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This paper describes and analyses 'Sunny Side Up', a short stop motion animated film created by one of the authors of this paper during the social distancing and lockdowns of the COVID-19 pandemic. The film was inspired by an unparalleled era where the time to contemplate was abundant. It features the internal dialogue of the protagonist as he cooks in his kitchen. The investigation focuses on the 'monkey mind'--a metaphor for the unsettled mind used in Buddhist writings. The creator and the protagonist of the film both experience this state of mind at the time of the conception of the film. This takes the form of a phycological analysis of the restless mind, which clearly was the creator's and subsequently the film's protagonist state of mind at the time of the conception of the film. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our inspiration, theorizing, and living process of co-creating Nymphaea, a time-based, collaborative work created using stop-motion animation and live projection on the body is the focus of our inquiry presented in this essay. Our multimedia creation is inspired by Prudence Gibson and Monica Gagliano's 2017 essay, The Feminist Plant: Changing Relations with the Water Lily. We explore queer ecologies posited by Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands and Bruce Erickson (2010) with Donna Haraway's (2016) "tentacular thinking." Engaging with feminist/queer theory through embodied and experimental approaches to making, Nymphaea is our tentacular co-inquiry, a contemplation on water lilies as a queer companion species and as a more-than-human model of feminist collectivity, relationality, and care. Through Audre Lorde's (1978/2007) Uses of the Erotic, we reflect on the ways our processes of co-creating Nymphaea and our companionship as artistic collaborators, educators, and life partners, are entangled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theory of Mind (ToM)—a social cognitive ability commonly underdeveloped in individuals with autism—is necessary to attribute mental states to oneself and others. Research into robot-assisted interventions to improve ToM ability in children with autism has become increasingly popular. However, no appropriate task currently exists to measure the degree of efficacy of robot-assisted interventions targeting ToM ability. The authors demonstrate how animation techniques and principles can be leveraged to develop and produce videos of humanoid robots interacting, which could selectively measure ToM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the treatment of cinematic special effects or kinotriuki (film tricks) in Soviet cinema of the 1930s, focusing on the film The New Gulliver (1935), an adaptation of Gulliver's Travels by director Alexander Ptushko that used cutting-edge techniques to combine live action and stop-motion animation. It argues that film tricks in both fantastic and dramatic genres of Soviet cinema served to generate a form of wonder akin to that inspired by the religious miracle, but transferred to the miraculous feats of the party-state, with implications for the comparative study of special effects and cinematic experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of new media provides new tools for promoting critical thinking and creativity in an environment that encourages collaboration, co‐authoring and sharing ideas and artworks with audiences. Embedding new media in art lessons and integrating art with other disciplines not only promotes visual competence but also transversal competences necessary for the future lives of children. Despite the many benefits that this process entails, there is still no broad integration of new media in art lessons or art integration through technology in primary schools, as teachers are often oblivious of the new possibilities and means of engaging children. However, there is a need to embrace today's dominant culture of communication if we really want to prepare children for the future. This article is about art technology integration in the primary classroom. It discusses ways of studying important real‐life issues with children and of bridging the gap between school life and daily life. It reports on two case studies with sixth grade classes (11–12 years old) that engaged in a stop motion animation project to communicate messages that were important to the children. Children shared powerful stories, anchored in real‐life contexts and developed critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity skills. The findings contribute to the discussions about arts integration that are grounded in empirical qualitative data. The implications of the study move beyond the art subject itself and highlight how generalist teachers can embrace interdisciplinarity and art integration, and view art as transformative pedagogy in the curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will argue that 3D digital animation, unlike its 2D and stop-motion counterparts, currently lacks recognisable self-reflexive aesthetic devices through which the trace of animators’ labour can be made visible. It will open with a brief history of how animation has previously shown its workings; from the pencil-wielding hand of Émile Cohl to the opening seconds of South Park, plus the intentional and unintentional smears and multiples visible on animation cells. These devices will then be discussed in relation to Marx’s analysis of the commodity in Capital Vol. 1, and how the process of fetishisation is momentarily disrupted by imperfections in the object which have been caused by production errors. These faults reconnect the object to its producer through the trace of (imperfect) labour which remains visible on the surface. In animation, similar (albeit consciously made) ‘errors’ connect the perceptive viewer directly to the work of 2D or stop-motion animators. This paper will argue the need for an equivalent to emerge in 3D digital animation, as well as highlighting some contemporary animators testing and subverting the limits of 3D and sketching some possible ways these might encourage further formal