How stop motion animation began

An unusual insect story was the start of an animation revolution.

Almanac Hollywouldn't is our miniseries on big changes to movies that came from outside Hollywood. Watch all of the episodes right here on YouTube.

Correction: A previous version of this video labeled King Kong and The Mascot as having come out in 1958. Both dates are 1933.

In this episode of Vox Almanac, Vox’s Phil Edwards explores the delightfully strange beginning of stop motion animation. In a stop motion movie, an animator arranges an object, takes a picture, slightly adjusts the positioning, and then does it all over again. When the pictures are played in succession, it looks like motion. Though people have been experimenting with stop motion since the beginning of film, the new art really took off when an insect collector named Wladyslaw Starewicz (later Ladislas Starevich, among other spellings) wanted to see his beetles move.

His 1912 film, The Cameraman’s Revenge, was the most significant of those early experiments. By that time, he’d been discovered as a precocious museum director in a Lithuanian Natural History Museum, and that enabled him to make movies. The Cameraman’s Revenge was his boldest experiment yet, depicting a tryst between star-crossed (bug) lovers.

As the above video shows, he employed technical innovations to do so, including strings that controlled his unusual puppets. He also occasionally replaced legs and augmented their bodies with wheels to enhance his stop motion process. The results are strange, hilarious, and changed the medium.

Starewicz went on to animate many other classics in the genre, influencing filmmakers like Terry Gilliam and Wes Anderson. And that legacy all started with the improbable story of cheating bugs and the museum director who loved them.

Further reading:

For a good overview, check out Puppet Animation in the Cinema by L. Bruce Holman. It’s a great tool to delve into the long history of puppet animation.

American Cinematographer has a nice 1930 interview with Starewicz about his work.

The Magic Mirror by Denise Youngblood is a history of Soviet Film from 1908-1918 (including Starewicz and even some of the propaganda films most historians believe he was drafted into making).

[bcpjw]

It’s must’ve been a hard day’s night for the beetles

[almostnessie]

Mom: what are you doing
Me, in the process of recording insect adult films: nothing

[lawd-pb]

there's always this magic of stop motion on being able to give life into inanimate objects. probably the reason why it's my favorite medium in animation.

[sinoroman]

i swear, everything starts out as a kink

[NickMate]

I watched "The camera man's revenge" for the first time this month. Hella trippy. Had me engaged every second

[posaidon]

Nobody:

Man from Lithuania: I want to see dancing insects

[Sassmill]

When I was little I always watched the Wallace and Grommit shorts, and then I was gifted a behind the scenes book on the stop motion work done for Chicken Run and became really obsessed with Aardman and stop motion in general. I used to make my own figures out of clay and animate them on my dads old camcorder... wonder whatever happened to them...

[oldfilmsandstuff]

As someone with a real interest in early cinema, it's great to see well researched and put together videos on the subject

[somespecies]

Someone do this stop motion thing to my corpse

[jessetorres]

"A staggeringly weird tale, of insect infidelity." You mean there's a normal tale?

[AnnabelleLeeTx]

Mary and Max is one of my favorite stop motion films. Dark poignant and beautiful

[dkim]

beetles getting more action than me now

[ShannonMcDowell]

"The Sculptor's Nightmare (1908)" is still disturbing to this day! Is this an early use of "claymation?" Amazing work!

[aleksandrasrimdzius]

Polish also argues that Starewicz belongs to their cultural heritage. Sadly, most people at least in Lithuania are oblivious of his legacy. Thanks for bringing this up in such a high production value.

[Risulfur]

Stop motion movies makes me feel uneasy in general but since I'm from Lithuania, I press like

[matazyo]

I have been Living in Kaunas for 5 years now and I had no clue about this!

[mayanksaharan]

Jan Švankmajer, a great surrealist from the Czech republic!!! A lot of his films are on YouTube for free

[dylandreisbach]

"I revolutionized stop motion by wanting to make my dead bug collection dance!"


Weird flex but okay.

[sircourgette]

As someone who loves entomology and animation I am here for this

[DamienDrake]

RoboCop 2 is the greatest example of a live action film using stop motion for visual effects in my opinion. The animation is fantastic and blended as well with the live action environments as I've ever seen.