In many ways, stop-motion is older than cinema itself. Before the arrival of celluloid film in 1888, inventions such as the zoetrope allowed audiences to view short clips made from a series of images. At the beginning of the silent film era, filmmakers used stop-motion techniques for special effects. However, for as fresh an audience as possible, stop-motion is synonymous with animated films that use puppets, clay (also known as claymation), paper cutouts, or even other physical elements. tell a story. This type of animation is a labor-intensive but appreciated medium. Although stop-motion animated films can use many other types of materials, they are all made by physically manipulating elements between photographed images. The effect makes the object appear to move independently. The most productive stop-motion videos come from all genres, but children’s videos, art videos and, surprisingly, horror videos are especially the mainstays of stop-motion animation.
This list plays a little fast and loose with the concept of “film.” It includes a short film and TV specials. However, all the entries on this list have been released on home video and are often watched as films. This list also prioritizes feature-length films. The genre of stop-motion films is a surprisingly varied field. While it is a popular technique for family films, many stop-motion films lean into the grotesque, creepy or spooky. Even some of the family-friendly choices deal with the macabre.
This list takes several factors into account, adding quality, unique storytelling, and legacy; however, it also explicitly takes into account the look of the film. When it comes to stop-motion, craftsmanship, design and cinematic artistry are essential. The stars of many of those films are actors; They are physical characters built with clay and paper. While art and character design are vital to all types of animation, the meticulous procedure of stop-motion animation, along with its physical appearance, makes those films look like animation. art in motion.
Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride is not the most inventive film on this list, but it has a great look and some beautiful music. The film follows a nervous young man who accidentally marries an undead corpse in the lead-up to his wedding.
The film is loosely based on 17th century Jewish folklore. The story was told to Burton by animator Joe Ranft while the two were filming The Nightmare Before Christmas. Although his Jewish roots do not come across in the film , has an almost folkloric atmosphere. Directed by Mike Johnson and Tim Burton, Corpse Bride stars Helena Bonham Carter, Johnny Depp and Emma Watson. It can be rented here.
The first of several movies on this list from the stop-motion animated studio Laika, Missing Link tells the story of an 1800s sasquatch in search of his lost family. Directed by Chris Butler, the film is notably much lighter than other films from Laika and feels very family-friendly.
Missing Link features an impressive cast, including Hugh Jackman, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Fry, Matt Lucas, Timothy Olyphant, Emma Thompson and Zach Galifianakis. However, it was a box office failure. Missing Link was the first non-CGI animated film to win a Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film. It is available on streaming here.
One of several films directed by Henry Selick on this list, Wendell & Wild is a bit divisive. There is a lot going on in the film, which is a blessing and a curse. However, the animation in this film is undeniably impressive and thematically, the film is interesting.
Wendell
Marcell the Shell with Shoes On would be a debatable selection for this list, as it’s not a fully stop-motion animated film. The mockumentary mixes stop-motion and live-action and follows a talking shell who is desperate to track down his lost family.
Directed by Dean Fleischer Camp, the film is based on a series of 2010s shorts by Camp and Jenny Slate. The film stars Slate, Rosa Salazar, Thomas Mann, Camp, Lesley Stahl and Isabella Rossellini. Marcell the Shell with Shoes On is a moving film. and an immensely sweet movie. It was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the Golden Globes and Academy Awards, but lost to another stop-motion animated film, Guillermo del Toro’s. Pinocchio. Marcell, the shell with shoes on, is available on platforms.
The Adventures of Prince Ahmed is a vital film in the history of animation and silent cinema. However, it comes with a slight warning about racist caricatures. Directed by Lotte Reiniger, the film is widely the first animated feature film and uses a strategy similar to the Indonesian art of Wayang shadow puppetry.
The film is inspired by Hanna Diyab’s One Thousand and One Nights, though it blends several of the stories. Reiniger’s earlier film, 1922’s Cinderella, uses a similar paper cut style, establishing her as part of a group of early experimental German animators. While she continued working in cinema through the late 1970s, she had to flee Germany due to the rise of the Nazi Party and her outspoken leftwing politics. The Adventures of Prince Achmed was heavily censored in the 1920s as it included a pair of openly gay characters kissing. Reiniger was passionate about destigmatizing homosexuality and thought adding it to a children’s film was important. It is available on multiple platforms, including Kanopy for free.
Laika’s ParaNorman is a sweet film about a boy who can communicate with the dead. It’s not the studio’s most productive film, but it’s a solid film with great animation. ParaNorman, the first stop-motion film to use character faces published in color in 3D.
The film is also cited as the first mainstream animated film to feature an openly gay character. It was also the first PG movie to be nominated for a GLAAD Media Award.