innovations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary first language curricula such as the Australian Curriculum: English strongly advocates the teaching of multimodal digital literature in the form of film in which understanding how characterisation is developed is a key task in comprehending and composing literature. In printed literary work, characterisation relies on the only semiotic resource-language to directly or indirectly depict a character's personality. However, in digital multimodal literature such as film, language is only one among many resources including actions, body language, sound, cinematography, and lighting that all negotiate their shared roles to contribute to the characterisation process. This paper discusses the pivotal role of gesture in the characterisation of Coraline, the central character in a stop-motion animation adaptation of the novel with this name. The paper proposes a framework for examining attitudinal meanings in gesture from the perspective of systemic functional linguistics, which was applied to analyse the deployment of Coraline's gesture during points of tension in the movie. The analysis indicates that gesture and co-occuring speech by the character never realise the same kinds of attitudinal meanings. Even when the two semiotics converge, gesture always has more attitudinal meaning commitment (i.e., Graduation) than language. These findings call for a conceptual renovation in first language education curricula. The pivotal role of body language should be given the status it deserves if digital multimodal literature education is to be taken seriously as indicated in the curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: The main aims of the study were to examine whether human neonates’ responses to communication disturbance modelled by the still-face paradigm were stable and whether their responses were affected by their previous experience with the still-face paradigm. Methods: The still face procedure, as a laboratory model of interpersonal stress, was administered repeatedly, twice, to 84 neonates (0 to 4 day olds), with a delay of an average of 1.25 day. Results: Frame-by-frame analysis of the frequency and duration of gaze, distressed face, crying, sleeping and sucking behaviours showed that the procedure was stressful to them both times, that is, the still face effect was stable after repeated administration and newborns consistently responded to such nonverbal violation of communication. They averted their gaze, showed distress and cried more during the still-face phase in both the first and the second administration. They also showed a carry-over effect in that they continued to avert their gaze and displayed increased distress and crying in the first reunion period, but their gaze behaviour changed with experience, in the second administration. While in the first administration the babies continued averting their gaze even after the stressful still-face phase was over, this carry-over effect disappeared in the second administration, and the babies significantly increased their gaze following the still-face phase. Conclusion: After excluding explanations of fatigue, habituation and random effects, a self-other regulatory model is discussed as a possible explanation for this pattern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In augmented reality, people can feel the illusion of virtual humans (VHs) integrated into a real (physical) space. However, affordances of the real world and virtual contents might conflict, for example, when the VHs and real objects 'collide' by occupying the same space. This implausible conflict can cause a break in presence in real-virtual human interactions. In this paper, we address an effort to avoid this conflict by maintaining the VH's spatial and behavioral coherence with respect to the physical objects or events (e.g., natural occlusions and appropriate help-requesting behaviors to avoid implausible physical-virtual collisions). We present a human subject experiment examining the effects of the physical-virtual coherence on human perceptions, such as social/copresence and behaviors with the VH. The basic ideas, experimental design, and results supporting the benefit of the VH's spatial and behavioral coherence are presented and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Joint object tracking and pose estimation is an important issue in Augmented Reality (AR), interactive systems, and robotic systems. Many studies are based on object detection methods that only focus on the reliability of the features. Other methods combine object detection with frame-by-frame tracking using the temporal redundancy in the video. However, in some mixed methods, the interval between consecutive detection frames is usually too short to take the full advantage of the frame-by-frame tracking, or there is no appropriate switching mechanism between detection and tracking. In this paper, an iterative optimization tracking method is proposed to alleviate the deviations of the tracking points and prolong the interval, and thus speed up the pose estimation process. Moreover, an adaptive detection interval algorithm is developed, which can make the switch between detection and frame-by-frame tracking automatically according to the quality of frames so as to improve the accuracy in a tough tracking environment. Experimental results on the benchmark dataset manifest that the proposed algorithms, as an independent part, can be combined with some inter-frame tracking methods for optimization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Grand Bizarre (2018) USA Director Jodie Mack Runtime 61 minutes Hoarders Without Borders 1.0 (2018) USA Director Jodie Mack Runtime 4 minutes and 45 seconds [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the increase of pop-up programs related to STEAM program in the library. Topics discussed include increasing STEAM-related occupations of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, several pop-up programs such as stop-motion animation and board games or a video game console; and librarians talk about the library as a safe space for teens to experiment.

