Tim Burton Stop Motion.

Tim Burton is one of the many people who's animation has shaped the very aspect of motion design. His stop motion puppeteering produced some beautiful and quite dark movements, and how it's made videos like this show the intricate details that are considerate for the production overall. It's interesting when you look into Burton's original drawings and sketches and see how ideas are catalogued and changed from the original ideas to conceptual animations.
Looking back at some of his storyboards also develops the fact that Burton starts with a simple idea and further adapts these drawings into new storyboards. From this sort of research I've decided to begin my own sketchbook involving sketches and drawings separate to my other sketchbook, as this sketchbook will hopefully help to develop inspiration and ideas that could lead to storyboards and future animations.

Even some of the pencil sketches here are beautifully placed together to show his original idea development, starting with sketches and building up to more intricate plans. For each of his beautiful stop motion feature films there are many sketches and drawings leading up to it first. Such films as his recent film 'Frankenweenie' has the sketches that were originally constructed 20 years before the film was produced. It goes to show that simply sketching characters and drawings could develop into future work, even if it is many years afterwards Tim Burton catalogues and collects his drawings together.
 To ensure that the whole team of animators knows what the story entails and the overall aspects of the characters themselves, it's clear that Tim Burton would have to first off ensure that they knew what was involved via diagrams and storyboards, probably presented to the team individually dependant on their roles in the production. The quite sinister qualities of his illustrations can be captured in stop motion animation in a way that couldn't be captured in a live shot ideally with the allowance of being viewed by young audiences due to the dark nature that most of his animations include. (Such as Frankenweenie, Corpse Bride etc.) Development of the ideas could range in media that then produces prototypes for the animation, with sculptured models etc.
 Pencil sketches to start with are a primary element to include and then they'll be beautifully developed into more elaborate animations.
Burton was recently asked to produce a short trailer to advertise the MoMa exhibition. So here's a look into the making of the trailer, he brought in his co-workers from the 2005 film 'Corpse Bride' to help out. The storyboard and overall sketches included on the site are also rather amazing to see the development that actually took place.
 Reading through the article on the 'How it's Made' section of Tim Burton's MoMa trailer, I found it interesting of how certain points were explored and why and how. (Information found on http://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2009/11/13/the-making-of-tim-burton-s-moma-animation/)
“Typically a puppet character can take anywhere between twelve to eighteen weeks to produce,” says Pickersgill, “But Tim’s design lent itself to a very economical build and we put the puppet together in just ten days, probably something of a record!”
 The sketches alike to those of 'Corpse Bride' etc. were extremely helpful to Burton and his team for a visual understanding of what needs to be produced and how. Sculptors needed to know how to produce the puppet and what it needed to involve etc. For example, you can see in the photographs included that the  sculptors based their designs on Burton's sketches, showing that visually they relied on the sketches to give them the information and data that they needed to produce the correct idea and bring the inspiration of the idea to life.

The detail of the character and what it involved would have to be carefully considered to ensure that they had the right time and budget to produce the short stop motion animation. The overall trailer took a total of 3 days, but with a simple background setting didn't require the production of intricate sets etc.


"Tim wanted the robot and the balloon against a flat grey background. It was great because it further emulated the look of his original pen-and-ink drawings on a plain sheet of paper. We had three days to shoot the whole piece and my first take had to be right. I’d spent a day the previous week videoing myself performing the robot part. You feel a bit silly but Neil Sutcliffe, who edited the footage into his animatic, was very kind. He didn’t laugh too much!”" - Martin Kelly: Animator.

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