After a long, super long and time off this blog I am more than happy to say we are back!!!! Here at SMW we apologize for not posting all awesome stopmo videos sooner but due to my moneymaking job I had give this site a small hiatus but we are back and super exited to be back.
There are lots of great videos out there and lots of talent! So thank you for coming back to our humble site and send us your awesome videos.
The guys over at Reckless Abandonment Pictures created a Tron stop motion animation using light painting photography. If you love pretty lights and Tron, you should definitely check this out. Makes me almost want to create my own light painting photography video… almost.
Extra tidbit: Over 800 individual “light painted” photos were used in this animated short.
And here is the making of, this is awesome!
Another great animation festival is about to start and its calling for entries so don’t miss it out!
There will be some screening on some awesome classic & contemporary stop-motion films.
Please check it out!
Be there! Corfu Animation Festival opens its doors. Send your animated films to the competitive program!
Be there! Corfu Animation Festival invites all directors of animated short films to submit their films to the competitive program.
The festival has two main competitive sections:
1. Short films: for films completed after 1/1/09, regardless of geographic origin
2. Graduation films: for graduation short films completed after 1/1/09, regardless of geographic origin
There is no entrance fee for submission. Short films can be from a few seconds to 35 min. length, and there are no restrictions regarding animation technique or film genre. Be there! Corfu Animation Festival awards prizes for the best 2 films in each section.
Read the instructions and complete the entry form (download in pdf). Send your films in DVD (Pal), along with the signed form and accompanying documents to: Be there! Corfu Animation Festival, PO Box 288, Corfu, Greece. (Please do not use registered post)
Deadline for all submissions: 10 January 2011
Be there!
Please check out their website at http://www.betherefest.gr/
Call for entries at http://www.betherefest.gr/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=88&Itemid=187〈=en
Thanks to our friend Vassilis for keeping us updated, best of luck in the festival!
One of this year’s best comedies, NBC’s Community, is no stranger to theme episodes. Like their sworn enemy, Glee, Community has its own form of tribute episodes. But rather than paying homage to pop stars, Community has episodes dedicated to mafia movies or action flicks. In their second season alone, the show has riffed on Apollo 13 and the zombie genre.
So it makes sense that the show is doing a stop-motion animated Christmas episode, in the spirit of the old Rankin/Bass specials of yore. James Fino, executive producer at 23D Films, talked with me earlier today on the joys and challenges of bringing Greendale Community College to life via stop-motion animation.
How did you get the gig of doing the animation for this episode?
Joe Russo, my fellow executive producer and partner at 23D Films, worked with Dino Stamatopoulos on episodes of Mr. Show with Bob and David. Dino, in addition to playing Star-Burns on Community , currently works on the show with series creator Dan Harmon. They had talked about joining forces and doing an animated project, and Dan presented the idea from the executives about doing an animated Christmas special. Dino mentioned his work on Adult Swim’s Moral Orel and suggested we do the episode in stop-motion. So we got started and, before you know it, the episode was written and we were doing a table read.
What was the process for this episode like?
Thanks to shows like Moral Orel and movies like Coraline and Fantastic Mr. Fox, there’s been a new appreciation for stop motion. So we had to race to find animators before they were snapped up by other projects. Some of our animators actually worked on Coraline.
When you think of stop-motion holiday specials, you think of Rankin/Bass, but that look is a set look that’s been parodied and we wanted Community to be its own thing. We were inspired by the rich worlds of Coraline and Fantastic Mr. Fox, so there was a strong emphasis on getting puppets to look like the live action characters from Community that everyone knows and loves. We immediately started designing those — we wanted resin heads with sculpted hairdos, so their hair wouldn’t shift from frame to frame.
We also had to figure out how to build the sets in a small amount of time. We had a team devoted to making the sets look just like they do in real life on the show. Duncan’s study was perfectly recreated with actual miniature replicas of the prints and books in his office. And the library is recreated with miniature versions of the couches and everything. We were grinning from ear to ear when we saw the sets.
Is your stop-motion process more traditional, stopping every frame to move the characters, or do you use a lot of software and technology to make it work?
I’m so glad you asked that. A lot of this is all done by hand and animated by hand. There are wires and rigging that support the puppets when they’re hopping and jumping in mid-air, so we use computers to get rid of those wires and rigging. Dragon Software allows every animator at their computer station to see each shot in an instant and we can calibrate what the next moves are, so that helps us capture the images and manipulate them. It’s a great leap forward and we were really happy to work with the folks at Dragon.
