TV Shows
Pingu is a British/Swiss claymation production created by Otmar Gutmann, popular with young children. It was orginally made in the 80's but was only aired in 1999. Set in Antarctica and centred around a family of penguins who get up to adventures, Pingu has no real storyline and only a handful of characters, most of which are only a few episodes. An instant hit, the BBC channel cbeebies instantly took to it and aired the programme frequently for years. Simplistic and easy to follow, Pingu is easily one of the most successful stop motion shows for kids.Channel Idents
Very few channel idents are stop motion, but the few that do are of incredible quality. An example of an ident like this is by E4 called 'Front Room'. Produced in 2006, it still runs today before programmers in the evening. E4 are well known for stop motion idents, and many have been produced in the past.
Front Room begins with a pan across a living room. Cutting to a tilt of the fireplace, grass flows out of it while a tree quickly grows on it on the floor. The walls change colour, the whole of the floor is covered in greenery and the windows rapidly open and close. This whole ident is done in 30 seconds, and due to it's smooth screenplay I'd day it's filmed at around 30 frames per second. This ident is effective due to it's random nature - having an odd sequence of events as seen here will make the piece more memorable and different, meaning that the logo shown at the end will have a higher chance of being remembered. I can take inspiration from this ident because the genre I'm working with is 'horror/surrealism' - not so much horror, but for the surreal aspect of it. I can take inspiration from how innovative the ident is too, particularly from the change from grass into a water-like substance - solid into liquid.
Front Room begins with a pan across a living room. Cutting to a tilt of the fireplace, grass flows out of it while a tree quickly grows on it on the floor. The walls change colour, the whole of the floor is covered in greenery and the windows rapidly open and close. This whole ident is done in 30 seconds, and due to it's smooth screenplay I'd day it's filmed at around 30 frames per second. This ident is effective due to it's random nature - having an odd sequence of events as seen here will make the piece more memorable and different, meaning that the logo shown at the end will have a higher chance of being remembered. I can take inspiration from this ident because the genre I'm working with is 'horror/surrealism' - not so much horror, but for the surreal aspect of it. I can take inspiration from how innovative the ident is too, particularly from the change from grass into a water-like substance - solid into liquid.
Music Video
The use of dimensions is the reason that this music video is so good. Although it's all shot from above, some scenes are actually supposed to be Oren sleeping, but some are of her walking. All done by the same angle, this is achieved by scenery moving around her when she's 'walking along' in the shot, such as pillows imitating the clouds in the sky - she can revert from telling a story in 3D to 2D.
Advertising
In 2009, a YouTuber named Max Keily created an advert for eBay using stop motion animation. Although it took around 1000 frames, half the length of Oren Lavie's video, Keily says that it took him a good few months to produce from scratch. As with Oren's video, the animation is very smooth, and runs at around 40 frames per second - very good quality. What's special about this stop motion animation advert is that it's all done using paper and drawings.
The storyline is basically people browsing eBay to find certain objects; the first character, a woman with nails painted the eBay colours, buys a signed tennis ball. The second character, a man with wristbands of the eBay colours, buys a t-shirt. Whenever something is bought, it appears from out of the 'monitor' and falls down in 3D. All of this is done by pen and paper - each frame individually drawn, even the old adverts needs to be redrawn in order to see the following advert when the person scrolls down.
Although not commissioned by eBay, Keily gained 220,000 views and hundreds of subscribers from this one video.
The story line to this advert is revolved around a fisherman - upon catching a large fish, a whale is attracted to him in the ocean and eats him. He then sets off a landmine inside of the whale that it had previously eaten and is blown straight out of the whale to the sea again.
Mobile phones
'Gulp' is a short film produced by Nokia. It broke records for the largest stop motion set in the world, and was made to advertise the new Nokia N8. Although the frame rate isn't great, everything else about it is - the story, the scale of the project, the sound effects.
As with the Oren video, the dimensions are a huge factor in this advert - when the ship is on it's side, it is used to portray movement along the width of the ocean. When the angle is directly overhead it is used to portray looking down, the method in which we can see the huge whale come up and eat him. As with the others, this advert is very effective because it is memorable. Making the advert memorable is more likely to make us go and buy the product - something which this advert makes me want to do. Using the N8 camera also help to promote the product too - if the audience can see that it was all done on something like that, it'll inspire them to not only buy the phone but produce stop motion films.
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