Stop-motion imperfection: why animation needs the human touch

The one film I’ve watched more than any other is Experimental Animation 1933, also known as The Peanut Vendor. It’s a short in which a stop-motion monkey sings along to Red Nichols’ recording of ‘The Peanut Vendor’ and dances outside the window of a potential customer. Len Lye – an artist better known today for his sculpture and direct animation work – built the puppet and animated it himself. For some reason, I’ve watched this monkey sell peanuts 24 times. 

There’s a moment at the beginning of the film when the camera pans down to reveal the puppet. For a single frame, we see a paper guide in the background used to guide the palm tree’s sway frame by frame. This blink-and-you’ll-miss-it error isn’t what draws my attention, though. In fact, I didn’t notice it until my 17th watch. What I really find compelling is the way the monkey’s fur twitches around its face, the unpredictable movement of its ears, and how the fabric of its clothing seems to jump around – indications of Len Lye’s touch, the artifacts of the poking and prodding required to animate. 

It’s these moments, where an animator leaves behind evidence of themselves, that I love about stop-motion animation. In an age where the proliferation of AI image generation makes it harder to tell what is made by man or machine, these visible imperfections are all the more important. 

Stop-motion animation has come a long way since its inception. In 1912, Ladislas Starevich made puppets out of dried beetles and wire in The Cameraman’s Revenge. The result was an entertaining story of insect infidelity, but also an undeniably rough film, full of jerky movements. Nearly 20 years later, he would animate The Tale of the Fox, whose animal characters are covered in fur that moves unpredictably in each frame. In 1908, the trick film The Electric Hotel used stop-motion to make objects move on their own. As the hotel guests’ bags magically unpack themselves, a suitcase’s straps jump erratically – an unintentional consequence of the animator’s repeated interactions with the scene. And then there’s The Magic Portal, an impressive early brickfilm. The rigid plastic Lego bricks do a lot to keep things consistent, but the hand-drawn minifigure faces have the opposite effect. 

These films amazed audiences when they were made, even if they lack the high level of polish seen in contemporary works. But should ‘polish’ be the ultimate goal? Today, animators have a wealth of high-tech tools at their disposal, from 3D printing to digital VFX that streamline production and give their films a slick finish. During the production of Coraline (2009), LAIKA used 3D printing to create interchangeable faces, removing the need for animators to sculpt every expression individually. This resulted in visible seams, usually along the eyes and nose where the bottom and top halves of their faces met. These seams were covered up digitally during post-production, leaving no indication of them in the final film. 

With the growing capacity for realism in stop-motion, there are some filmmakers who’ve pushed against it, instead embracing the charm of visible human interference. Henry Selick was among them when he set out to direct his next feature after Coraline. Wendell & Wild’s characters have visible seams between the facial replacements. It’s not exactly calling attention to it – it’s easy to forget after a few minutes – but it’s not shying away either. This is heightened by Selick’s choice to shoot on twos (shooting two frames of film per movement) and even threes (three frames per movement) at times, deliberately lowering the frame-rate to avoid an overly smooth look. 

It’s possible to find a balance where rough edges are smoothed out slightly but not completely eliminated. In Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005), a special armature was built for its titular creature that used sturdy plastic reinforcement and handle controls to reduce any unwanted fur movement. What was minimised there was embraced in Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), where animators used tiny pins to carefully move the puppets’ eyes, but then blew on them between frames to intentionally create the look of rippling fur. Director Wes Anderson specifically named the twitchiness of Starevich’s The Tale of the Fox as an inspiration. In stop-motion filmmaking, individual shots or even entire scenes are handled by specific animators who often work alone. Anderson has compared these animators to actors, each with their own take on a character. 

Stop-motion is most powerful when you can see indications of the hands that crafted it. The Oscar win for Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022) feels poetic in this way, being a hand-animated story about a character who is literally carved by hand. Other animation forms have even inserted fake imperfections meant to replicate stop-motion; characters in The Lego Movie (2014) are covered in fingerprints, cracks and dents in their computer-animated plastic. The end credits of The Boxtrolls (2014) features a pair of characters wondering whether there are giants controlling them. A time lapse of their animator comes into view. This animator is none other than Travis Knight, CEO of LAIKA, who would make his directorial debut two years later with Kubo and the Two Strings (2016). He dutifully animates one of the characters’ elaborate dance moves, and as it cuts back to the credits sequence, the character’s voice continues to talk about the theoretical giants controlling them. “It’s too much,” he says, right as the names of all the animators begin to fill the screen. “They’ve got to have other jobs. It’s more like a hobby.” It’s a tongue-in-cheek way of celebrating the animators’ commitment to their craft. 

LAIKA’s end credits always include a celebration like this, often a time lapse or behind-the-scenes montage revealing wires, rigging and the animators themselves. The technological developments that allow for smoother, seamless stop-motion animation ought to be celebrated. With special armatures, rigging improvements, 3D printers and new material combinations, the possibilities available to animators grow each year. But among those possibilities is a world where stop-motion becomes indistinguishable from computer animation. In an era where new technologies like AI image generation seek to remove humans from the creative equation, stop-motion ‘mistakes’ like fingerprints, shifting clothing and twitching hairs remind us of the humans behind every frame.

Stop-Motion: Celebrating Handmade Animation on the Big Screen runs at BFI Southbank in August and September.