Favourite Stop motion animation moment or film

[HardyGirl]

Rankin Bass specials
Davey & Goliath
Gumby
Califormia Raisins

[MegoGeekJr]

At the end fo Evil Dead.
All of that gore and stuff was awesome!!

[EllaJames]

The Mr. Bill shorts from SNL are my favourites. I have them all on VHS and just found out they've actually been released on DVD, yay!

[Bo8a_Fett]

Have you seen the "Clash" statues from gentle giant...they're awesome.

[Vortigern99]

I'm going to list what I believe to be the two paramounts of achievement for stop-motion animation in their respective eras:

KING KONG (1933) - If Pete Jackson's sugary, bloated romance didn't have you rushing home to watch the captivating original 2 years ago, I highly recommend you do so now! My favorite scene has got to be the Stegosaurus, which charges at Denham & co. full tilt, on-screen in a very convincing use of rear projection; even after being shot several times the thing still thrashes about, the camera following every twitch, every shake of its spiked tail as the party trudges past the gi-normous behemoth. Willis O'Brien was a visionary genius!

CLASH OF THE TITANS (1981) - I'm as big a fan of JASON and the SINBAD movies as the next guy, but CLASH is Harryhausen's swan song. Not only is it a really good adventure movie in and of itself, with scenes of /actual human emotion/ and cinematic flourishes that are not seen in any of the older Shneer/Cross/Harryhausen films, but the monsters are all absolutely kickass and dynamic and highly memorable. My favorite scene (after the Medusa stalk, of course, which someone else already covered) is the one that follows, in which giant scorpions grow out of Medusa's blood, Callibos kills Thallo, and Perseus at last slays the evil Callibos. The compositing of live actors and animated models is a bit off in this scene, but it's shot with very little light, and must have been technically quite challenging. I love the weird clacking sounds of the creatures, and the brooding darkness of the scene (Thallo's death always disturbed me as a kid), while Perseus' triumphant toss of his sword into the man-monster's gut is a moment of pure cinematic awesomeness. May Callibos' tail whip in his death throes, T-Rex-style, for all eternity.

[Brue]

All my favorites have been mentioned - I just want to add that CGI was a really bad replacement for stop motion starting with the gawdawful Jabba the Hut in the rerelease of Star Wars up until the mostly had the kinks worled out with Golem (who I think should have won an academy award as best supporting actor in LotR)

[apes3978]

My vote for favorite stop motion film is the 1933 King Kong, though there are other cool stop-motion films...

[Bo8a_Fett]

Love the brain/spine creatures in "Fiend without a Face" also...didn't one cameo in "looney Toons back in action"?

[ctc]

>The studios love CGI cause it's as cheap as hell to produce.

Actually, I've been told by a friend of mine that it's more expensive than any standard form of animation; but all the execs push it 'cos they're dreaming of a day when you don't need actors and can make a LITERAL pushbutton film. "Characters 1,2, and 6... plot 5.... plot twists A, B, CC and X.... setting G, voiola!"

You can already see it with the reused vectors everyone uses in their films. (The little sniglets I've seen of the mutants from "Last Man on Earth" has them moving a LOT like the robots from "I Robot." Which moved a lot like the Morlocks from the new version of "The Time Machine"....)

>They still can't get the proper FLOW OF MOVEMENT correct.

Well.... for inanimates it works pretty good. I've seen a few shows that use CGI for vehicles and standard animation for characters and it usually works decently. Part of the PROBLEM I have with CGI animation isn't inherent to CGI; but that STUPID bobblehead thing they ALWAYS have the characters do! Nobody sits still. There's always these weird little twitches and recoils that vereyone does. I'm thinking it's the old buildup/resolution/recoil trick from the ol' days of animation; gone horribly, horribly wrong...

Don C.

[Bo8a_Fett]

Wise words there...did you know they actually approached Ray Harryhausen to do the ATATs in Empire...he turned them down.
CGI is only workable if they get Flow of movement (as type1kirk has mentioned), and the feeling of wieght ...otherwise it just looks wrong...the cheaper the budget , the cheaper the cgi looks.
In reverse something like "Caveman" can be a cheap looking film with some pretty damn good stop frame in it. Harryhausen always said the budget on most of his movies was very tight indeed...but look at the results. I suppose it was his love for doing it RIGHT rather than for the money.

[Mikey]

CGI sucks ......

Even the lastest stuff......

They still can't get the proper FLOW OF MOVEMENT correct.

It still looks like glorified video game animation--- not much better than Last Starfighter.

It's a shame everyone embraces it today -- mostly because they don't know any better.

The studios love CGI cause it's as cheap as hell to produce.

It costs the price of one computer nerd with a computer.

[jds1911a1]

CG has eliminated alot of the old Stop motion but I still love Davey and Goliath, gumby, and all the Rankin Bass Holiday specials. and for today robot chicen

as a purist who prefers the original versions of the Star wars trilogy all these have great stop motion moments

[kingdom warrior]

^^^Those damn Tim Allen Santa movies have ruined the ability of people to spell Claus correctly.

I do it on Purpose lol!

[Hector]

King Kong atop the Empire State Building.

[thunderbolt]

^^^Those damn Tim Allen Santa movies have ruined the ability of people to spell Claus correctly.