Which character was the most difficult to create and animate?
At one point in the episode, the characters are all turned into Christmas icons. And Jeff turns into a jack-in-the-box, so that took a lot of rigging to get that character to move and hop along. Chevy Chase turns into a bear and Shirley turns into a baby, so their proportions changed from the standard 8 inches we were using on most of the characters and that was somewhat of a challenge.
Were you a fan of Community before working on it — and if not, are you a fan now?
I had seen a couple of episodes and loved them. When this opportunity came up, I knew what a great set of characters we had to work with. And the world that Dan created, I immediately plugged into that. So the opportunity to do this was a dream come true.
I know that you’re a University of Texas grad. Did you also grow up in Texas?
I was born and raised in El Paso. I knew early on that I was a fan of special effects in movies, like Ray Harryhausen’s work and disaster movies of the 1970s. So I knew I wanted to go into the fields of film and television for special effects. USC and New York were too far away for my parents, so UT was the natural choice. And I loved my classes and everything came really easily to me because I loved it so much.
I see on your bio with 23D Films that you also worked on King of the Hill. Obviously, the show has Texas ties, too. What was your involvement with that show?
I got called in to work as a writer’s assistant, which is an awesome job to have but a hard job to get. If you’re good, you get to contribute and it’s a good path towards becoming a writer. The opportunity to work with Greg Daniels and Mike Judge was too good to be true. The first thing I did was help organize a trip for the writers to Texas because they’d never been and they needed to get past their stereotypical ideas of Texas. They had a great time and got a better sense of the people, which was key for the writing staff. So I constantly answered questions about Texas and people from Texas. That job was awesome. And I transitioned to being the production manager and I worked directly with Greg and Mike and I learned how an animated show was launched.
For Disney fans, Don Hahn’s name is instantly one of animation legend, responsible for the studio’s creative rebirth near the end of the 20th century. Hahn, who began working with Disney in 1976, quickly became one of animation’s foremost film producers, delivering classics like Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King.
Hahn’s Disney contemporaries ranged from John Lasseter to Tim Burton and the era of creativity they brought forth is the subject of Waking Sleeping Beauty, a feature-length documentary directed by Hahn chronicling the studio story beginning in the mid-1980′s. Careful not to shy away from controversy, the film, for the first time, offers a frank, insider’s look, backed by vast amounts of behind-the-scenes material and newly-recorded interviews with the men and women who brought forth Disney’s animation renaissance.
Hitting DVD this Tuesday, Waking Sleeping Beauty arrives the same day as Fantasia and Fantasia 2000 (on Blu-ray for the first time). Hahn, who also produced and directed scenes in Fantasia 2000, spoke with ComingSoon.net about his lifelong career and where he sees himself and the studio heading in the future.
Read more: Exclusive: Disney Producing Legend Don Hahn – ComingSoon.net http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=71928#ixzz16eSGiiaF
CS: Do you ever see yourself tackling a narrative film as a director?
Hahn: Possibly. I mean, I’ve thought about it. There’s nothing in the works right now, but I think it might be really interesting in the future. But the thing is, I have animation in my blood, too. I’m actually working with Tim Burton right now on an animated film and I just love it. So I think that’s probably my calling and what I was meant to do on this Earth.
CS: This is “Frankenweenie”? That’s being done in stop-motion?
Hahn: Yeah, it’s all stop-motion. Very much in the style of “Nightmare Before Christmas.”
CS: Do you have a preference for animation style? It seems impressive that Disney is able to simultaneously have stop-motion films, hand-drawn animation films and computer animation films.
Hahn: That’s all John Lasseter. In the coming couple of years, you’ll see hand-drawn films and puppets and pixels and every kind of style. That’s because John loves storytelling and he’s not afraid of technique. He trusts directors to choose technique so when Tim or Henry Selick comes in with a project in stop motion, who cares? They’re great directors. He’s fearless of the technique and I think that’s admirable of him. I totally believe in that. It’s about the story and not the technique.
CS: Is there a nostalgic element involved in coming back around to “Frankenweenie,” given that it’s based on a short film from the days featured in “Waking Sleeping Beauty”?
