Karel Zeman was a Czech film director, artist, production designer and animator, best known for directing fantasy films combining live-action footage with animation. Because of his creative use of special effects and animation in his films, he has often been called the "Czech Méliès".
Karel Zeman
American poster for Zeman's Vynález zkázy
Entrance to the Karel Zeman museum
Stop motion is an animated filmmaking technique in which objects are physically manipulated in small increments between individually photographed frames so that they will appear to exhibit independent motion or change when the series of frames is played back. Any kind of object can thus be animated, but puppets with movable joints or plasticine figures are most commonly used. Puppets, models or clay figures built around an armature are used in model animation. Stop motion with live actors is often referred to as pixilation. Stop motion of flat materials such as paper, fabrics or photographs is usually called cutout animation.
A clay model of a chicken, designed to be used in a clay stop motion animation
Stills from Battle of the Suds and other Helena Smith-Dayton films (1917)
Pat & Mat, two inventive but clumsy neighbors, was introduced in 1976, while the first made-for-TV episode Tapety (translated Wallpaper) was produced in 1979 for ČST Bratislava.