Evaluation of Claymation

Gumbasia is a 3 minute 10 second short film that was released September 1955, first clay produced by Art Clokey who by using the same technique went and created Gumby and Davey and Goliath. Gumbasia was created in a style Vorkapich taught called Kinesthetic Film Principles. Described as "massaging of the eye cells" this technique, based on camera movements and stop-motion editing, is responsible for much of the look and feel later seen in Gumby films. Whilst doing the Gumbasia animation it was fun and creative. It did get messy but not too messy to not handle. Aardman is a film and television animation company that produced Wallace and Gromit series. Unlike the claymation productions that the company are famous for, Aardman was cel-animated. The name comes from the Dutch word "aarde" meaning "earth". However, "aardman" is more commonly translated as "goblin". They've released films such as "Wallace and Gromit" "Chicken Run" "Arthur Christmas" "The Pirates! In an adventure with scientists" and "Flushed Away" with an upcoming film called "Shaun the sheep" 
Morph was produced for the BBC by Aardman Animations, it is an animated plasticine stop-motion character that appeared with the late Tony Hart which was an early success for Aardman beginning in 1977 on several of his UK TV programmes. Morph and the other plasticine characters could change their morphology. They would become spheres in order to move around, or extrude themselves into cylinders to pass all different levels. They could also mimic objects and change into different characters.
The term morph comes from MetaMORPHism.

The main shapes used in Gumbasia are :

• circles
• pyramids 
• cuboids.

The camera angles used in the animation were close ups, wide shots, P.OV shot, over the head shot, birds eye and vertical shots.

To construct this animation they got loads of clay and transformed them into different shapes and sizes whilst using StopMotion. A lot of hand rolling to perfect the shape would have happened. They had to step on the clay with their footwear to give it that finely shoe zig zag, cross design, pencils to give it straight stripes, stalig lights to make the cones vertical and they reversed footage, meaning they played it back to give it that illusion.

Advantages

The advantages with 3d, you can do the objects 360 degrees. unlike cut out which is just one angle.

The limitations of cut out animation are that the objects are very difficult to make it disappear but with claymation its easy to get turning that kind of depth in animation.

With claymation you can do it anywhere, with zoetrope you're restricted to just doing it in the small box sheet.

Disadvantages

• It's messy
• Things fall off
•  Not shaped nicely
• The clay gets warm and becomes floppy.