In early 2015 ESA and NASA invited participants of all ages to create an art piece that would celebrate Hubble's 25th anniversary in space. Contestants could use any form of art, with the final presentation being in video format. Throughout the competition animators, photographers, painters, songwriters, and many more shared their art and appreciation for Hubble. Martin and I had a special interest in stop-motion animation and we used this in our film, Hubble's Universe, to illustrate some of the discoveries that had enhanced people's interest in, and knowledge of, the Universe. Over a year later, reflecting on the contest and its effect on our lives, we will expand on our creative process, what inspired us, how we continue to inspire others, and how future competitions can continue to engage people from different fields and backgrounds with science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Creating movies using stop-motion technology remains a fascinating approach for storytelling even in the era of digital cinema. A huge number of professional and semiprofessional clips that were produced as fan art can be watched on Internet video platforms and serve as testimonial for the unbroken interest in unleashing creative potential using this technology. However, producing content using stop motion remains a cumbersome task that raises production costs, especially for full-length movies. Consequently, a trend can be observed even for successful television series that were originally produced using stop motion m which the production scheme was changed to computer animation. Against this background, we propose a production scheme for stop-motion-animated movies that has the potential to lower the production costs while increasing the quality of the resulting content. By using a static multicamera array and algorithms from the field of computational imaging, our technology allows artistic effects to be created in the post-production that are difficult to realize using conventional stop-motion production methods. Our approach allows changing the depth of field, smoothly moving the camera along virtual camera paths, and upsampling the frame rate of the stop-motion video in high quality. All effects are computed and applied in post-production, while all intrinsic and extrinsic parameters of the cameras remain static during the whole production. To demonstrate the practicability, results are shown from a stop-motion video that has been produced using the proposed approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biomechanics, and specifically the biomechanics associated with human movement, is a potentially rich backdrop against which educators can design innovative science teaching and learning activities. Moreover, the use of technologies associated with biomechanics research, such as high-speed cameras that can produce high-quality slow-motion video, can be deployed in such a way to support students' participation in practices of scientific modeling. As participants in classroom design experiment, fifteen fifth-grade students worked with high-speed cameras and stop-motion animation software (SAM Animation) over several days to produce dynamic models of motion and body movement. The designed series of learning activities involved iterative cycles of animation creation and critique and use of various depictive materials. Subsequent analysis of flipbooks of human jumping movements created by the students at the beginning and end of the unit revealed a significant improvement in both the epistemic fidelity of students' representations. Excerpts from classroom observations highlight the role that the teacher plays in supporting students' thoughtful reflection of and attention to slow-motion video. In total, this design and research intervention demonstrates that the combination of technologies, activities, and teacher support can lead to improvements in some of the foundations associated with students' modeling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present a method for reconstructing a surface mesh animation sequence from point cloud animation data. We mainly focus on the articulated body of a subject -- the motion of which can be roughly described by its internal skeletal structure. The point cloud data is assumed to be captured independently without any inter-frame correspondence information. Using a template model that resembles the given subject, our basic idea for reconstructing the mesh animation is to deform the template model to fit to the point cloud (on a frame-by-frame basis) while maintaining inter-frame coherence. We first estimate the skeletal motion from the point cloud data. After applying the skeletal motion to the template surface, we refine it to fit to the point cloud data. We demonstrate the viability of the method by applying it to reconstruct a fast dancing motion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A frame-by-frame edit propagation system for video is introduced in this study. The proposed approach propagates the editing parameters by multiplying a large and dense matrix, which we refer to as the Edit Propagation Matrix, to a vector that consists of the editing parameters of the pixels in the preceding frame. The proposed approach has two main advantages. First, the computational cost depends only on the size of each frame and is independent of the total size of the input video. Second, this approach only needs to consider the relationship between two successive frames. This approach can be applied to a wide variety of computer graphics applications such as color manipulation, stylization, colorization, and tonal stabilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This case study investigated the nature of the discussions generated when three preservice primary teachers made a narrated stop-motion animation called “Slowmation” to explain the science concept of moon phases. A discourse analysis of the discussion during construction demonstrated that the preservice teachers posed many questions, propositions and ideas facilitated by four affordances of the process: (i) a need to understand the science in order to explain it; (ii) making models; (iii) stopping to check information; and (iv) sharing personal experiences. Slowmation is a simplified way of making animations that has four affordances to promote discussion resulting in scientific reasoning. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article discusses the aspects of Energy Animation to understand the phenomenon of energy transfers and transformations and also offers examples from student projects concerning energy tracking representations. Topics discussed include features of the Energy Animation such as use of simple shapes and ordering of transfers and transformations, use of stop-motion animation application for mobile devices to create animation, and examples such as use of bicycle chains to discuss flow of energy.

