Movies

Pixilation (from pixilated) is a stop motion technique where live actors are used as a frame-by-frame subject in an animated film, by repeatedly posing while one or more frame is taken and changing pose slightly before the next frame or frames. The actor becomes a kind of living stop motion puppet. This techique is often used as a way to blend live actors with animated ones in a film, such as in The Secret Adventures Of Tom Thumb by the Bolex Brothers, which used the technique to compelling and eerie effect.

The first work known to use the pixilation technique was Emile Courtet's 1911 film Jobard ne peut pas voir les femmes travailler (Jobard cannot see the women working).

Other well-known examples include Norman McLaren's short films Neighbours and A Chairy Tale, Chuck Menville and Len Janson's extrordinary trilogy of pixilated short films (Vicious Cycles - 1967, Blaze GLory - 1968, and Sergeant Swell of the Mounties - 1970), the [[music videos for "Road to Nowhere" by Talking Heads, "Sledgehammer" by Peter Gabriel, "Point of No Return" by Nu Shooz, and the tour-de-force short and full-length independent films, both titled The Wizard of Speed and Time by Mike Jittlov.

The pixilation technique was also used for the opening of Claymation, Will Vinton's 1978 17 minute documentary about his animation studio's production techniques, the first time the famous trademarked Claymation term was used, now a term synonymous with all clay animation.

The Czech animator Jan Švankmajer also uses pixilation in most of his work; most notably "Food" [1]. A recent example of the technique is the Stephen Malkmus' video clip "Baby C'mon" [2].

Today it's possible to record a scene with a digital video camera and removing a few frames per second, create the illusion of a pixilation movie very easily. Though this is not considered a real animation, and lacks the slightly out-of-place quality of real pixilations, recorded frame by frame.