The Requirements of Working to a Brief

The Requirements of Working to a Brief

Briefs

A brief is a set of instructions given to a person about a job or task. In TV and film a brief/project brief is a guideline you must follow for a film project set by a production company. The brief will tell the filmmakers the direction they need to be heading in with the film and what you can and can't do. A commission is when your approached individually by a client looking to start a film project and payed and employed or getting a contract for the production of the film.

On the other hand a tender is an open request targeted at anybody to submit films and ideas. An example of a tender is The Editors Brief: New Beginners on www.ideastap.com. This is a tender because anyone from all ages can apply for this brief. The brief is about new beginnings so it must be themed around this but can be visual art/photography, writing, video or audio. The brief also states if it's a video or audio it must no longer than 2 minutes. A written piece should be no longer than 1000 words and visual/photographs must submit no more than 2 items. Applicants must follow this brief if they want to be considered for judging. Tenders are a great way to get experience with working to a brief without the added pressure you get from commissions.

You could also respond to a brief through competitions. For example the E4 ESting which is a competition anyone can apply for and submit their own 10 second video for E4. The E4 ESting competition wants people to create a 10 second ident to remind viewers they are watching the channel E4. Another example is the Bluecat Screenplay Competition, as anyone can apply but there is still a brief that must be followed if you want your screenplay to be considered for the competition. For example the screenplay must be 65 - 125 pages in length, must be PDF format, must be in English.

Reading a Brief

The E4 brief was a guideline you have to follow when creating your ident. The brief contained information on what you can and can't do and what must be included in the E Sting for it to be considered in the competition and shown on TV. Anyone who is working with a brief must read it carefully and understand what needs to be done as their are restrictions and less freedom following a brief.

When I was creating an E Sting for the E4 competition I made sure I read all the rules and the brief so I knew exactly what I had to do and couldn't do when making my E Sting. Here are a few examples of what I had to include in my E Sting and what I couldn't do:

The brief stated that I can't just use any music I like, I MUST use one of the soundbeds available to me on the E4 E Sting website and I wasn't allowed to remix or edit the soundbeds when making my E Sting. The brief also stated that the video must be EXACTLY 10 seconds long and contain the E4 logo in it. If it's not 10 seconds long it won't even be considered by the judges in the competition.

Negotiating a Brief

When creating the animation for the E Sting competition we actually had quite a lot of freedom despite their being a brief stating the video must be 10 seconds long with the E4 logo integrated into the idea which limited the content and ideas we could put into the video as it was a short amount of time. However the animation could be any genre and style of animation we wanted and could be about whatever we wanted as long as it fitted in exactly 10 seconds, contained the E4 logo and wasn't anything explicit or violent as the ident will be shown in the daytime. In the media industry changes may have to be made to a brief if it doesn't go according to plan, for example if a production company runs out of money or doesn't have enough budget to follow the brief. Or someone might not be available or leave the production so changes will have to be made to work around this. For example director Edgar Wright left Marvel's superhero movie "Ant-Man". Sources say "Marvel had to unhappy with his take on Ant-Man for weeks." so rewrites were made without Edgar Wrights input so he left due to the different visions of the film. Another example of negotiating and changing a brief is Sherlock (TV Series) created by Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat who shared the idea with BBC who commissioned them to create create the series. In the brief Sherlock was originally announced as a series of six 60 minute episodes should the pilot prove to be successful. However the first version of the pilot was reported to have cost £800,000 according to The Guardian. This caused Sherlock to be a potential disaster. So the BBC decided not to broadcast the pilot but instead requested a reshoot and a total of three 90-minute episodes.

 

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_(TV_series)
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/why-ant-man-director-edgar-707374

When reading the judging criteria for this brief I actually had a lot of room to negotiate the brief as I could still be creative and entirely come up with my own idea so I decided to make a Legomation, action fantasy genre, 10 second E Sting which contained the music supplied to me and the E4 logo was integrated in the story as two armies were battling and the E4 logo was the boulder in the catapult which was fired into the enemy forces.

When following a brief there are always constraints you will face and have to work around. When creating the E Sting constraints I faced was that the video had to be EXACTLY 10 seconds long which is capitalized to tell the client this is extremely important and must be followed. Making my animation 10 seconds exactly was difficult to do at first as this was a very small amount of time to fit all the content I wanted into 10 seconds and always had to be aware if I'm taking too many shots when filming. When I finished production and started post production and editing all the images together the animation was over 10 seconds long as I added too much content and shots which I didn't need so I had to go back and make amendments by re-shooting scenes and removing shots in post production. Another constraint I faced was that I had to use the music supplied by E4 which was very limited as there wasn't much to choose from and a lot of the music sounded the same. I didn't like the music I had to include in my animation but these are problems you face and have to overcome when responding to a brief telling you what you must and can't include in your animation. Amendments may have to be made in a brief if a company hasn't got a large enough budget to meet the brief so it may need to be negotiated and changed until the brief can be met for clients.

