Stop motion (also known as stop frame) is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence. Dolls with movable joints or clay figures are often used in stop motion for their ease of repositioning. Stop motion animation using clay is called clay animation or "clay mation".

The term "stop motion", related to the animation technique, is often spelled with a hyphen, "stop-motion". Both orthographical variants, with and without the hyphen, are correct, but the hyphenated one has, in addition, a second meaning, not related to animation or cinema: "a device for automatically stopping a machine or engine when something has gone wrong" (The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 1993 edition).

Stop motion is often confused with the time lapse technique, where still photographs of a live surrounding are taken at regular intervals and combined into a continuous film.

Phil Tippett (born 1951) is a movie director and an award-winning visual effects supervisor and producer, who specializes in creature design and character animation.

Tippett was born in Berkeley, California. At the age of seven, Phil saw Ray Harryhausen's special effects classic, The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, and his life's direction was set. Phil completed a bachelor's degree in art at the University of California, Irvine, and went to work at the animation studio Cascade Pictures in Los Angeles.

In 1978, Phil headed the ILM animation department with Jon Berg for Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (released in 1980). For this film, Tippett co-developed the animation technique called go motion to animate the sinister AT-AT Imperial Walkers and the hybrid alien tauntauns. In 1981 Tippett continued using go motion for Dragonslayer, and received his first Academy Award nomination for the extraordinarily realistic dragon animation. By 1983, Tippett led the famed Lucasfilm creature shop for Return of the Jedi for which he was awarded his first Oscar in 1984.

Kevin John Parry (1933 – 26 November 2010) was a businessman from Western Australia, most noted for his backing of the Taskforce '87 syndicate which unsuccessfully defended the 1987 America's Cup in Fremantle, Western Australia. The defence cost over $20 million and built and raced three 12-metre class boats: Kookaburra I, Kookaburra II, and Kookaburra III.

In his younger years, Parry had been a noted Australian baseball player. He later established the Perth Heat baseball team as well as funding the first purpose-built baseball stadium in Perth, Parry Field at Belmont.

Parry headed the diversified Parry Corporation group (formerly Parry's Esplanade Limited), which included the Perth-based Parry's department stores which he developed from a backyard furniture workshop inherited from his father. In 1986, Parry Corporation was ranked 96 in a listing of the top 100 Australian non-financial firms. The West Perth Scitech centre was supported by Parry until financial difficulties ended his involvement.