possible emotion. 

The target audience for this type of puppet animation is mainly teenagers and adults because of the dark themes.  I think these types of films are successful because of the use of puppet animation and the voice of famous actors.  It would not be as successful if actors were used instead of puppet animation.  Puppet animation is used as an advantage to show different character types and personalities. 

Object Animation

Object animation is a type of animation which only uses objects.  The technical process involves taking a series of images of any object, such as a shoe and moving the shoe slightly and taking a photograph at every movement.  These are then linked together by uploading the images onto final cut pro and then adjusting their frames per second to create a sequence of film.  This type of animation is currently used in adverts and children's animation films. 

Object animation is the oldest stop motion technique and was first used at the turn of the 20th Century.  "The Humpty Dumpty Circus" (1898) by Albert E. Smith and J. Stuart Blackton is a first example. 

A current example of object animation is used in the TV advert:  EDF Energy Blue to attact members of the UK public to switch over to EDF Energy.  This is a good example of the application of comtempory object animation and is acheived by a using a 'morph' type character as the main focus who is shown moving from two levels of emotion - from dull and gloomy to bright and joyful once the background music changes from sad piano to the famous upbeat Hawaii Five O soundtrack. 

An influence of it's production seems to have come from a past childhood character 'Morph' who was formed using clay.  This advert's character has no features apart from a large pair of eyes.  This would make the viewer have empathy with the character.  The voiceover in the advert also encourages viewer reaction. 

The animation is very simplistic but effective in a sense because the actual character does not move very much but it doesn't really need to as the soundtrack and voiceover helps to generate audience reaction and emotion. 

This is a sucessful example of how object animation has been used in current adverting because it is memoriable due to the soundtrack and use of the little character.  Reviews on Youtube suggest that most people who have seen the advert have found it catchy because it has been influenced by music from the past.


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