3D printing

A way that 3D computer animation has had a big influence on other forms of animation is by creating models for printing. Whereas in earlier times, when creating replacements for stop motion puppet animation, replacements were always handmade. Because they were handmade, the variation of expressions of each type of face, synchronised mouth shapes and other various poses were quite limited and took a long time to create. Even though there were still a lot of heads created for the main characters Jack and Sally, the other characters were a bit more limited.

With 3D animation programs things get a real lot easier. For a lot of the characters they create the puppet by hand first. A way to get the puppet digital is by creating the model through polygons or digital sculpting by hand, or by scanning the puppet with a 3D scanner and then importing it into another program. When you have the puppet digitally imported into the program, it's easier to tweak the model and create loads of different faces for replacements. As whereas before a lot of the (already) 3D generated replacement faces were printed with a black and white printer, they had to be coloured and painted by hand (Coraline). Nowadays with the progression of both the creating of the model and the printing of 3D products, models are painted digitally and printed with a 3D colour printer. These new things in the technology of creating 3D products makes it easier to create more of the same while it takes less time to do so.

The photos above show the difference in Coraline (2009) and Paranorman (2012) and the Boxtrolls (2014) below. This is the prime example of hand painting the printed faces and the colour printed versions. With all the possibilities of painting digitally, you are able to make it look manually nowadays, making it look hand painted while it's cleverly not the case.

I'd say that the progressions of 3D technology is helping a hand with the production of stop motion films. While most of the props and characters are still handcrafted, it might feel a bit like cheating to create such an important part of the character through the computer. I beg to disagree for it's all connected to the original concept and designs. To me it only shows more dedication to the old crafts to make the final product look even more stunning and bring it more to life.