In this article, the author discusses his research in stop motion animation and autoethnography. The author comments on how he used both methods in a course he taught for preservice art educators. The author suggests that autoethnographic animations, which are designed to encourage the development of self, can be used to better prepare preservice art teachers for their future careers. Three autoethnographic animations created by students are discussed: "Bad Choices Aren't Genetic" by Chelsea Landvatter, "New in America" by Grace Nguyen and "Long Distance Love" by Alex Rasi.

When talking about Animation as a graphic or a plastic cinema it is underlying a certain idea of what the medium is and how it is different from live-action films. On the one hand it is about creating the movement and on the other hand it deals with an infinite kind of techniques related to fine arts and graphic arts to produce the images needed, in a word: the forms. Among these techniques, the Stop motion as a privileged medium based on frame-by-frame, shows that reality and its matter can be animated too and not only the abstract space of the representation, be it a drawing or 3D modelling. With Stop motion, even if the technique can be 'reduced' to animating puppets and a set or clay for example, we will argue that its specificity lies more specifically in the possibility of changing the propriety of a matter and its limit of elasticity to the point of breaking the consistency of things, transmuting the substance into another. In this state of thing, the link between creating form and creating movement cannot even be drawn anymore because the form and movement are one and the same consequence of the substance behaviour the artist is giving to matter, whereas in traditional animation you create a form more or less stable and you make it move. This art, now interrogating the global notion of arts of movement, cease to be a graphic or plastic cinema and becomes what we would call a plasmatic cinema. The form never really gets a permanent consistency and integrity to be able to be seen as a moving object or subject but as pure protoplasm constantly transforming and redefining a matter. Indeed, the natural limit of elasticity of matter can be modified with Stop motion to the point that anything can become subject to plasticity - not only a gum in cinema or the body of a drawn character in animation, for example. In these kinds of cinema the matter is pure virtuality, where in Stop motion it is real matter becoming virtual through the plasmatic process: movement is just a change of the form and form just a change of character through movement. The whole matter of the world is becoming a material to be liquefied and redefined where movement and forms are sharing the same state of the art. If a plasma is in chemical research the fourth state of matter (with solid, liquid and gas) we would say by analogy that it also helps to define another kind of animated picture dealing with a perpetual fusion (or fusing) of forms. In that sense, Stop motion is exemplifying what is plasticity of motion, in the overall arts of motion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stop-motion is a well-established animation technique but is often laborious and requires craft skills. A new video-based system can animate the vast majority of everyday objects in stop-motion style, more flexibly and intuitively. Animators can perform and capture motions continuously instead of breaking them into increments and shooting one still picture per increment. More important, the system permits direct hand manipulation without resorting to rigs, achieving more natural object control for beginners. The system's key component is two-phase keyframe-based capturing and processing, assisted by computer vision techniques. With this system, even amateurs can generate high-quality stop-motion animations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The purpose of this qualitative case study is two-fold: (a) describe the implementation of a stop-motion animation video activity to support students' understanding of cell processes, and (b) present research findings about students' beliefs and use of iPads to support their creation of stop-motion videos in an introductory biology course. Data indicated that students used the devices extensively to access, seek, and share information related to cell processes, which led to their increased familiarity with using the iPad to support their learning. Using iPads and apps enriched students' learning experiences by providing them with a creative way to demonstrate their understanding of content, enhanced their communication skills, and provided them with an alternative means for gathering and sharing supplementary resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines an early stereoscopic film made for and shown at the 1939 World's Fair held in New York. The film In Tune with Tomorrow was commissioned by the Chrysler Motor Company, and featured 3D stop-motion animation of a car magically assembling without human intervention. This film is discussed in the context of a range of large and small screen experiments conducted at the fair. The rise of American industry's use of film technologies as integral elements of ascendant its communication strategies is also addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the emergence of animation industry in India. It notes that the Indian animation industry is yet to be identified as a part of the film industry or as an entity on its own as India has to find its own niche towards animation. It describes animation that has fused with two major domains, the information technology (IT) industry and the film industry, wherein animation has been used to deliver live action works in film adaptations and cartooning. It also traces back the origin of the animation in India wherein it refers to the early works of Dadasaheb Phlake, the father of Indian cinema, who had used animation in experimental films through stop-motion featuring marching matchsticks and dancing coins.

