The Quay Brothers are two of the world’s most original filmmakers. They are identical twins, identified as Stephen Quay and Timothy Quay.
The Quay Brother were influenced mainly by a tradition of Eastern European animation. The displayed a passion for detail and it shows in there work. Their use of colour and texture, use of focus and camera movement has definitely not been unnoticed and is instantly recognizable.
They are best known for the 1986 film ‘Street of Crocodiles’.
In 1994 with Institute Benjamenta, they made their first foray into live-action feature-length filmmaking.
Tim Burton is the most recognized film director of animation in the 21st centurey working with the likes of Alec Baldwin, Christina Ricci, Michael J. Fox and most notably Johnny Depp.
Tim Burton started working with Disney and led him to work on ‘The Fox and The Hound’ in 1981. Disney allowed Burton to have freedom to work on his own personal projects which resulted in the making of the six minute black and white Gothic animation, ‘Vincent Price’. But Burton hit a stump, with his next project ‘Frankenweenie’ which was judged to be unsuitable for children so was never released.
However due to the creation of ‘Frankenweenie’ Burton’s work was noticed by Paul Reubens and so he decided Burton was the perfect person to direct his feature debut ‘Pee-wee’s Big Adventure’ 1985. It was a box office smash which came to a surprise to everyone.
This success built Burton’s career up another step on the ladder which then led to the comedy ‘Beetlejuice’ 1988.
The success of ‘Beetlejuice’ led to Burton being trusted with the film that could make or break him ‘Batman’ 1989.
Although Batman was his least personal film, it was the most successful film of all time.
Bearing in mind that Burton was a young man, his creativity took him to new height and his work never fazes to amaze people. From films like ‘Edward Scissorhands’ to ‘Coraline’.
In 1949, Willis was known for working on the critically acclaimed ‘King Kong’, 16 years later Willis O’Brien worked as Chief Technician on another gorilla picture for Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Shoedsack called ‘Mighty Joe Young’. A young Ray Harryhausen would animated most of it, but O’Brien did come up with the designs for the film so his inputs weren’t overseen.
This is a short clip illustrating the work Willis did.
Ray Harryhausen
The history of cinematic art should be handed to yours truly as his creative work has lead to what we see today. He used legend and mythology to develop stories and creatures that played a creative role in fantasy films in the 1950s, 60s and 70s.
Did you Know:
In both Aardman’s ‘Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2006)’ and Tim Burton’s ‘Corpse Bride(2005)’, there appear pianos both labelled with the makers name of Harryhausen.
That just goes to show the importance and respect people have for Harryhausen’s existence and creativity.
Svankmajer made his first film in 1964 and years after he has made some of the most memorable and unique animated films ever made. He gained a highly respected reputation as one of the world’s foremost animators, influencing filmmakers from Tim Burton to The Brothers Quay. His brilliant use of claymation was definitely apparent in the 1982 film ‘Dimensions of Dialogue’.
Stop Animation was made official due to Albert E. Smith and J. Stuart Blackton for The Humpty Dumpty Circus which was debuted in 1897.
The story is basically about a group of acrobats and animals in a toy circus coming to life.
Stop motion is a technique to make an object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small steps and photographed between in frames, it creates the illusion of movement when the frames are played all together. Clay figures are mostly used due to the fact that they are easily moved and positioned, thia is called clay animation or clay-mation.
Stop motion became more popular during the years and is used most famously by director Tim Burton in credited films such as Corpse Bride in 2005 and The Nightmare Before Christmas in 1993.
Stop animation is bound to progress more in the future duie to New Media Technologies, we’re are just going to have to wait and see what’s next.
Plateau was a Belgian physicist. He is down as the first person to successfully demonstrate the illusion of a moving image. He was able to use counter rotating disks with repeating drawn images in small increments of motion and one and regularly spaced slits in the other, he called this phenakistoscope.
