Check this cool stop motion video done by some students…
Cool Stop-Motion Student Project – Watch more Funny Videos
Over 300 French students at the ESCP Business School used stop-motion techniques to create a film designed to represent the spirit of their school.
Wes Anderson wants us to think he’s weird. He would probably be very happy to find himself staring out of the page under a dictionary definition of “weird”. His life and career are all about his own studied brand of peculiarity, and he’s not about to change that now.
Which is why, while the IoS interviews him, he is eating. Well, he is doing Wes Anderson’s performance of eating. Spinach soup; a separate plate of spinach; a plate of bread and a bowl of baby potatoes are brought at his request. He takes one arch forkful of each, chewing each morsel in slow motion, before pushing his tray aside and announcing he’s “quite full”.
It is an odd vignette in the series of strange moments that comprise an encounter with one of Hollywood’s oddest auteurs. He enters the room, swamped in a furry-hooded green parker, shuffling along with his eyes locked on the floor. “Oh hello, I’m Wes,” he says softly, one of America’s most celebrated film directors playing the role of a shy schoolboy.
The good manners and bashful demeanour lack sincerity. For a start, he doesn’t need to introduce himself: his acclaimed, off-beat films including The Royal Tenenbaums; Rushmore and The Life Aquatic have already brought him two Oscar nominations and a loyal following. Like his cinematic style – credited with inspiring a new generation of indie films such as Juno, Napoleon Dynamite and Garden State – his quirkiness seems a little mannered: this is Anderson playing Anderson.
While for us, the performance began when he came into the room, for him, it began before he even entered the central London hotel where we meet. He tells me he has just missed his lunch because he sat waiting on a hotel reception bench for 45 minutes.
“Apparently the guy who was here before me checked out but left all his possessions,” he explains, with a deadpan delivery that is instantly recognisable from his films. “I think it’s an unusual situation for a hotel to deal with. I kept thinking, it’s just going to be a moment.” One can only imagine the sort of explosion a similar situation would elicit from, say, Quentin Tarantino. So, no hissy fit then? “Well, I wasn’t wildly excited about it, but I could understand it was sort of an unexpected situation.”
Each of his answers is delivered like a line from one of his scripts, with calculated timing and with his face almost expressionless. In fact, his demeanour is of one who’s performing for a close-up. Even his posture has artifice, his bony hands motionlessly clasped over a crossed knee and his back bolt upright in an armchair that I am sure he has selected for its symmetry between two lamps.
His clothes look more like items raided from a costume cupboard than something an ordinary person has hanging in their wardrobe. In his bespoke orange-brown corduroy suit, neat yellow tie, pale blue shirt and evergreen sweater, he actually resembles his latest hero, Mr Fox, whose miniature outfit is almost identical. “Oh, I guess you’re right,” he says, letting out a small, almost girlish giggle of appreciation. There’s nothing accidental about the clothes he’s chosen. He commissioned the same tailor who made this suit to create a near-replica for Fantastic Mr Fox, which is out on DVD soon and is the reason he has consented to be interviewed. “I thought this would be a good colour for him,” he muses.
Clothes play a big part in Anderson films: whether it’s the matching adidas tracksuits of the neurotic Chas Tenenbaum and his twin sons, or the trademark red hats and powder-blue jumpsuits of team Zissou in The Life Aquatic, they set the ironic tone of his productions. “In animated movies or live action, the costumes often tell you a lot about the characters, and they’re another opportunity to invent something that might be entertaining to the audience or might give something to the movie,” he explains. “The costumes interest me as much as the sets, as much as the music; you spend 81 minutes watching a film and these clothes are a big part of what you see in the frame.”
Every year folks gather around their television sets and watch as the stars flaunt who they’re wearing on the red carpet and we all lumber through more than three hours of ceremony to hear first-hand which film is crowned Best Picture. Unfortunately, two of the categories that appear in the festivities but go mostly unrecognized are the awards for Best Live Action and Animated Short Films. That is, until recently, when the lineup of nominated shorts began screening in theaters for the general audience to experience and enjoy. This is great for two reasons; one being an increased exposure for the filmmakers, the other being an increased interest from the audience in these films as a part of the annual awards culture.
