The 40 Best Stop-Motion Animated Movies of All Time

Created by Igor_Brynner.

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This technique has been used since the dawn of cinema to bring objects to life and manufacture magical worlds. Before the days of CGI, it was a primary way to produce special effects, in classics from King Kong, to Jason and the Argonauts, to Star Wars. It’s called stop-motion.

It’s rumored that the legendary cinema pioneer Georges Melies accidentally discovered it when his camera jammed once, and upon restarting it he noticed how everything slightly changed. Soon after, stop-motion films began appearing in Europe. What started as a novelty turned into an art form when artists with unique skill and vision began making their films utilizing it.

Most commonly, it’s associated with puppet, but over the course of cinema development other mediums were used as well-figures made of clay (claymation), puppetoons (ready-made figurines), silhouettes. The final results are often fascinating, but the process is traditionally painstaking.

To make the character move, the filmmaker has to take a picture, adjust the figure, take another, and so on. As there are 24 frames in a second of film, it can take hours to shoot each second. That’s especially true for more advanced works, with multiple characters.

With the advent of CGI, stop-motion is considered passé. But it’s still alive and well, with new interesting works coming out almost every year. Much like each painter has a unique brush stroke, each animator creates a uniquely looking work, as the creation of characters and scenes is literally a hands-on experience here.

This list consists of a variety of films made using stop-motion, and was compiled in order to best illustrate this unique art form.