It is almost impossible to watch a Science Fiction or Fantasy film without witnessing some sort of special effects hoo ha. But where did it all that movie magic start? With a little technique called Stop Motion Animation.

Stop Motion animation or frame by frame animation, is the second oldest form of simulation next to cel animation. The animation is created by moving a static object a small amount and photographing each frame of movement individually. When the frames are played back at normal speed, the object or objects appear to move. Currently, the TV show Robot Chicken utilizes stop motion animation.

French filmmaker Georges Méliès is often credited with discovering the stop motion process. An innovator in special effects, Méliès used stop motion to produce moving title letters for a short film but never pursued the process any further. Albert E. Smith and J. Stuart Blackton are attributed with the first use of stop motion in a film in the 1908 production Humpty Dumpty Circus .

Belarusian Filmography Ladislas Starevich broke new ground in stop motion animation beginning with his short film made for the Kaunas Natural History Museum, Lucanus Cervus (1910). Using two stag beetle carcasses, Starevich re-created a fight that he could not capture in real time due to the beetle’s natural propensity to sleep when the camera lights where turned on. He went on to produce some two dozen films using puppets and dead insects with his most famous being Mest' kinematografičeskogo operatora (Revenge of the Kinematograph Cameraman).

In America, Willis O’Brien was leading the way with his brilliant stop motion animation that featured skillfully designed clay miniatures. Together with the multi talented Mexican-American special effects artists/background painters Marcel Delgado, Victor Delgado and Mario Larrinaga, he produced some of the greatest moments in film history including The Lost World (1925), King Kong (1933), and The Son of Kong (1933). The team would later be joined by O’Brien’s pupil, Ray Harryhausen, for the production of Mighty Joe Young (1949). O’Brien and company would inspire generations of writers (Ray Bradbury), directors (Peter Jackson, Lucas, Spielberg, Tim Burton) and animators (Pete Kleinow, Art Clokey, Phil Tippet).

Hungarian animator George Pal erupted on the American scene in the late 1950’s and early 60’s with Tom Thumb (1958), The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1963) and The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao (1964).

Ray Harryhausen dominated stop motion animation from the mid 50’s to the early 80’s with such hit movies as The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms(1954), The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad(1958), Jason and the Argonauts(1963), One Million Years B.C.(1966), The Golden Voyage of Sinbad(1974) and Clash of the Titans(1981).

While Stop Motion and 3-D Stereoscope seem to go together like Lucas and Spielberg, it has been rarely used. The first short to use stop motion animation , 3-D stereoscope and Computer Generated Imagery is The Incredible Invasion of the 20,000 Giant Robots from Outer Space(2000) by Elmer Kaan and Alexander Lentjes. The first stop motion feature film will be Caroline (2009) based on the Neil Gaiman novella and will be shot stereoscopically with duel digital cameras.