SUMMARY

Cinema is a jong art as well as a complete one, that carries away an important heritage from greater arts and the most tradicional ones. Its main interest pretended to tell stories and to leave an unheard testimony of persons, moments and times, however almost from its arrival it achieved to turn into a spectacle which composes its own space applying lights, shadows, tones, colors and characters in a completely bidimensional version, to which are added music, voices and effects in harmony, to remit ourselves to the fact that manipulates openly time and space in a consciously abstract manner. In this context, film animation besides to be considerated a real background of the Lumière brothers invention, also established an attractive resource for the image progress in the seventh art. Its inmediate incorporation to the film spectacle did not took a long time in produce outcomes which awoke up curiosity and disclosed the secret of stop trick in order to produce a more committed and dreamer image.
This thesis examines carefully the valuable contribution of film animation applied to the development of special and trick effects in cinema. Only the film and TV media can disppose of thecniques, methodes and gadgets to produce special effects exceeding the realitiy and to bring us the possibility to know new worlds and dimensions. Most of these procedures are directly related to the principles and foundations of film animation as a speciality, aplied directly in the fiction cinema. Its effectivity in this work is proved and shown through the work of the great masters and pioneeers of cinema, effects and f ilm trick effects. The development and improvement of stop-motion and puppet animation, as one of the thecniques more involved and representatives of this medium, is introduced in a journey around the film works by the most relevant figures and producers in this kind of animation, very requested until nowadays.
The scientific development and the new technologies in the animation world have favoured a total turn around in the concept and introduction of a new image for the seventh art, subordinating special effects in it and looking for its well deserved place on infography, 3D animation and the new digital tools, that have meant real advances and substancial changes in the present and for the future of cinema. The artistic and historical evolution of these mechanismes and resources applied to the film image, clearly defined as special effects and trick effects, is exposed by the quality analysis of three classics of contemporary cinema: Jason and the Argonauts (1963), Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988) and Star Wars: Episode IV. A New Hope (1977), where film animation played a decisive role in the staging of an ideal reality imagined by its renowned filmmakers.
The contents of this research, besides that they could be considerated at least and without doubt fascinating in its own aesthetic representation, offers information and contributes clear evidences that prove in which messure the development of special effects in cinema is due to the work and research of  profesionals and fans of film animation. This development offers the possibility to become an interesting area where artists and animators of this time can work and experiment. It also establishes a well deserved tribute to the greatest figures and celebrities of animation all around the World.