Clay Animation

Wallace and Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, and Chicken Run are not drawn and they are not made on a computer. They are little clay puppets, moved by hand a tiny bit at a time and photographed one click at a time. To make Gromit wag his eyebrow for just ONE second on screen, an animator has to move the clay and snap a picture 24 separate times!

- What clay animation (claymation) actually is - Why moving things a tiny bit at a time makes them look like they move on their own - The special word for one single clay animation picture: a frame

Here is the secret: the clay never moves itself at all! An animator nudges a clay character just a tiny bit — maybe moving an arm up a little — and takes ONE photo. That single photo is called a frame. Then they nudge it a tiny bit more and take another frame. When you play all those photos back very fast, one right after another, your eyes get tricked into seeing smooth movement, like the clay figure is walking or waving all by itself. Movies show 24 frames every single second. That means to make a clay dog wag its tail for just 2 seconds, an animator has to pose the clay and snap a picture 48 times, moving it just a tiny bit each time.

The most important rule in clay animation is that every move has to be SMALL. If an animator moves a clay character's arm too far between photos, the movement will look jumpy and strange when played back, instead of smooth. That's why one minute of finished claymation can take a professional animator an entire full day of work, carefully moving the clay just a little bit at a time.