William George Horner was a British mathematician and schoolmaster. He is responsible for the invention of the zoetrope in 1834. Under a different name (Daedaleum), has been attributed to him.
A zoetrope is a device that produces an illusion of action from a rapid succession of static pictures. The term zoetrope is from the Greek words “zoe”, “life” and τρόπος – tropos, “turn”. It may be taken to mean “wheel of life”.
Reynaud was a French science teacher responsible for the first projected animated cartoon films. Reynaud created the Praxinoscope in 1877 and the Théâtre Optique in December 1888.
Praxinoscope
Théâtre Optique
On the 28 October 1892 he projected the first animated film in public, called Pauvre Pierrot, at the Musée Grévin in Paris.
Muybridge was an English photographer but he spent most of his life in the US. He is best known for his pioneering work on animal locomotion which used multiple cameras to capture motion, and his zoopraxiscope.
A device for projecting motion pictures that pre-dated the flexible perforated film strip.
In 1891, Thomas Edison built a device called a Kinetoscope. This device was installed in penny arcades, where people could watch short, simple films. The kinetograph and kinetoscope were both first publicly exhibited May 20, 1891.
Their father (1840–1911), ran a photographic firm and both brothers worked for him. Louis was a physicist and Auguste was a manager. Louis had made some improvements to the still-photograph process, the most notable being the dry-plate process, which was a major step towards moving images.
It was not until their fathers retirement in 1892 that the brothers really began to create moving pictures. They patented a number of significant processes leading up to their film camera.
They patented a number of significant processes leading up to their film camera, most notably film perforations, this was originally implemented by Emile Reynaud (mentioned above).
The cinématographe itself was patented on 13 February 1895 and the first footage recorded using it was done on March 19, 1895. This first film shows workers leaving the Lumière factory.
They had a private screening in Paris for their film.
Pal was a Hungarian-born American animator and film producer, he was mostly associated with the science fiction genre.He was nominated for Academy Awards in the category for ‘Best short subjects’ (cartoons) no less than seven consecutive years (1942–1948) and received an honorary award in 1944. That award made him the second most nominated Hungarian exile.
In 1931 he moved to Berlin and founded‘Trickfilm-Studio Gmbh Pal und Wittke’ with UFA Studios as its main customer from 1931 to 1933. During this time, he created Pal-Doll known as Puppetoons in the US.
Puppetoons
“Sweet Pacific”
In 1933 he worked in Prague and in 1934 he made a film advertisement in his hotel room in Paris, and was invited by Philips to make two more short adverts. He started to use Pal-Doll techniques in Eindhoven, in a former butchery, then at villa-studio Suny Home.
He made five films before 1949 for the British company Horlicks Malted Milk. He left Germany as the Nazis came to power. In 1940, he emigrated from Europe, and began work for Paramount Pictures. At this time, his friend Walter Lantz helped him obtain American citizenship.
Disney tried out several stop motion techniques by taking on independent animator-director Mike Jittlov.
He did the first stop motion animation of Mickey Mouse toys ever produced for a short sequence which was called Mouse Mania. A year later, Jittlov did not disappoint with another impressive multi-technique stop motion for a 1979 Disney special promoting their release of the feature film The Black Hole.
The most recognized cartoon character made by Disney is the one and only Mickey Mouse. He created in 1928 at The Walt Disney Studio. .Mickey is the mascot of The Walt Disney Company.
The first ever appearance made by Mickey Mouse was in a short film entitled Steamboat Willie 1928.
He went on to appear in approximately 120 films including The Band Concert1935, Brave Little Tailor1938, and Fantasia1940. Mickey appeared in primarily short animations, but also in feature-length and direct-to-video films. Nine of Mickey’s cartoons have been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film, one of which won the award, Lend a Paw1942. In 1978, Mickey became the first ever cartoon character to have a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame.
Concept art of Mickey from early 1928; the sketches are the earliest known drawings of the character. From the collection of The Walt Disney Family Museum.
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