Discuss “How Things Work: Clay animation”

The California Raisins, Gumby, and Wallace and Gromit are all brought to life with clay. But to create a story showing these characters jumping, playing, or running, a person needs a few techniques that aren’t normally taught in high school art class.

Three-dimensional objects like clay forms or metal armature are typically animated using a process called stop-motion animation. This technique requires the forms to be filmed one frame at a time. Between each frame the animator moves the figure very slightly.

Much like flip books that, if flipped fast enough, will make the object on the page appear to move, stop motion relies on our persistence of vision. Our eyes can only process new pictures as being single entities up until a certain...