Thanks to the indie and art house theaters that have taken the reigns, I encourage everyone to make an effort to see as many of the foreign and short films nominated for Academy Awards, prior to the big event. For one week only in Saint Louis, Landmark brings the nominees to the public to screen at the Tivoli Theatre, starting on Friday, February 19.
The animated shorts nominated for the Academy Award this year are not surprisingly dominated by CGI techniques, but Nick Park’s classic stop-motion remains a contender once again. Story is less of a determining factor in this category than concept and execution, which is my favorite pick for the best of the best this Oscar season goes to LOGORAMA.
GRANNY O’GRIMM’S SLEEPING BEAUTY (Ireland, 6 min.) — directed by Nicky Phelan – don’t be drawn into the fairy tale trap of this film, because it’s a much darker twist on the classic Sleeping Beauty story you grew up with. Bitter about her age, Granny subjects her grandchild to her own nightmarish retelling of the tale. Certainly not intended for the little kiddies, this CGI-animated film combines claymation-influenced reality scenes with colorful two-dimensional fairy tale sequences.
Equipped with little more than a video camera and a piece of green cardboard, Montreal filmmaker Patrick Boivin earns a comfortable living by setting up action figures on his kitchen table and moving the limbs in tiny increments to produce weirdly funny slugfests. The creative shorts have propelled this self-taught stop-motion auteur from YouTube sensation to Hollywood hopeful in a matter of months.
In March, Boivin, 35, heads west to pitch projects on the strength of his videogame-inspired hit “YouTube Street Fighter,” his funny smackdown clip “Iron Man vs. Bruce Lee” and his recent martial arts spoof “Ninja’s Unboxing,” commissioned by Google to promote its new cellphone. The videos have racked up millions of views on YouTube and earned Boivin entry to Hollywood’s hit-making machine.
Essentially a one-man show, Boivin savors the do-it-yourself show biz ethos.
“There used to be this huge process where you had to go to a company with an idea, they’d called another company to hire a director — there was all this protocol,” he told Wired.com in an telephone interview. “Now, thanks to the web, companies can contact me directly to create all this stuff. For them it’s cheaper, and for me it’s a lot of money because I’m all alone.”
It’s an absolutely loopy stop-motion comedy, painstakingly and absurdly made with tiny plastic figurines still tethered to their bases, which makes for very silly walks and an even sillier story.
This town is a place where talking animals live alongside an agitated cowboy and an Indian. No pretences here: the main characters are called Horse, Cowboy and Indian.
They more or less all get along until the day when an Internet glitch results in the delivery of millions of bricks, many more than needed for the barbecue that Cowboy and Indian were planning to build as a birthday present for Horse. This leads to an underwater sea adventure that you don’t want to know about, at least not yet.
Hello, i thought I would add random interesting videos that are out there. If you have a video that you want us to showcase just shoot it our way!
This video is awsome, i wish i could draw like this.
Please we want to add more videos and showcase them. If you have anything you want to share with us, or show us how something is made, this is the place. We want to make this the one spot for all of us that love this medium to gather and share and have fun watching what other people are doing. This is the sole purpose of our site, so use it and make it yours!
Art Clokey 1921 2010
We can only say thank you to the great creator of “The Gumby Show” and “Davey and Goliath.” In our most humble way we would like to make homage to this great creator by showing you some samples of his great work. We not only lost a great artist, but also one of the biggest promoters of stop motion, for all of those great memories we can only say thank you Art Clokey.
Gumbasia
Gumbasia, a 3 minute 34 second short film produced in 1953, was the first clay animation produced by Art Clokey, who went on to create the classic series Gumby and Davy and Goliath using the same technique….
The visually rich Mandala—described by Clokey as a metaphor for evolving human consciousness—and the equally bizarre The Clay Peacock, an elaboration on the animated NBC logo of the time.
1966-67 Gumby Intro
Gumby and Pokey – In the Dough
Opening sequence for “Davey and Goliath”
And last but not least we will leave you with this great interview by the Archive of American Television, its a 6 part piece but well worth watching, so grab a cup of coffee sit back and enjoy the great Art Clokey.
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Once again thank you Art Clokey we miss you.
October 12, 1921 - January 8, 2010
