Developers: Remember to analyse and evaluate their work how does it link to modern practice?

Willis O’Brien – O’Brien is a stop motion pioneer who is most famous for joining two completely different worlds of film together. These were stop motion and human film. His most famous creation was the original King Kong which was released in 1933, which was also ground breaking technology at the time of release. The idea of combining stop frame animation with ordinary film was only merely something people dreamed of seeing, however O’Brien influenced the film industry forever. By creating a stop motion animation and editing it into the ordinary film gave O’Brien the opportunity to create inanimate objects and add them into inanimate situations. This allowed things like huge beasts to encounter people and if the stop frame was of a good standard, it would look almost real. The scene where Kong is hanging from the top of the Empire Statebuilding has become an iconic scene that people remember, and even re-create today. Peter Jacksons King Kong (2005) included the same Empire State scene because it is a scene people still consider to be incredible. Due to O’Brien’s work, it has changed the way film has been created today.

Ray Harryhausen – harryhausen was an artist and director who was most famous for creating the technique of Dynamation. This was when actors would appear to be interacting with fantastical objects like skeletons or dinosaurs. Dynamation was also known as ‘split screen’ because of how the animation was formed. Two separate films had to be made in order to create the illusion of the actors interacting things. The actors’ expressions had to be captured and then the stop motion animation had to be created. Willis O’Brien was a huge inspiration in Harryhausen’s career as he instigated his desire to make stop-motion his career. This had a huge impact on film-making today because we have used this technology and idea to create actors interacting with animated objects, but in a different way. Motion capture works similar to Harryhausen’s work because they have to film the actor’s movement first and then add the animation onto the actor’s outline later. This technique has been used in films like ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’. Due to harryhausens breakthroughs and art style, he has major links to Nick Park and Tim Burton. This is because he has influenced their art styles and the way they animate. Some of his creatures that he has made have a huge resemblance in Tim Burtons work because they are very eerie and awkward looking. This links to Jack Skellington because this is an example of a eerie character who makes the younger viewers feel uncomfortable and slightly on edge.

Jan Svankmajer – Svankmajer was a filmmaker and artist who was well known for his use of three dimensional stop motion with live action animation. Also he was very well known for his use of action over plot and his dark portraying’s of well-known fairy-tales. He used giant puppets and clay figures to present his slightly darker images.