Widely acknowledged as an archetypal design activity, sketching is typically carried out using little more than pen and paper. Today's designed artifacts however, are often given qualities that are hard to capture with traditional means of sketching. While pen and paper sketching catches the character of a building, it may not equally well capture how that building changes with the seasons, how people pass through it, how the light moves in between its rooms from sunrise to dawn, and how its façade subtly decays over centuries. Yet, it is often exactly these dynamic and interactive aspects that are emphasised in contemporary design work. So is there a way for designers to be able to sketch also these dynamic processes? Over several years and in different design disciplines, we have been exploring the potential of stop motion animation (SMA) to serve this purpose. SMA is a basic form of animation typically applied to make physical objects appear to be alive. The animator moves objects in small increments between individually photographed frames. When the photographs are combined and played back in continuous sequence, the illusion of movement is created. Although SMA has a long history in filmmaking, the animation technique has received scarce attention in most design fields including product design, architecture, and interaction design. This paper brings SMA into the area of sketching in architecture by reporting on the planning, conduct, result, and evaluation of a workshop course carried out with a group of 50 students at Umeå School of Architecture, Umeå University, Sweden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Speaking of Pascual Pérez means talking about high quality stop-motion animation, as this animator from Castellón has shown after his way through Aardman Studios, that clay is his natural means of expression. After his stay at Bristol, Pascual has returned to Spain to tell Història d'Este, a personal and independent work supported by IVAC-Generalitat Valenciana, the ICAA and Radiotelevisió Valencia Group. The film tells of a serious issue such as alcohol in a tone of humorous story, using a simple doll whose appearance recalls Peter Lord's legendary character Morph. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present an efficient algorithm for building an adaptive bounding volume hierarchy (BVH) in linear time on commodity graphics hardware using CUDA. BVHs are widely used as an acceleration data structure to quickly ray trace animated polygonal scenes. We accelerate the construction process with auxiliary grids that help us build high quality BVHs with SAH in O( k∗ n). We partition scene triangles and build a temporary grid structure only once. We also handle non-uniformly tessellated and long/thin triangles that we split into several triangle references with tight bounding box approximations. We make no assumptions on the type of geometry or animation motion. However, our algorithm takes advantage of coherent geometry layout and coherent frame-by-frame motion. We demonstrate the performance and quality of resulting BVHs that are built quickly with good spatial partitioning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay puts artists, historians and theorists into conversation with each other in the context of an examination of stop-motion work process. Stop-motion film-makers frequently blur the boundaries between work and play as they practise their painstakingly labour-intensive craft, and this essay considers how the work of the animator's hands is evoked (in implicit and explicit ways) in two key examples of late-twentieth-century stop-motion film. Starting with Adam Smith's metaphor of the 'invisible hand' as a figure for self-regulating tendencies within capitalism, and extending into far more critical re-examinations of the figure by C. Wright Mills, I discuss the visual culture of workplace efficiency analysis and its relationship to the history of stopmotion film. I focus in the remainder of the essay on representations of work process in Henry Selick's Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas and Peter Lord and David Sproxton's Confessions of a Foyer Girl. I argue that these films' contrasting considerations of work are enmeshed within ambivalent considerations of the political economy of cinematic production and distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a visual essay recording the production process of a 75-minute stop-motion feature animation, made in the spirit of traditional Czech puppet animation, but using mixed media techniques. It is a story called In the Attic: Who Has a Birthday Today? and though it is a children's animation, based on the way children conduct their games and imagine their play environment, it is also a political metaphor, reflecting upon past Czech history. The images in the essay show different aspects of production and reveal some of the approaches taken to achieve certain craft effects. The film includes puppet animation, clay animation, cut-out animation and drawn animation; and uses post-production tools, but has no computer animation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]