Opportunities

Responding to a brief is great for experience in the industry and helps you learn to follow instructions which is a skill you must be able to do if wanting a career in this industry. It will also help you gain recognition which is extremely important if you want to be successful in the media industry. As you're working for companies and completing the brief set, the company will remember you and could ask you to do another project for them again.

I have created and had experience with stop motion animation before completing this brief this helped me immensely when responding to this brief as I already had a good understanding of how to create a stop motion animation and what to do for the brief. As I have done animation before there isn't really any new skills that I learnt however I feel I have improved on certain areas due to this project, especially in post-production when editing. I shot my stop motion animation over a few days so the lighting wasn't on point so during post-production I colour corrected the shots until the lighting in all the shots were the same as much as I could. When watching the stop motion with the new colour correction I was very happy with the outcome as it looked more professional with minimum flickering from the lighting.

As well as this I chose to do some masking to give the effect that my E4 boulder is flying in the air by taking a shot of just the background of my set with no objects then taking another shot in the exact same place and exact same lighting but this time with the E4 logo being lifted up with Lego bricks. When all the shots are completed they will be masked on Photoshop by importing the background image and then layering the image with the logo and Lego bricks on top of it. As the shots are layered you can rub out the Lego bricks lifting the E4 logo as we don't want to see them and the image underneath will appear through the rubbed out areas showing the background without the Lego bricks. This gives the effect that the E4 logo is floating. I felt I improved on masking as it looked good when masking it together as it's vital that each shots getting layered is identical when it comes to lighting and movement of the camera which I felt I improved on and achieved the effect of the E4 logo flying towards the army.

I created the entire project brief on my own as it was individual work. I completed all the planning and pre-production paperwork before filming so I knew exactly what the brief wanted me to do and what I was going to make. I also made the set and gathered all the characters and props needed for my animation. I filmed the entire project and edited it all together as well as colour correcting shots to improve the look of the animation and masked shots.

Animation Evaluation

              

STEP 1

Here is the questionnaire I created and shared with my classmates and on websites such as Reddit.com under Polls & Surveys to collect responses from people I do not know and specialize in different subjects about my 10 second animation.

STEP 2

I will review my animation project by producing a written report on this blog.

I exhibited by animation by sharing it on the website YouTube so anyone can watch the animation at anytime and able to leave a comment on the video saying what they liked or didn't like, if they wish to. I also attached my animation to my online questionnaire and shared it on many forums and websites such as Reddit under Polls and Survey so more people will watch and leave feedback on the video. I could have exhibited by animation to a broader audience by sharing it on more websites to get more responses from different people. Reddit however was a great website to share my questionnaire as it's an extremely popular website which many people from different ages use. My respondents were from the age of 17 all the way to 41 years old.

What happens in this animation?

                                 (Here are a few responses I received)  

I asked respondents "What happens in this animation?" as it's very important for viewers to understand the narrative if they're going to enjoy the Esting. This is even more so important with this project as you're only given 10 seconds to show and tell and story so the audience need to be engaged and interested with it quickly. As you can see from the image above all my respondents understood what the narrative and what was going on perfectly so I'm very pleased it came across how I wanted it. 

What style of animation is this?
  

For the question "What style of animation is this?" I wanted to find out if people knew what kind of animation I created and how much they know about animation already. The majority (62.50%) said it was Legomation which is correct. However 37.50% said it was a Live Action Stop Motion but there was no real people or animals involved in my Esting so it wasn't a Live Action Stop Motion. As I handed this questionnaire out to more people than just my class mates who study film and TV, I can understand if some people aren't sure. In my questionnaire I had people who were office managers and registered nurses.

What do you think of the characters in this animation? (Development , Quality, Costume)?

                                (Here are a few responses I received)  

For the question "What do you think of the characters in this animation?" I wanted to find out what the respondents liked/disliked about the characters such as the quality, costumes and development in the story. It was difficult for me to change the characters in the animation as I was using Lego which someone pointed out.

 The Lego characters were already made for me unlike clay which I could manipulate and have had more freedom in creating my characters. The responses were mostly good, for example someone liked the idea that the evil and defeated side looked like monsters and someone else said it "Looked good, artistic". The only real criticism I got was "Some hats would improve the costumes slightly." I agree with this as my animation was set in the medieval times I think helmets for some of the characters would have been appropriate and made the costume and characters more engaging.

What did you think of the movement in the animation? (Was it Smooth or Jumpy)

                                   (Here are a few responses I received) 

For the question "What did you think of the movement in the animation?" I wanted to find out what people thought of the quality of the Esting. As I created a stop motion it was crucial that it was smooth and not to jumpy when putting all the pictures together that the viewers can understand and see what is going on. I got mixed responses for this question, Most say it was fairly smooth but had a few jumps in places. For example someone said "Lego men are smooth. Something seems jumpy about the background behind the logo when it's flying through the air."

