Stop Motion from the 1980's to Present

Within the 1970's and 1980's, Industrial Light and Magic used stop motion animations for such films as the original Star Wars trilogy. Taun Tauns, AT-AT walkers in the Empire Strikes Back and the AT-ST Walkers from Return of the Jedi were all stop-motion animation, some of it using Go films (this was the use of programming a computer to move body parts and limbs slightly through each frame of the film). Many shots of the ghosts within Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark and the first two feature films of Robocop series use Phil Tippetts go motion version of stop motion.

In 1980, Mark Paul Chinoy was the first director to create a full feature length clay animated film, a film based on the famous Pogo comic strip. It never got a commercial release however, despite being a claymation, some of the animation did require armatures and some needed Hard based legs when going along a specific path. 

Stop motion was also used within the final scenes of Terminator and primarily used throughout the film "Batteries Not Included" in 1987, animated by David W. Allen. His other pieces of work can be seen throughout films like "The Crater Like Monster" (1977) and "Q - The Winged Serpent" (1982) and his King Kong Volkswagen advertisement is now famous among stop motion fans.

In 1985, Will Vinton and his team released an incredibly ambitious stop motion film by the name of "The Adventures of Mark Twain", based on the life and works of the famous author. Another famous set of films to take note of would be the work of czech animator Jan Svankmajer, these films would be known as "Alice", a take on the obvious "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll. Since then, many films have stood out in due to their use of stop motion i.e. "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" and "The Little Mermaid" around the 1980's and the beginning of the 1990's. Since then, there have been an increasing amount of films in the stop motion industry, the main company headlining these would be the Tim Burton franchise i.e. "Corpse Bride" and "Nightmare Before Christmas" which were entirely stop motion, both were directed by Henry Selick who was also in charge of "James and the Giant Peach" and "Coraline" and another largely known animator would be Nick Park, the man responsible for the "Wallace and Gromit" series and movies.