Before there were CGI superheroes, animatronic dinosaurs, or even hand-drawn cartoons, there was a creative method of animation that could bring objects to life. Stop-motion animation is a technique almost as old as filmmaking itself.
Before digital media __1__, movies were actually a series of still images changing so quickly that the brain processed them as if they were moving. These long reels of still images would run through a projector to create a movie. Similar to how a movie is produced, stop-motion animation also creates the __2__ of movement with a long series of still images.
The subject of the animation is often a figure, clay sculpture, or puppet. The film crew takes a picture of the subject in a starting __3__. Then they make very small changes that may be too __4__ to see. The production team takes another picture and then __5__ that process hundreds, thousands, or even millions of times until they create a full show or film.
The heyday of stop-motion animation is long gone. Early in cinema history, it was one of the only options to mix live actors with __6__ creatures. The famous ape in the first King Kong movie was __7__ with stop-motion. The style has also created __8__ holiday memories like the 1964 TV special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Or we could look back to The California Raisins, which rose to popularity in the 1980s. These stop-motion dried fruits first appeared in a __9__ for Sun-Maid raisins, but they wound up starring in TV specials of their own, a Saturday morning cartoon, and in music videos singing popular renditions of classic R&B songs.
The stop-motion tradition __10__ even in modern cinema, especially in children’s movies that want a creepy vibe, but one that isn’t too scary. Modern classics like The Nightmare Before Christmas, Wallace & Gromit, and Coraline are recent stop-motion animations that have found mainstream success.