When I watched the animation back I could see what they were talking about and agree with that they're saying when the E4 logo is flying by the trees the background moves about slightly. To improve and minimize the jumps I could have stuck the background to the table better so it wouldn't move about when I was moving the E4 logo.

What did you like/didn't like about the look of the animation?

                                 (Here are a few responses I received) 

For this question I wanted to find out what people like and don't like about the animation so I can get an idea what people like and what I should improve and do again next time an animation like this. Overall the comments were positive "it's well lit", "I like the faces of the Lego guys, I like the background and overall concept.", "Cool animation, funny, short and creative. I like the combination of the real forest in contrast with the Lego characters".

Some respondents didn't like how short the animation was, they would liked to have seen the evil side getting up and fighting back.

As much as I would have liked to make the animation look and create an intense battle between the two sides I couldn't as I was set a brief to create an Esting which must be no more then 10 seconds. This limited me to how much I could create and show in the animation. The main criticism I retrieved was that it wasn't long enough and also "Not much back info. I have no idea why they're fighting in the first place.". Which again comes under timing. If I had more freedom with the time I would have made the narrative more detailed and longer. Someone did actually point out the that the E4 logo was backwards when it came down to take out the evil side. "Logo is actually backwards when it lands which just looks really odd." I completely agree that it does look odd and should be the other way around. If I was creating this animation again I would most definitely change it around.

Do you think the idea is creative?

                                 (Here are a few responses I received) 

For the question "Do you think the idea is creative?" I wanted to find out if people viewing this animation will appreciate and enjoy the animation if it was aired on TV. Overall the respondents liked the animation and thought the idea was creative so I'm very happy with the responses and outcome of the animation.

That being said two respondents said the concept is fine and liked the idea, however humans vs orcs isn't all that new or original.

STEP 3

When creating my E Sting I had to make sure I was meeting the requirements of the ESting brief and be aware of any constraints there may be. An issue I had with my ESting was that I used Lego as my models which brought up copyright problems as I used LEGO products in my ESting without permission from the LEGO company. As well as these restrictions I had to be aware of The Ofcom Broadcasting Code.

Here are some of the sections I had to be aware of and follow when creating my E4 ESting if I wanted it to be eligible for TV.

As my animation contains violence with LEGO characters characters fighting I had to read and be aware of violence under the section Harm and Offense on the Ofcom Broadcasting Code and safe for children under 18 to watch as I'm using Lego they will be an audience interested in this animation. 

The time frame of this project was eight lessons doing the pre-production paperwork, eight lessons filming and eight lessons editing the final product. When managing my time during the project I spend a lot of time in pre-production, planning out the content I wanted in my Esting and how I would go about creating it. I then had to make sure I could get hold of the Lego I needed for my Esting, such as the props and characters in the animation and make the catapult out of Lego before I could film. As well as this during production took quite a lot of time as their was a lot of trial and error. The camera would jump too much at times or the lighting wasn't great so I had to shoot the same scene until I was happy with the outcome. It was also difficult how I was going to make the string I attached to the catapult look like it was getting cut by the Lego sword but after a lot of practice I finally got what I wanted. I think what also ate up a lot of the time was the editing as I was masking each individual photo on the E4 logo crashing down onto the enemy forces.

My Esting animation met the requirements of the brief set up on the E4 Esting competition website. The music I used in my Esting animation was one of the downloadable soundbeds they give you to use as they stated in the FAQ you MUST use of the sound beds supplied to you by E4. My Esting is also exactly 10 seconds long as that is how long the ident must be to be considered in the competition.

I obtained feedback on my animation from my peers in class and family, as well as questionnaire respondents by creating a questionnaire on www.smartsurvey.co.uk and distributing it on the internet. The general tone from my respondents were mostly good, saying the idea was creative and well made and overall my peers liked the idea. However there were some errors in my animation and parts which didn't work as well, for example I had mixed responses on the movement. Some people said it was smooth overall while other said it was fairly smooth with a few jumps of the camera when the E4 logo is flying in the air above the trees.

I feel like I learnt that I can work to specified brief along with all the restrictions it comes with of what I can and can't do. I found it quite easy working to a brief as you know exactly what you've got to work with and already sends you in one direction of what to create before you have even started. However I feel this restricts the freedom you get and makes it less creative as you can't just create whatever you desire as you have to worry about following a specific brief telling you what you can and can't do. Personally I don't mind following a brief as it tests you to be more creative in a way as you really need to think about the restrictions or obstacles if you like challenging you and how you will overcome them with a different creative mind set than if you had all freedom to create what you want and how you want it. I also enjoy having the creative freedom to create what I want and how I want without worrying how long the film is or what content I need in it. When I was creating my Esting animation there was a number of times where I added to much where it was almost like a short film however I needed to cut this down with less content so it meets the E4 competition brief of 10 seconds.