Hahn: It is, yeah. When I first met with Tim on it several years ago, I think that yeah, there is. It was one of the first films he made and I think it was a very easy fit to say we should expand it into a feature. That’s why “Waking Sleeping Beauty” could have easily become a five-hour miniseries. Because there’s so many things that happened in that ten year period. “Frankenweenie” was certainly one of them and the opportunities that Tim got that led to “Pee Wee’s Big Adventure” and other films. The other things that happened in that period. John Lasseter getting kicked out of the studio. Brad Bird and all these people were there at the same time. That’s what made it such an amazing petri dish for the animation industry.
CS: So looking to the future, what else is on your plate for the long term?
Hahn: “Frankenweenie” and “African Cats” is really enough to keep me busy. We’ve got some other animated and live-action films in development right now, but they’re all really too early to talk about. But it’s cool. It’s thrilling to be able to work with Tim again. It’s great to get “Waking Sleeping Beauty” out on DVD. It hopefully celebrates the artists and celebrates the people of that time. I’m really exciting about letting people be able to see it because we had a really great festival run and a great run in art houses. I think this is going to be where general audiences can see it and really get to appreciate the art form.
Read more: Exclusive: Disney Producing Legend Don Hahn – ComingSoon.net http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=71928#ixzz16eSSbmag
Our super talented friend Lyle Piso send us his new amazing new video called The Empress. Please check this out and hope you enjoy it. Lyle congratulations on another amazing work and please keep us in the loop!
Please check out this Lyle Pisio film at:
http://vimeo.com/10402774
or you can access it from the films website:
http://www.empress.lilyposie.ca/EmpressMovie.html
Stop-motion animation 8min, 25sec
Trevor and Martha fall in love across a seady bar. The couples shyness is only overcome in a mutual dream where their shadows dance together.
The piece was inspired by and uses the song ‘The Empress’ by the Montreal based band Briga. We all cried when Brigitte Dajczer decided to forsake Calgary for Montreal, but when she sent me the song ‘The Empress’, most of the voices in my head said “wow, you really got to use this”. Without the song, the film would not exist, so I can’t stress the importance of the music enough. Check out Briga’s website brigamusic.com.
It took about a year and a half to finish this piece, what with making puppets, sets and testing different ideas out, in the end I had about 30 – 40 minutes of footage that I edited down to this.
Some of our old classics will be making an appearance soon on our old television, so I thought we should homage to our favorite Christmas classics and stop motion to boot!
Rudolf The Red Nosed Reindeer!
Love it! Can’t wait to curl up to a fire, some hot cocoa and stop motion on my tv!
Hello fellow Stop Motion Lovers!
I found a treat for you! Design graduate and stop motion enthusiast Neils Hoebers has come up with this cracking concept for a mobile, all-in-one stop motion mini studio to make the process that little bit more bearable. Of course, Neils sells his concept with a little stop-frame of it owns.
My only question is…WHERE DO I GET MY HANDS ON ONE OF THESE BRILLIANCES!
The users of Carterton Daytime Support won best animation at Oxford Film and Video Maker’s (OFVM) Flash Forward Film Festival, held at the Vue Cinema, Blackbird Leys.
The four-minute film, Amazing Animation, used clay figures, known as ‘claymation’, to tell stories from the imagination of group users.
Project Leader Selina Crozier said it was “amazing” to win.
She added: “We couldn’t have wished for a better outcome. It was very emotional. The guys haven’t stopped talking about it.”
One of the filmmakers, John Parratt, 45, said he was “really happy”, but “amazed”, to have won the award.
He added: “I didn’t think we would do it until I saw it on the big screen.’”
Mr Parratt’s segment of the film was about the dangers of smoking.
Say what you will about NBC‘s struggling Sophomore comedy, but you’ve got to hand it to Dan Harmon and crew for coming up with new ideas. As previously reported, Community will be doing a Christmas episode. What we didn’t know is it’ll feature stop motion clay animation!
From EW, “When Community ingénue Alison Brie (Annie) says, “It’s going to be a very special Christmas episode,” she means it. The sophomore comedy is officially going through with plans to produce a holiday eppy in stop-motion animation like the old Rankin/Bass classics.”
“It is so hard for me not to tell everybody I know about it,” exclaims Danny Pudi (Aped). “The minute we read that script, I was over-the-moon excited. It’s like that Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer special that you see every Christmas. But in true Community fashion, it’s also a little subversive and a little dark.”
The buzz about this episode is growing louder by the minute. The cast and crew even go as far as saying this might top Modern Warfare or the recent Halloween episode. Just looking at the first preview for the episode, we can’t say we object!
