There are many ways to make movies a frame at a time: drawing them by hand like Walt Disney’s Pinocchio and Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, computer graphics like Pixar’s Toy Story and The Incredibles, 2D cut-outs like the cult feature Twice Upon a Time, animating sand or paint on glass, scratching film emulsion, moving pins on a screen, slicing wax and clay, and no doubt other techniques that exists. I happen to love stopmotion best. So much of animation’s history has been about the pursuit of making things move smoothly, to hide the artist’s hand. When CG animation hit the big time, first as special effects and then with the Pixar features, it delivered on this goal in spades. The animation was perfectly smooth, without a single, unintended bump or jerk. It was sexy and shiny, and audiences ate it up . . . and they still are. CG can do anything, but it can’t do easily what is inherent in stop-motion: give proof of the artist’s hand through the inescapable mistakes made and communicate to the audience that what they are watching really, truly exists. It was this part that grabbed and haunted me when I first saw Ray Harryhausen’s work at age 5—I knew his Cyclops actually existed! Why does even crude stop-motion animation have an effect on us? Ken Priebe, the author of this great book, and I share a similar theory: stop-motion connects us to the time when our toys came to life through the power of our imaginations.