Directed by Sam Fell and Chris Butler, the film stars Kodi Smit-McPhee, Tucker Albrizzi, Anna Kendrick, Casey Affleck, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Leslie Man, Jeff Garlin, Elaine Stritch, Alex Borstein and John Goodman. It is available here.
Technically, The House is a television special. However, since it was released on Netflix and is 97 minutes long, it feels a lot like a movie. The House is a three-part horror anthology focused on families living in the same mysterious space in other eras.
The first segment is directed by Emma de Swaef and Marc James Roels, while the moment is directed by Niki Lindroth von Bahr. Paloma Baeza makes the third. It stars Mia Goth, Jarvis Cocker, Susan Wokoma and Helena Bonham Carter. Although The House is deliberately unpleasant and not for everyone, it features impressive animation and a unique narrative approach. It is available for streaming here.
It is surprising that a spin-off of a spin-off is as good as this film is. Shaun The Sheep Movie is based on the TV series Shaun the Sheep, which was a spin-off of the Wallace & Gromit short A Close Shave. Directed by Mark Burton and Richard Starzak, the film follows the titular sheep as he must rescue his farmer from the big city.
This film is very much for kids, but it is very charming. Inkoo Kang said of the movie in The Wrap, “Refreshingly for children (but especially for adults), there are no lessons to learn and no faults to admonish. Instead, it’s an 84-minute, dialogue-free distillation of all the innocent fun we wish childhood could be.” It is available to stream on multiple platforms.
Junk Head by Takehide Hori is a Japanese stop-motion science fiction film about a dystopian long-term in which population decline is rampant. It is profound but at the same time captivating.
The film was directed almost exclusively by Hori, who not only wrote and directed Junk Head, but also sculpted characters, edited it, dubbed it, and operated the camera. It’s even more impressive that Hori was self-taught and spent seven years on the project. Brian Tellerico wrote about the film in his Fantasia Fest summary for Roger Ebert: “One views Hori’s film with more awe at the artistic good fortune of his craft than at his story; I’m not sure I can do it. “fully convey to anyone what it’s all about. . . But it still exerts a spell. The film is available here.
Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer, is another special one. However, many rewatch each holiday season as if it were a Christmas movie, and it turns out that there isn’t a Rankin/Bass Christmas special on a list about stop-motion.
Rudolph stars Burl Ives, Billie Mae Richards, and Larry Mann. Based very loosely on the Johnny Marks song of the same name, the special follows Rudolph to the island of Misfit Toys. It’s an adorable holiday vintage with now-iconic character designs. It is available for streaming here.
The Wolf House is one of the most disturbing films on this list. This is a strange and surreal stop-motion horror film that will likely stay in audiences’ brains long after watching it. The film follows a young woman who flees a remote German town. settlement, is chased by a wolf and takes refuge in a deserted house.
Directed by Cristobal León and Joaquín Cociña, the film blends stop-motion and drawn animation. It also utilizes papier-mâché, clay and puppets. The film has a spooky handmade look that really sets it apart. The film is available on streaming here.
King Kong mixes stop-motion special effects with a live-action world. Although the practice has declined, this strategy constitutes a bankruptcy in the history of special effects. In the early days of cinema, stop-motion allowed for the fantastic, and King Kong is a wonderful example. Willis H. O’Brien made the special effects for the film. O’Brien used a similar strategy for dinosaurs in 1925’s The Lost World and 1918’s The Ghost of Slumber Mountain. However, his paintings of King Kong fostered a genre: monster cinema.
King Kong follows a film crew who captures a giant ape and brings it to New York City. Directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, the film stars Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong and Bruce Cabot. The film was chosen for preservation. at the Library of Congress in 1991 and has encouraged sequels and remakes. It is available here.
Directed by Wallace and Gromit’s Peter Lord and Nick Park, Chicken Run remains the highest-grossing anti-movie film of all time. The film follows an arrogant American chicken who will have to save an organization of Yorkshire chickens before they are turned into pies. .
The film has dark themes but balances them with homage and comedy. Chicken Run stars Mel Gibson, Phil Daniels, Lynn Ferguson, Tony Haygarth, Imelda Staunton and Julia Sawalha. The film was a co-production between Pathé and Aardman Animations in association with DreamWorks Animation. Chicken Run animated the 2023 sequel Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget; However, the original movie is better. It can be rented on various platforms.
Street of Crocodiles is actually a short film, but no list about stop motion would be complete without at least one stop-motion animation The Brothers Quay. Street of Crocodiles follows a puppet exploring the dark and lonely world around him.
