October means the start of the fall/winter holiday season. Halloween arrives, then you look up, and it’s New Year’s. But before we get too far ahead of ourselves, I like to think of October as starting another key period: the season of stop motion animation.
Whether it’s the classic herky-jerky movement of the Rankin-Bass productions like Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer, or the more-recent (yet still 33 years-old!) Nightmare Before Christmas, these three months are more closely associated with this artform than any other. So for that reason, our Book of the Month is one that celebrates the long tradition of stop motion. A Century of Stop Motion Animation: From Melies to Aardman, as the title implies, celebrates a century of this style of animation. You might be a bit surprised to learn that stop motion is 100 years old. In which case, you’ll be more surprised to learn this book was published in 2008, so we’re really 118 years into it at this point.
The book is authored by the one and only Ray Harryhausen, a stop motion and special effects pioneer. We throw the word “pioneer” around quite a bit these days, but Harryhausen really was, and so having him behind this book lends an enormous credibility, and takes it from mere coffee table book, to necessary edition for serious animators and animation fans.
You can get the book from Amazon here, but it’s a bit, um… pricey… Or check your local library.
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