I think I could be a suitable candidate for work within the media industry where working for a brief is commonplace as I enjoyed working to brief when creating my E4 Esting animation as it was fun and challenging to try and keep with the brief given and the brief basically already gives you an outline and idea of what to create and how to go about it before you've even started which helps you out in the long run.

I feel like animation could be a viable career option for me as I really enjoy creating animation even if it is challenging, stressful at times, very time consuming and you need precision when creating an animation. I am patient so I enjoy creating animation as it's more challenging as your moving inanimate objects and coming with creative ways to make them jump or fly. Once you've completed filming and editing all the clips together the end result is to rewarding as your seeing your finished product and seeing something you bought to life on screen without it actually being alive. 

Research and Planning: Designing an E Sting

E Sting - Can and Can't

What format do you propose to use to create an E Sting?

The format I propose to create my EString is a stop motion using Lego. 

What will happen in your proposed E Sting?

The narrative of my Esting is about two armies fighting on a battlefield (Good vs Evil), the good army are fighting to keep their land while the evil army is fighting to take it and gain more power. The good army will have a catapult that has an E4 shaped "boulder" inside it. The E4 logo will be shot into the sky and knock down the enemy forces raiding the land.


In regards to diegesis, where will your animation be set? 

My stop motion will be set in the Medieval times in a forest/plains area.  


Are there any limitations or difficulties to face when you produce your ESting?

I don't think there will be any limitations or difficulties when creating my stop motion as it can all be created and everything I need can be made out of Lego and all the resources needed for my stop motion are already available to me.
  

Who is the target audience for your ESting?

The target audience for my Esting will be aimed mainly at males aged 14 to 60 as medieval themed films target more of a male audience due to fight scenes, vast battles, deaths, swords. My stop motion will contain all this appealing to a more male audience. 


ESting Pre-Production Paperwork

Storyboards

Main Characters & Location Information

Location Recce

Risk Assessment



Production Schedule

E4 and the Brief

 

E4 is a British television channel that is owned by Channel Four Television Corporation. Channel Four's other television services include 4seven, Film4, More4, 4Music and bought 50% of Box Television Ltd which operates music channels like Kerrang! and Magic. E4 has existed for a very long time now which launched on 18th January 2001 by channel Four. E4 has shown some very popular programmes on the channel, the most popular one was The Inbetweeners which got over 3 million viewers on each episode. In 1996 Channel Four bought the broadcast rights to Friends on E4 which was extremely popular at the time amongst the UK audience. Popular programmes shown regular now on E4 are Hollyoaks, The Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother and Rules of Engagement.

E4's primary target audience demographically is lucrative 15-35 year old males and females as there are quite a few comedy programmes with adult humor like How I Met Your Mother, The Inbetweeners and Big Bang Theory appealing to both teenagers and middle aged males and female. Psycho-graphically I think it's targeted at people who like to have a laugh, go out with friends and maybe unemployed in education. I think programmes like The Inbetweeners pulls in more male teenagers as it's about four teenage lads partying and trying to get lucky with the ladies. While programmes like Rules of Engagement attract females as it's about modern relationships seen through the eyes of two very different couples and their single friends.

An E String is an ident which is a short sequence shown on television between programmes to identify the programme. In this case an E String is used to keep reminding their audience they are watching the channel E4. They are usually played right before the programmes comes back on after an ad break and right when an advert begins.

Here are three examples of an E String:

Must Troy Harder is a stop motion animation, historical and action genre as it's an adaptation of Troy and the Greek forces sneaking into the city inside the Trojan horse. I think the audience this E String is targeted at is history fans and appeal to mainly a male audience who enjoy Greek mythology films such as Troy and Hercules as they are action packed and contain violence appealing to males. I like this E-Sting because it's a historical, action and mythology film which are my favorite genre of films.  The production of this E Sting is very creative and a well made stop motion which plays smoothly. I can tell the creator has spent a lot of timing making this stop motion as the castle, soldiers and E4 shaped Trojan Horse are all crafted out of cardboard.

E4 Dino is a computer generated animation. I think the genre of this E4 ident is a comedy aimed at children. This dinosaur doesn't look like a typical realistic scary T-Rex with razor sharp teeth as that would scare children, instead it's a purple dinosaur who looks like a funny children's cartoon character with different size eyes as if it was hand drawn by a child to appeal to them. The  bright purple dinosaur also pops the screen in contrasts with the black and white dull background which will attract children to look at the video. I like this E Sting because I like the purple dinosaur contrasting with the black and while background. I also liked the idea of the Dinosaur licking the window and the dripping drool looking like the E4 logo which I thought was cleaver and creative.