The film has been included in multiple home video releases, The Brothers Quay Collection: Ten Astonishing Short Films 1984–1993, Quay Brothers – The Short Films 1979–2003, and Phantom Museums – The Short Films of the Quay Brothers. It also was used in Christopher Nolan’s tribute documentary Quay in 2015. Unfortunately, it is currently not available on streaming.
Fantastic Planet is a bit of an outlier on this list. For many, it will not look like a typical stop motion. While many stop-motion films are made using clay characters, Fantastic Planet uses cutouts, giving it a much more 2-D feel. While cutout stop-moton had a moment in the 1970s, Fantastic Planet is experimental in its animation and storytelling.
Directed by René Laloux, the film tells an allegorical story about humans living on a planet invaded by giant humanoid aliens. The film won the Special Prize at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival. It was the first animated film to earn a PG rating from the MPAA in the United States. It is available on various platforms.
You can’t talk about stop-motion cinema without Wallace and Gromit and Aardman Animations. While the duo’s shorts are arguably more famous, Wallace and Gromit have also appeared in two feature films. Directed by Nick Park and Steve Box, Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit is the first of their feature-length films.
The film follows Wallace and his dog, Gromit, who will have to use their pest activity to stop a giant rabbit from attacking the city. The film won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. The new Wallace and Gromit movie, Wallace
Directed by Ladislas Starevich and Irène Starevich, The Tale of the Fox is based on the medieval stories of Fox the Fox. The film follows the titular fox as he annoys the Lion King. The film stars Claude Dauphin, Romain Bouquet, Laine, Sylvain Itkine and León Larive.
The film is the sixth animated feature film (and the third that is preserved). It uses puppets and, being made in the 1930s, the animation looks old beautifully. Unfortunately, it is not yet streamed and can be discovered online.
Adam Elliot’s Mary and Max follow two pen pals in their unlikely 20-year friendship. The film stars Toni Collette, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Eric Bana, with narration by Barry Humphries.
The film explores themes of loneliness, isolation, and intellectual fitness and is incredibly animated in claymation animation. Mary and Max used more than a hundred sets, 212 puppets and around 500 miniature props, plus a fully functional Underwood miniature typewriter, which took nine weeks to design and build. The film premiered on the opening night of the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. It can be obtained on platforms.
Co-directed by Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio is a remake of the old story of a wooden boy. The film co-written by Patrick McHale of Over the Garden Wall and stars Ewan McGregor, David Bradley, Gregory Mann, Burn Gorman, Ron Perlman, John Turturro, Cate Blanchett, Tim Blake Nelson, Christoph Waltz and Tilda SwintonArray.
The film features some notable adjustments from Carlo Collodi’s 1883 novel The Adventures of Pinocchio. It is set 20 years after toymaker Geppetto lost his son in a World War I air raid and examines the rise of Italian fascism between the two global wars. The film won Best Animated Feature at the Golden Globes and Academy Awards, as well as five Annie Awards. You can get it here.
Although several films on this list are aimed at children, Mad God is arguably the least suitable for younger viewers. The film is an experimental horror film that follows an anonymous killer who descends into an underworld overrun by monsters.
The film was directed by legendary special effects artist Phil Tippett. Tippett has worked on stop-motion and go-motion special effects on Star Wars, Robo-Cop, Willow, and Dragonslayer. However, Mad God is his first feature film as a director. . While Tippett began working on the task in the 1990s, he put it aside while running at Jurrasic Park. Mad God is a dark and dark movie, but there’s something undeniable about it. It is destined for cult vintage status. It’s available to stream here.
Fantastic Mr. Fox is one of two stop-motion animated films directed by Wes Anderson. If the other movie, Isle of Dogs, is wonderful, it has something to do with Fantastic Mr. Fox.
Based on the story of The Call itself by Roald Dahl and co-written by Noah Baumbach, the film follows a fox who will have to protect his pregnant wife and their friends after a farm raid goes wrong.
The film features the voice talents of George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Owen Wilson and Bill Murray. While it underperformed at the box office, it was met with approval from critics. The film features a beautiful score from Alexandre Desplat (who also worked on Island of Dogs). Fantastic Mr. Fox was nominated for two Oscars: Best Animated Feature and Best Original Score. Every shot of the film also includes orange, which gives it a beautiful autumnal glow. It is available on multiple platforms.
Directed by Henry Selick and produced by Tim Burton, The Nightmare Before Christmas is a stop-motion megahit. The movie has a classic Halloween and holiday feel to it. It follows Jack Skellington, the king of Halloween Town, as he tries to co-opt Christmas as part of his mid-life crisis.
