Claymation
Also known as clay animation
Stop-motion animation made with clay or plasticine figures, moved a tiny amount between each photographed frame, as in Wallace & Gromit. Will Vinton coined and trademarked the name in the late 1970s.
In practice
Claymation is stop-motion animation made with clay or plasticine figures. An animator poses the figures, photographs a single frame, moves them very slightly and photographs again; played back at speed, the frames become movement. Film runs at 24 frames a second, and many stop-motion productions shoot on ‘twos,’ holding each pose for two frames.
The word itself is a brand name. Will Vinton, the Portland animator whose Closed Mondays won the Academy Award for best animated short, coined and trademarked ‘Claymation’ in the late 1970s. The general term is clay animation, which is older: Art Clokey's Gumby was on American television from 1956.
For a writer, claymation changes the economics of a script. A few seconds of finished animation can take a day to shoot, so every gesture, crowd and camera move has a cost. Scripts for the form tend to favor small casts, contained sets and physical comedy that reads in a single held pose.
A claymation scene written for the animator
INT. TINY BAKERY - MORNING
HOLLIS, a round clay baker with a flour-dusted mustache, frosts a towering cake. Everything in the room is slightly lopsided.
The top tier tilts. Hollis freezes.
HOLLIS
(barely a whisper)
Stay.
The tier holds. Hollis exhales, and his mustache flutters. Then the second tier slides off the other side.
Opens as a new Plot project once you sign in or create a free account. Inkwell keeps this copy for 24 hours.
Each action line describes one clear pose or change the animator can build: a tilt, a freeze, a breath. The joke is physical and timed in beats, which suits a medium where every movement is made by hand. A single word of dialogue keeps recording and lip sync simple.
How claymation is made
Figures are sculpted from oil-based modeling clay or plasticine, often over a wire armature so limbs hold a pose. Faces may be reshaped by hand for each frame or swapped from a set of sculpted mouths and expressions.
The set is built at miniature scale and lit like a film set. The animator moves one element a fraction at a time between frames, and a stray fingerprint or a bump to the table shows up as a flicker on screen.
Voices are usually recorded before animation, so the animator can match mouth shapes to the dialogue. That is one reason claymation scripts lock their dialogue early.
Claymation movies and shows
Gumby (Art Clokey, from 1956): the green clay figure who walks into books, one of the first clay characters on American television.
Closed Mondays (Will Vinton and Bob Gardiner, 1974): an Oscar-winning short about a drunk man wandering an art gallery where the exhibits come alive.
Wallace & Gromit (Nick Park, Aardman Animations, from 1989): an inventor and his silent dog, where the dog's eyebrows carry most of the acting.
Chicken Run (Peter Lord and Nick Park, 2000): Aardman's first feature, a prison-escape film in which the prisoners are chickens.
Claymation vs. stop motion
Stop motion is the whole technique of animating physical objects frame by frame. Claymation is the branch that uses clay. Puppet films with cloth, silicone or printed faces, such as Coraline (2009), are stop motion but not claymation.
Many productions mix materials. A clay face on a puppet body, or clay effects in a puppet film, is common, so ‘claymation’ is often used loosely for any stop-motion film with a handmade look.
How to write a claymation script
Write in poses and beats. Describe what a figure does in clear, separate physical moments, since the animator will build them one at a time.
Keep casts and locations contained. Every extra character needs sculpting and every location needs building, so a short script with two characters and one set is far easier to produce than a crowd scene.
Let silence and timing carry the jokes. Clay faces read best in held expressions and reactions, which is why so many classics give the funniest moments to a character who never speaks.
In Plot, format it like any screenplay, with scene headings, action and dialogue. Keep a take of a scene trimmed to what a small crew can animate, and compare it with the full version before you commit.
Common questions
What is claymation?
Claymation is stop-motion animation made with clay or plasticine figures that are moved slightly and photographed one frame at a time, then played back as movement.
Is claymation the same as stop motion?
Claymation is one kind of stop motion. Stop motion animates any physical object frame by frame; claymation uses figures made of clay or plasticine.
Who invented claymation?
Clay animation dates back to early film, but the word Claymation was coined and trademarked by Will Vinton in the late 1970s. Art Clokey's Gumby brought clay characters to television in 1956.
How long does claymation take to make?
It is slow. Depending on the shot, a team may finish only a few seconds of footage a day, because every frame needs the figures moved and photographed by hand.