Film reviews and a Timeline

We were shown a variety of animators on this project, from the well known to the not so well known.

The Brothers Quay produced some really surreal animations using stop motion animation. We were shown The Street of Crocodiles. It was dark grimy and nightmarish. Jiri Barta also used stop motion. We were shown the Club of the Abandoned. This showed theres abandoned maniquins living in this dark run down building. The repetitiveness enhanced this again nightmarish quality. I didn't particularly like either of these animations, but I suppose its usefully to see a wide variety of styles.

Rene Laloux is a 2D animator. We were shown the Fantastic Planet. I much preferred these animations. I felt like I had gotten sucked into this world that was created in this film. Although it did begin to drag towards the end.

The Tune by Bill Plympton was my favorite. A colourfull 2D animation; A bit Alice in Wonderland; about this guy who can't write the number one tune. he is taken on a dream like journey, meeting people and eventually coming up with the tune. It contained a lot of music sequences. This deep thinking character goes through this morphing phase, personifying his seemingly random thoughts.




Muybridge to Avatar Timeline


Muybridge 1830 - 1904

Most famous for photographing a galloping horse and proving that there is a point where all hooves are off

the ground. He continued using this photographic technique on other animals. He developed the machine

called the zoopraxiscope, which provided means of viewing a sequence of images to create motion.


J. Stuart Blackton 1875 - 1941


The first Stop Motion Animation. The Humpty Dumpty Circus in 1898.

He created the first cartoon animation "Humorous Phases of Funny Faces" in 1906


Winsor McCay 1871 - 1934

Created the animation "Gertie the Dinosaur" in 1914. The difference with this is that it has narrative.


Walt Disney 1901 - 1966

The first full feature length animation; "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" was made in 1937.



Nick Park 1958 -

Created the characters Wallace and Gromit in the first in a series of films A Grand Day Out in 1989. He

used the technique of stop motion to bring these clay models to life.


John Lasseter 1957 -

Toy Story was the first full length CG animation film created in 1995.



Avatar 2009

Not the first film to use motion capture techniques to animate the CG characters, but is extensively to perfection, translating the actors emotions through to the CG equivalents.