
See it at its trippy best with Fantastic Planet, and in The Adventures of Prince Achmed, the oldest surviving animated film. Paper cutout stop-motion animation is less frequently used.

His films and studio, Aardman, have an outsized presence in that scene, with the likes of Chicken Run and Shaun the Sheep. Clay has led to the creation of one of animation’s most enduring man-and-canine duos, Wallace and Gromit, created by Nick Park. In this guide, we’ll come in contact with the different materials and styles used in stop motion. It’s what filmmakers have been doing for over a century, so we’re taking a look through time with the 47 best stop-motion animated movies ever made. Shape a chicken and a fox, mold some pirates, heck, make a movie. It’s an almost atavistic art form of ours: Instinct tells us if you have a lump of clay in your hands, start making stuff out of it.

Tangible and physical, stop-motion animation is the art of manipulating objects and figures frame by frame, creating the illusion of fluid movement. Thumbnail: DreamWorks SKG, Buena Vista Pictures, Fox Searchlight, Paramount Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection) 49 Best Stop-Motion Animated Movies of All Time (Photo by Focus Features/Courtesy Everett Collection.