The Midnight Beats is computer animated. The genre of this E sting is a comedy because there are two strange but funny looking tribal characters doing a kind of rain dance around a cauldron but instead of getting rain a huge E4 logo crashes down from the sky and crushes them. I think the content in this animation is aimed and appeals to children as the animation is silly which children will enjoy. The visual style on this animation also looks quite simple and childlike. I like this E Sting because it's funny and unexpected when the E4 falls down and crushes the characters. The animation is also well made.

Planning and Preparation

Thaumatrope

This is a Thaumatrope I made. A Thaumatrope is a disc with two different pictures on each side and when the disc is rapidly rotated the two pictures will merge together to create one image. In this case I drew a man getting kicked by a spartan which was inspired by the movie 300. I could have improved this by lining up the two images on each side more accurately as the Spartans leg is overlapping with the image on the other side when the Thaumatrope is spinning rapidly.

Live Action SMA

For the Live Action Animation we were given a brief to create an animation which had a race in it. The animation could be any genre and contain whatever we want as long as it's Live Action and contains a race. We decided to show off live action animation by doing impossible activities that can't be done unless it's an animation. To show this off we had one of the actors ride on a wet floor sign like a skateboard which is impossible to do in reality while getting chased by the antagonist with a clown mask and a bat. 

History of Animation

The Techniques and Development of Stop Motion Animation

Pioneers

Joseph Plateau - The Phenakistoscope

Joseph Plateau was a Belgian physicist and was the first person to demonstrate the illusion of a moving image by inventing the Phenakistoscope. In 1829 Joseph submitted his research which contained results into the effect of colours of the retina, intersections of revolving curves and his research towards the invention of the Phenakistoscope by looking into the reconsecration of distorted images through counter revolving discs. 

The Phenakistoscope was invented in 1832 which was the first device to give the illusion of a moving image. The Phenakistoscope used two spinning disks which were attached vertically to a handle. One disk had small equally spaced slits for the viewer to look through and the other had a sequence of pictures of image around the center. When you look through the small slits when the two disks are spinning the images will create an animated effect. This phenaskistoscope creating the illusion of motion later led to the development of cinema. 

William George Horner - The Zoetrope

William George Horner was a British mathematician, schoolmaster, headmaster school keeper. He also invented the Zoetrope in 1834 which closely related to the Phenakistoscope. The Zoetrope is a pre- cinema animation device that produce the illusion of motion by showing a sequence of images showing progressive phases of that motion.




The Zoetrope was a revolving cylinder with vertical slits all the around to look through. Inside the cylinder is a long strip of a sequence of images and much like the Phenakistoscope when the cylinder is spinning the viewer looks through the slits which stop the images from blurring and the sequence of images will move rapidly, creating the illusion of motion.

The Praxinoscope

The Praxinoscope was invented in 1877 by Charles-Emile Reynaud who was a french inventor. He was the first person to project animated cartoons and in December 1888 he projected the first animate film in public, "Pauvre Pierrot."

The Praxinoscope was the successor to the Zoetrope. It was similar to the Zoetrope because it used strips of images which were placed inside the spinning cylinder, however it was improve by replacing the vertical viewing slits with mirrors inside the cylinder. When someone looks at the reflection of the pictures while the wheel is spinning you would see a rapid succession of images.

The Lumiere Brothers

The brothers were credited to be the first filmmakers in history. They panted the Cinematograph to create a motion picture camera superior to Thomas Edison's Kineograph. The Lumiere Brothers are Auguste and Louis Lumiere who are the sons of well known Lysons based portrait painter Antoine Lumiere. Antoine abandoned his art and started a business manufacturing and supplying photographic equipment, while Louis was experimenting with the equipment his father was manufacturing.

Lumiere Brothers were excited by the Kineograph and wanted to create something better so they corrected the flaws to develop a machine with both sharper images and illumination. Two main flaws the brothers identified with the Kineograph was that it was too bulky and heavy and only one person could watch the film at a time. The Cinematograph is a motion picture film camera which also projected film as well as a printer which Thomas Edison's Kineograph could not do. The brothers most important decision the brothers made was to add intermittent movement which was something Edison rejected as he struggled to project perfection using continues movement. They kept the Cinematograph a secret by organizing private screenings.


The Stop-Trick

The Stop-Trick was accidentally developed by George Melies in 1896. George Melies was born in Paris 1861 and was a French illusionist and filmmaker. He was famous for leading many techniques and narrative developments in the earliest days of cinema and is sometimes referred to as the first "Cinemagician" because of his ability to manipulate and transform reality through cinematography. He created films using this special effect which includes A Trip to the Moon (1902) and The Impossible Voyage (1904).

The Stop-Trick is a special effect technique which is when an object or person is filmed then the camera is turned off and the object is moved off camera, then the camera is turned back on and when put together and watched it looks like the object has disappeared. 

