A Basic History Of Claymation

The term Claymation was made and trademarked in 1978 by Will Vinton, aproximately 70 years after the first claymation film.
The "first" claymation movie made was the short film "The Sculptor's Welsh Rarebit Dream" created by "The Edison Manufacturing CO."

- The most common type of clay used is plasticine clay, developed in 1892 by Claude Chavant

There are a few basic type/variants of animation techniques including

- Strata-cut animation: you start your clay in a layered clump, and as you cut away from the front of your block of layered clay you take a picture of each cut to present the animation.

- Clay painting (direct manipulation animation): this form of claymation is extremely similar to "cel" animation where the clay is applied to a plane manipulated directly from the canvas to create a painted affect.

- "Clay melting": clay melting is a form of claymation that can be either done by stop motion by frame by frame stripping the clay from its base or simply "live/realtime" filming of actually applying heat to literally melt the clay.