See how Stop Motion works

Released more than two decades ago, the film “Chicken Run” was released by studio Aardman in partnership with DreamWorks Animation in 2000, achieving enormous success by bringing a fun plot at the same time as bringing sequences full of tension and critical o capitalism while following Ginger, a chicken who lives with many others in a chicken coop on an English farm in the 1950s, where she dreams of freedom and creates a plan to escape the place by flying with her companions to make her wish come true.

With enormous acclaim, it is clear that the work asked for a sequel — this one arrived 23 years after the original story. Entitled “Chicken Run: The Nuggets Menace”, the story debuted directly in the catalog of Netflix on December 8, 2023, being a direct sequel to its predecessor as it follows Ginger joining the other chickens to save her family, and the entire hen house, from a new imminent danger.

But, did you know that both animations were not created using computer graphics? In fact, both productions use the principles of traditional animation, where there is a sequence of static images with small differences between them, which create the illusion of movement, but instead of a drawing in each frame, the technique of these feature films uses dolls!

We are talking about Stop Motiona cinematographic technique that dates back to the beginnings of cinema (yes, it has existed for over 100 years!) and can be used not only with dolls, but with clay figures, paper cutouts and also people, as these can be moved and photographed manually.

One of the oldest examples of this technique appears in the short film “Journey to the Moon”, released in 1902 by the French magician and illusionist George Melieswhich used Stop Motion to show the arrival of a rocket with a human crew on the Moon.

The process for creating films with this technique is very slow, as it is necessary to follow a clear order: create the recording set and characters, then capture the images frame by frame with small camera, light and character adjustments with each new one. photography, and finally editing and post-production. So much so that the second film in the “Chicken Run” franchise had its production announced in 2018, taking around 5 years of development to reach the screen.

MORE ABOUT THE PROCESS

Nothing is simple! The sets are generally built on small scales, like models, for example, so that the scale is proportional to the size of the characters, as happened with films like “Coraline and the Secret World” and “The Nightmare Before Christmas”.

Furthermore, it is common for characters to have articulated structures so there are different possibilities for moving these figures from frame to frame. It is also possible for the dolls to have several versions of body parts or facial expressions to better adapt to the needs of the script.

A practical example of this use can be seen in ‘A Concierge Pokémon’, an animation from Netflix, which presents the Pokémon universe included in a new story: after all, here the creatures spend their holidays at a resort designed so they can relax and have fun , where the main character, Haru, featured approximately 30 different pieces of facial expressions.

In the human characters, in addition to body movements, we wanted to show facial expressions, so we created several pieces for them”, highlights Shuhei Harada, responsible for moving the puppets during filming in the Making Of series available on YouTube.

Finally, after all the clicks are made, editing and post-production come into play! Here, there is the inclusion of sound effects and other effects, as well as the organization of frames in the correct order, and adjustments to the reproduction speed are made, after all there is every second of production duration, there must be at least 12 frames so that the illusion of movement is made!