What is Pixilation?
Pixilation is a form of animation that uses a stop-motion technique to create moving art from frame-by-frame photographs. Pixilation is an early form of animation that utilizes live actors or props that are photographed in a succession of slightly changing poses. The subjects of the pixilation are continually moved and posed through a series of motions or acts, and after principal photography is concluded, the images are played in rapid succession to give the appearance of live action. The slighter the variation of movements and changes between photos, the more fluid the appearance of the final production.
The use of this technique allowed for some of the earliest forms of special effects for cinema by allowing inanimate objects to appear to interact with live subjects in ways that are naturally impossible. Pixilation has also been used to allow live actors to appear on screen with animated ones and can be seen in most forms of what is commonly referred to as “Claymation”.
Additional information
The term Pixilation is known specifically in the animation industry as being almost synonymous with stop-motion animation, but the two terms are not entirely interchangeable. Although all Pixilation is stop-motion animation, not all stop-motion animation is necessarily Pixilation. Animators and other industry professionals usually make the distinction that Pixilation refers specifically to the use of live subjects in the animation project as opposed to simply puppets or other inanimate objects.
Pixilation is used exclusively as a term within the animation industry and communities and is not to be confused with other forms of similar sounding but distinctly different industry relevant terminology. Pixelation refers to the low-resolution display of a computer graphic which reveals the individual pixels of a bitmap. Pixelization is a technique used in image editing which intentionally blurs part or all of an image to give it a lower resolution, primarily used for censorship.
