HUNDRED * YEARS HURRICANE : MASTER GLOBAL ESSAY

WELL OVER a decade ago -Yes, that's right ! I kept pressing, maniac like, both Rabo and Dee to get into '' motion on animation films.'' Both esteemed founders of !WOW!, both very dreamy, both geniuses in the top tier.

Come, today. They would have been multi-billionaires for themselves and The World Students Society. Sadly, for me in particular, they were game afoot on '' Memoirs of Meteors.'' 

The 2025 Academy Awards shaped up to be a big one for stop-motion animation. Australian director Adam Elliott's Memoir of a Snail [ 2024 ] raked in a nomination for Best Animated Feature Film, alongside Wallace & Gromit :

Vengeance Most Fowl [ 2024 ].

Coincidentally, this recognition comes in what is already a historic year for stop-motion.

A century ago, on February 8, 1925, The Lost World hit cinemas. The film is widely considered the feature-length stop-motion production, as well as the first ''creature feature.''

Audiences were captivated as they watched animated dinosaurs share the screen with live actors.

The animators positioned and photographed miniature dinosaurs made of rubber, one frame at a time, to create moving sequences that accompanied full scale shots with human actors.

This method drew from earlier works such as  George Melies 1902 short film A Trip to the Moon [ Le Voyage dans la Lune ].

'' Dynamation : The Beginnings '' : After animating on The Lost World, stop-motion pioneer Willis O'Brien went on to animate King Kong [ 1933 ] and the lesser-known Mighty Joe Young [ 1949 ], where he mentored Ray Harryhausen.

Harryhausen himself would later design and animate some of the most celebrated stop-motion sequences off all time, including the famous skeleton fight in Jason and the Argonauts [ 1963 ] and the fictional Rhedosaurus from The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms [ 1953 ].

The blend of animated miniatures and live actors became known as Dynamation, as  Harryhausen pushed to create ever-more integrated and dynamic sequences in which animated puppets '' interacted '' with real actors.

Back then, it wasn't possible to review animation as it was being shot : you could only see the puppet as it was being shot ; you could only see the puppet as it was in the moment.

Sequences were shot on celluloid film, and animators had to wait for the film to develop before they could see the results.

The famous skeleton fight in Jason and the Argonauts required Harryhausen to remember the movements of seven skeletons and line up a fight sequence with two pre-recorded actors, one frame at a time. He would often work for months before being able to review his work.

In Eastern Europe, filmmakers such as Karel Zeman were also combining live action with miniature special effects and stop motion -extending a long history of Eastern European puppet theatre into cinema.

In 1958, Zeman brought Jules Verne's whimsical vehicles and underwater worlds to the screen in his feature film Invention for Destruction [ Vynalez zkazy ].

Zeman's work went on to influence famous animators such as Jan Svankmajer and Terry Gilliam.

This Master Essay Publishing continues. The World Students Society thanks Jack McGrath, a Lecturer in Animation at the University of  Newcastle in the UK.