The Zoopraxiscope

The Zoopraxiscope was invented by Eadweard Muybridge in 1876 which may be considered the first movie projector. Eadweard Muybridge was an English photographer important for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion and early work in motion-picture projection.

Muybridge is known for his pioneering work on animal locomotion in 1877 and 1878, which used multiple cameras to capture motion in stop-motion photographs, and his zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting motion pictures.

Thaumatrope

The Thaumatrope is a disc with a picture of each side of the disc with two pieces of string attached. When the strings are spinned quickly the disc will also rotate quickly causing the two pictures to merge together into one. This invention is credited to either John Ayrton Paris or Peter Mark Roget.

            

Sources:
www.youtube.com
en.wikipedia.org
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/zoetrope
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_trick
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/zoopraxiscope
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thaumatrope

Developers

Willis O'Brein

Willis O'Brein was a motion picture special effects and stop motion animation pioneer. O'Brein is most famous for his work in stop motion using the material clay mainly involving dinosaurs as he grew an interest in dinosaurs while working as a guide to paleontologist for example "The Dinosaur and the Missing Link". In his spare time he would take part in sculpting and illustrating which lead him to become a sports cartoonist for Francisco Daily News. The first film he created caught the attention of Thomas Edison who created the Kinetoscope. Thomas Edison employed Willis to animate other films e.g. R.F.D 10,000 B.C. O'Brein was responsible for some of the best images in cinema history and best remembered for his work on The Lost World (1925), King Kong (1933) and animated a brief scene in It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963).

Here is an example of Willis O'Brein's first film:

Otmar Gutmann

Otmar Gutmann (1937 - 1993) a German television producer, animator, and director. He is most memorable for creating stop motion animations using clay. His most famous and successful claymation is Pingu. Pingu is a British-swiss stop-motion claymation childrens show produced by The Pygos which first began in 1986. However after Otmar Gutmann passed away in 1993. However in 2001, HiT Entertainment bought the rights to the series, including the 105 episodes, for £15.9 million and later decided to being back the show and produced a further 52 episodes.

Nick Park

"We can do things that we never could before. Stop-motion lets you build tiny little worlds, and computers make that world even more believable"

Nick Park was born in 1958 and is an English director, writer and stop motion artist. Nick grew up with a keen interest in drawing cartoons and made his own film at the age of 13. He he went to National Film and Television School where he started creating his first Wallace and Gromit film, "A Grand day out". Nick Park specialised a most famous for his use in clay and plasticine clay which he used in all of his films. In a quote I found Nick Park said "plasticine was available to me when I was a teenager and you can make whatever you like come out of a blob of platicine" . He wanted to be like Disney and film with plastic cells but it was too expensive. Because of the success of his Wallace and Gromit shorts, Nick earn't the respect to make feature films and began work on claymation action/adventure film Chicken Run making his first big screen debut. Some successful films Nick created include Wallace of Gromit, Shaun the sheep (2007-2010), Chicken Run (2000) and Creature Comfort (2003-2006).

George Pal

Oddly enough, George Pal always began and ended something with the bible. All his pictures had a religious undertone. God was always there, protecting us.

George Pal (1908 - 1980) was a animator and film producer who is most famous for creating animations using puppets also known as puppetoons. George studied at Budapest Academy of Arts where he acquired a degree in Architecture and Advanced drawing skills. George was raised in an artistic background as both his parents were stage entertainers. From 1928 to 1931 he was employed and made films for Hunnia Films and later decided to take his work to his very own studio, Trickfilm-Studio where he patented puppetoons. George had wooden puppets which he gave names and created dozens of puppetoon films for Paramount Pictures. Examples of some puppetoon films George is famous for are "Tulips shall Grow" (1942), "Rhythm in the Ranks (1941)", "Jasper and the Beanstalk" (1945).

Walt Disney

"Whatever you do, do it well. Do it so well that when people see you do it they will want to come back and see you do it again and they will want to bring others and show them how well you do what you do"

Walt Disney (1901 - 1966) was an American business magnate, cartoonist, filmmaker, philanthropist ("Love of Humanity") and voice actor. Walter Elias "Walt" Disney and his brother Roy O. Disney co founded The Walt Disney Company. During Walt Disney's childhood he developed the love for drawing cartoons. Walt Disney took night courses at Chicago Academy of Fine arts after he finished his day at high school and became the cartoonist for his school newspaper. After having trouble getting hired as an artist and his and Ubbe-Iwerks commercial company failed, Walt decided to work at Kansas City Film Ad Company where he found his love for animation and decided to become an animator. 

Now a days we know Disney for their spectacular computer animated films, for example Frozen, Big hero 6, Tangled, etc. However Disney began and got famous for their drawn animations as Walt Disney was very talented and loved drawing. Famous drawn animated films Walt Disney created was The Lion King which is the highest grossing hand drawn animation in history. Also, Bambi (1942) and Pinocchio (1940) are successful hand drawn animations by Disney.