The film features an all-star cast, including Chris Sarandon, Catherine O’Hara, and Paul Reubens. However, arguably the most iconic aspect of the film is Danny Elfman’s music. While many mistakenly believe that the film was directed by Burton, he was unable to direct it due to his commitment to Batman Returns. However, the film is based on a poem Burton wrote while working as an animator at Disney in the 1980s. Burton has done other stop-motion animation projects, adding the superbly directed short film Vincent. The Nightmare Before Christmas has a committed cult following. The film has collected concerts, spin-off comics, video games, toys, a behind-the-scenes podcast, and even a seasonal overlay of amusement park rides at Disney’s Haunted Mansion at Disneyland and Tokyo Disneyland. Find it here.
Anomalisa is another anti-movement film that is decidedly not aimed at children. The movement-preventing mental comedy-drama co-directed by Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson. Kaufman also wrote the film, based on his 2005 audio play of the same name. The film follows a motivational speaker and customer service professional whose life changes after meeting a girl.
Anomalisa stars David Thewlis, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Tom Noonan. It premiered at the Telluride Film Festival and went on to be nominated for a Best Animated Feature Film Oscar. The film was championed by critics and currently holds a 91% on Rotten Tomatoes. It is available on multiple platforms.
Coraline was the first feature-length film from Laika Studios (however, they were contacted to work on 2005’s Corpse Bride). The studio has become one of the biggest names in stop-motion animation, and it makes sense with films as impressive as Coraline. Directed by Henry Selick, the film is a children’s horror masterpiece.
Based on the Neil Gaiman YA novel of the same name, Coraline follows a young girl who discovers a sinister alternate universe behind a secret door. The film is a cult classic and is beloved for its spooky and creepy imagery. It is available to stream here.
My Zucchini Life, also called My Zucchini Life, is a French-Swiss stop-motion animation. The film follows the formative years of a boy in an orphanage after the death of his mother. Directed by Claude Barras, the film has a French edition and an English dub. The English edition is a bit more star-studded, with performances from Nick Offerman, Amy Sedaris, Will Forte and Elliot Page. However, the French edition is more nuanced.
While the characters are colorful and the film is filled with whimsy, it isn’t afraid to explore weighty topics like abandonment and belonging. The film boasts a 99% on Rotten Tomatoes and was nominated for an Oscar for Best Animated Feature. The film also won two Cesar Awards for Best Animated Film and Best Adapted Screenplay. Unfortunately, it is currently not on streaming.
Conclusion
From heartbreaking horror movies to cozy clay sheep movies, there’s a lot to love about stop-motion animation. It’s a deeply artistic genre that will delight everyone, from children to art film snobs.
Stop-motion animation is a strategy in which objects are photographed, psychically manipulated, and then photographed again. When those images are grouped into frames, small manipulations make the elements appear to move independently in the scene. Stop motion animators create those scenes with dolls, clay figures, and even paper cutouts.
Stop-motion animation has been used since the birth of film (and arguably before). The first stop-motion animated film was 1898’s The Humpty Dumpty Circus. While the film is now lost, it used dolls with jointed limbs to reenact a scene with acrobats and other circus performers. Since then, stop-motion has been used in many films as an animation and special effects technique.
Claymation is a subset of stop-motion animation. Namely, claymations are stop-motion films that use clay figures instead of dolls made out of other materials. Claymation characters (and often backgrounds) are usually made by covering a flexible metal armature with plasticine clay. This modeling clay is made from calcium salts, petroleum jelly and aliphatic acids. It is used because it doesn’t dry out, which allows it to be changed and manipulated between scenes.
William Harbutt developed clay for modeling in 1897, and as early as 1902 in the short film Fun in the Bakeshop, it was used for this type of animation. Clay is synonymous with Aardman Animations, which has been employing plasticine for characters like Wallace and Gromit. Shaun the sheep and Morph since he opened the studio in 1972. However, many animators used and continued to use clay techniques.
The highest-grossing stop-motion animated film is Chicken Run from the 2000s. Lately he has been followed by Wallace.
Three sensible-moving films have also held the title of highest-grossing animated film at some point: 1975’s The Pinchcliffe Grand Prix, 1993’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Chicken Run. However, there are currently no sensible action films among the top 50 highest-grossing animated films.
There are some big names in stop-motion animation. Henry Selick is the notable director of The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach, Monkeybone, Coraline and Wendell
Across the pond, Peter Lord founded the claymation studio Aardman Animations Limited and has directed films like Chicken Run and The Pirates! Band of Misfits. He often collaborates with another Aardman animator, Nick Park, who directed the iconic claymation show Creature Comforts, Chicken Run, Early Man and the upcoming Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl. Parker also notably did the stop-motion animated segments for Pee-wee’s Playhouse. Many stop-motions movies are co-directed because of the labor-intensive and complex nature of the medium.
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