Monty Python

Monty Python is a group formed by comedians which inludes an animator.
The animator Terry Gilliam converted the comedians ideas into a still image, stop motion animation.
All of Monty Pythons animations are done whitout greater technology such as computers.
Each animation is made by taking lots of photos and putting them together and as you play them through it will appear that the objects ar creating motion. The only way to edit the film was by using a razor and literally cutting the film up.

The style of the animations could be considered

• Surreal
• Victorian
• Comic
• Distinctly British/ English
• Faded/ De Saturated
• Bizzare
• Unique

They use un co-ordinated limb movements often giving the characters unproportionate figures. When they used this in their characters it would appear that they have deformities. It was very much 2D for all of the productions. When they wanted to move the characters it would be so simple as to make the limbs appear as if they were swinging. Being a 2D production there was a limit on how many ways you could show movement. Incorporated in their animations the characters movements may be such as the eyes moving but nothing else, limbs swinging round all ways, moving the mouth on a character and keeping the rest of it still. They use background layers which stay still throughout the animation. Randomness was a key thing to keep their success going. There was never anything that made sense.

The animation technique that Terry Gilliam used was : STOP MOTION ANIMATION

Stop-motion is an animation technique to make a un animate object appear to move on its own. The object is moved a fraction at a time between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence.


Below are two videos showing how he used movement in 2D and the whole concept of his animations being random.