The Walt Disney Company was founded on October, 16, 1923 and established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before doing live action film productions, television and theme parks. Mickey a well known cartoon character is a primary symbol of the Walt Disney company. Walt Disney's first creation was a short film called Alice's Wonderland which consisted of live action and animation as it featured a child actress interacting with animated characters. In 1934 Disney decided to push the boundaries even further and started production of it's first feature length animated film, Snow White and the Seven dwarfs. Today Walt Disney Company is one of the largest and best known studios in American cinema. 

Hayao Miyazaki

"We live in an age when it is cheaper to buy the rights to a movies than to make them"

-Hayao Miyazaki 

Hayao is a Japanese film director, animator, manga artist, illustrator, producer and screenwriter and one of Japan's greatest animation directors. Miyazaki is most famous as a manga artist and manga films which are hand drawn.  Hayao aspired to be a Manga author from a very young age. He would read the illustrated stories in magazines and acknowledge the influences of creative artists in magazines. Osamu Tezuka heavily influenced Hayao's work that he would destroy much of his early work as he believed it was "bad form" to copy Tezuka's style because it was hindering his own development as an artist. The film "The Tale of the White Serpant" was the film which sparked his interest in animation.  He began his animation career in 1963, when he joined Toei Animation and worked as an in-between artist for Gulliver's Travels Beyond the Moon. Hayao didn't find the ending of this film satisfying so he pitched his own ending for the film which became the ending used in the film, gaining him recognition and respect.


Hayao directed his first feature film called Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro (1979) after the success of his second film Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984), Hayao co-founded Studio Ghibli where he produced many feature films. One of his most famous films include Spirited Away (2001) which topped Titanic (1997) at the Japanese Box Office, won Picture of the Year at the Japanese Academy Awards and was the first anime film to win an American Academy Award.

Tim Burton

"Drawing is exercise for the restless imagination"
- Tim Burton

Tim Burton is an American film director, producer, artist, writer and animator. Tim is well known and most famous for his dark, gothic, quirky horror and fantasy, stop motion animations using clay. At a young age Burton would make short films in his backyard using stop motion animation techniques. One of the films he created at the age of 13 was called The Island of Doctor Agor (1971). This was his first animate film and adapted by Burton from the H.G. Wells story The Island of Doctor Moreau. At school Burton wasn't a very good student and found pleasure in painting, drawing and watching film. Later he went on to attend California Institute of the Arts to study character animation.

Burton eventually went on to work for Walt Disney Productions Animation Department and worked as an animator, storyboard artist and concept artist on films such as The Fox and the Hound (1981) and Tron (1982). However Burton's personal style clashed with Disney's standards and longed to work on solo projects. This lead on to Burton's creation of the live action short Frankenweenie (1984). After the film was complete Disney fired Burton as they said he was "Spending the company's resources on doing a film that would be too dark and scary for children to see." Tim Burton went on to direct and produce other films such as Pee-wee's Big Adventure, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Corpse Bride and Nightmare Before Christmas, etc.

Pixar

"If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they will screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a brilliant team, they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something better."
-Edwin Catmull

Pixar is an American computer animation film studio in California. Pixar is best known for it's CGI animated feature films. In 2006 the studio was bought by The Walt Disney Company for a value of $7.4 billion. The studio was founded by Edwin Catmull who is a computer scientist, at a young age Edwin found inspiration in Disney films such as Peter Pan and Pinocchio and wanted to become a feature film animator because of them. At University Edwin came across a computer drawing program called Sketchpad and the new field of computer graphics was the future of animation which combined Edwin's love for technology and animation and decided to be part of the revolution wanting to make his own animated film. Edwin's first contribution was an animated version of his hand which was put in the movie Futureworld (1976) the sequel to Westworld which was the first film to use 3D computer graphics. The sequence Edwin created with known as "A Computer Animated Hand" and was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in December 2011.


Edwin contributed to many 2D and 3D animations in film and eventually got recognised by George Lucus and LucusFilm and Francis Ford Coppola and in 1979 became the Vice President at the Computer Graphics Division at LucusFilm. In 1986 Steve Jobs bought LucusFilm's Digital Division and founded Pixar. Then in 2006 Disney bought Pixar and Edwin and John Lasseter were put in charge in giving energy to the Disney animated studios. They both later were given control to DisneyToon Studios and supervised three studios for Disney: Pixar, DisneyToon and Disney Animation and Catmull gained the title of Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios.

Here are a few examples of films worked on by Pixar. They produced it's first feature long film Toy Story (1995) which followed more CGI productions by Pixar like A Bug's Life, Monster's Inc, Cars, WALL-E, Ratatouille and The Incredible's.

