Module 8: Stop Motion Animation

All of the other previous modules focused on drawn animation, but animation is defined as the creation of the illusion of movement, and that includes another major form of animation: stop motion animation. This is a massive field that includes puppet animation or animation with different media like clay or sand. In fact some of the earliest animated films were done with stop motion animation. This style only became more prolific with improving technology as it is still a viable form of animation with many users.

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Best Animated Short - 1990

This going backwards thing certainly makes for some interesting dynamics. We're now at the first year of the 1990s, which happens to be our last year in this decade. After that we'll be going into the 1980s and 1970s and so on. The 1990s were certainly a meaningful decade for me. It was the decade where I spent most of my formative years, since I was going on five when the decade started and going on 15 when it ended. I've thought about doing some sort of a retrospective write-up of the 1990s where I'd rank each year by how good it was, along with some special memories. But I've been too lazy to get it started, and I'm sure nobody would want to read it. So I'll just be reviewing the Oscar nominated animated shorts instead.

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Best Animated Short - 1993

Our journey in reviewing the Oscar nominated animated shorts has taken me to 1993 Oscars. This was the first time I remember watching any parts of the Oscar ceremony. Before I get into that story, let me first clarify something. The Oscars are an annual thing, so there will have to be a way to designate which ceremony you are talking about. There are generally three ways to do so. The first way is to do the official title, which counts the ceremonies using the 1927-28 one as the first one. So for example one we are reviewing is the 66th annual Academy Awards while the one that just passed is the 85th annual Academy Awards. I don't like this method because it is annoying and requires a lot of math. An alternative method is to do it by year, but even then there are two ways to do so. One is to do it by the year of the ceremony, so in this case would be the ceremony from 1994. The other is to do it by the year the movies they were celebrating came out. So this would be the 1993 Oscars, since the films that were nominated had their release in 1993. This is the way I do it.

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Best Animated Short - 1995

1995 was a milestone year of sorts in my Oscar history. It was the year that I first became aware of the Oscars. Oh, before then I knew there was an award show that celebrated the movies, but I didn't know what films won or were nominated until well after the fact. 1995 was the year when I first learned the nominees (at least some of them) BEFORE the ceremony. Okay, it was only one film, which was Apollo 13, which I saw in theaters the year before, but still I cared enough about its Best Picture chances that I wanted to watch the show. I ended up watching just enough to see Apollo 13 lose Best Visual Effects to Babe, and Hank Aaron: Chasing the Dream lose Best Documentary Feature to Anne Frank Remembered. I can't remember why I stopped watching, but it wasn't until the next day that I found out Apollo 13 lost to Braveheart.

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Best Animated Short - 2009

 This was originally written in March 1, 2010, over a month since the Academy Award nominees were announced, and over a month since I saw all of the nominees. This year set a personal record for earliest time to watch all of the nominees in a category. I had seen all of them by the day the nominees were announced. How is that possible? Well that year, the Academy announced the shortlist back in November, so I had an early start in trying to catch the nominees. I finally saw the last nominee the night of the announcement. And then I waited a whole month to write this review. Why? Mainly because the category just isn't too exciting this year.

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