Dreamworks

"You Shouldn't Dream your film, you should make it!"
-Steven Spielberg

"What I love most about animation is, it's a team sport, and everything we do is about pure imagination.
- Jeffery Katzenberg

"When we first started DreamWorks, I said to Jeffery, 'We ought to call this new company the SpielBerg Brothers. Anything Steven thinks is important, we want to invest in."
- David Geffen

DreamWorks is an American film production company which produces and develops films, video games and TV programmes. DreamWorks began in 1994 and founded by Steven Spielberg, Jeffery Katzenbery and David Geffen (SKG). In December 2005 Steven, Jeffery and David sold the company to Viacom who is the parent of Paramount Pictures. They later ended this partnership and DreamWorks signed a $1.5 billion deal to produce films with India's Reliance ADA Group and Reliance funded into recreating DreamWorks SKG into DreamWorks Studio an independent entity.

In 2004 DreamWorks Animation SKG was created which is an American animation studio that creates animated films, TV programmes and online virtual worlds. The studio has released a total of 30 feature films some of these films include Madagascar, the Shrek franchise, How to Train your Dragon, Antz and The Prince of Egypt.

The Quay Brothers


"What happens in the shadow, in the grey regions, also interest us - all that is elusive and fugitive, all that can be said in those beautiful half tones, or in whispers, in deep shade."
- The Quay Brothers

The Quay Brothers are American identical twins called Stephen and Timothy Quay. They are both stop motion animators and Directors. They're famous for their stop motion work and creepy style in their films as they animate strange dolls, objects and create and animate their own characters out of lots of different items such as light bulbs, screws and other work tools. Most of The Quay's work often have esoteric influences and most of the animations featuring puppets made of doll parts and other organic materials. There films also have a dark, moody atmosphere to them and very little of their work contain dialogue, if any at all.

Their best known work is Street of Crocodiles based on the novel by Polish Author Bruno Schulz which is about a puppet that comes to life and explores the darkened room around him as the camera shows how unfulfilling the surroundings actually are. Other Animations they created include In Absentia and The Piano Turner of EarthQuakes. They also created Music Videos for His Name is Alive, Micheal Penn and 16 Horsepower.

The Street of Crocodiles (1986):

Animated Music Video 

This music video uses stop motion animation. I think this music video is aimed at adults more than children as the colours are dull and not very appealing to children to look it causing them to lose interest. The song is also quite slow and boring about how people live their lives as "sleepers" not really grabbing the attention of Children. The stop motion itself uses clothes and the bed which aren't very interesting to children. If it used toys or puppets in the animation which children are actually interested in, it would appeal more to them than adults.

Animated TV Advert



The animation used in this Snickers advert is computer animation. I think this advert is aimed at young to middle aged males as advert has giant animated monsters/robots playing rugby which is a manly sport in a deserted airbase which is action packed. It could appeal to young males as when the protagonist eats the snickers he turns into a robot transformer making the younger audience want to get the product because they want to be a hero like that.



Film




The film Tangled is computer animated. I think this film is aimed at children both males, females and families as it's a fairy tale film with a princess who is shown as a strong female character in the trailer. Young females will look up to this character as she is a princess which is every girls dream as a child who is strong and beautiful. The film also contains action and the male protagonist will appeal to males, and the silly comedy with a typical fairy tail ending makes it a great, fun film for families to watch.

TV Show

  

Beavis and Butthead is a drawn animation aimed at males teenagers and adults from 16 to 35 as it's contains rude and crude adult humor. I think it's more appealing to teenage males as the two protagonist are teenagers boys who are reckless, causing trouble and doing what they want and show females as sex symbols in the animation.

Who is stop motion animation made for?

I believe stop motion animation is aimed at anyone and everyone, it just depends on what attracts someone to see a stop motion such as the genre, story or characters etc, just like any ordinary film out there would. However I feel the majority of stop motion films appeal to and are made for a younger audience and families such as films like Nightmare before Christmas, Wallace and Gromit, Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer and James and the Giant Peach. 

What does the future hold for stop motion animation?

I feel like stop motion is becoming less and less popular as the years go than when it was in the past as technology improves. You don't see as many films making stop motion animation as we have computerized animation or CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) now which has cast a huge shadow over stop motion animation and put it in the background. Computer animation looks better as its 3D and can do/create much more than stop motion. However Stop motion animation isn't dead and I don't think it will ever be, I believe there will always be a place for stop motion as it was the beginning of film and for that it will always be respected in the film industry. Directors still make stop motion animation today for example we've recently had The Boxtrolls, and upcoming stop motion films such as Shaun the Sheep, Grass Roots and Pinnocchio.

Sources: 
www.youtube.com
en.wikipedia.org
www.imdb.com
http://biography.yourdictionary.com/willis-o-brien
http://pingu.wikia.com/wiki/Otmar_Gutmann
http://www.egs.edu/faculty/stephen-timothy-quay/biography/
http://www.biography.com/people/walt-disney-9275533