Seth Green Launches Series ‘Stoopid Monkey’ on YouTube
This could not be a better news if you are a Robot Chicken fan like me! The more I can get to see funny and awesome stop motion the happier I get so yeiii!
Robot Chicken creators Seth Green and Matthew Senreich and their Stoopid Monkey Productions are launching a new YouTube live-action-meets-stop-motion animated series called Stoopid Monkey.
Two episodes of series will premiere every Friday beginning this week for 10 weeks on YouTube.com/StoopidMonkey. Green and Senreich partnered with Joe Kavanagh, who launched the Harry Potter, Batman and Justice League action figure brands for Mattel, for the project.
The series, which revolves around the misadventures of Stoopid Monkey, Biggie and QT (voiced by Senreich, Green and Hillary Bergen) as they interact with real people. The onscreen role of Stoopid Monkey is shared by Jonathan Morgan Heit (Bedtime Stories) and Danny Woodburn (Seinfeld), Biggie by Brian Allen. The trio will be digitally replaced by stop-motion animated characters using Buddy System Studios’ stop-live animation.
Buddy System’s John Harvatine IV, Eric Towner and David Brooks direct; Matthew Beans wrote and produced the sketch shorts with Steve Tzirlin and Nakia Trower-Shuman and live-action producer Terence Liff.
UTA packaged the deal for Green, Senreich, Kavanagh and Tzirlin.
Don’t forget to check out Stoopid Monkey’s site at http://www.stoopidmonkey.com/
Montreal Stop Motion Film Festival
I it that time again, when awesome things happen and the Montreal Stop Motion Film Festival is one of this things! This is a great opportunity to submit your work and share it with stopmotion lovers around the world.
The 2011 Montreal Stop-Motion Film Festival
From the charm of Gumby, to the wild adventures of Wallace and Gromit, through the zaniness of Jack Skelington in The Nightmare before Christmas, we have all fallen under the magical spell of characters brought to life by stop-motion animation! Laboriously created by artists moving puppets in tiny increments while recording one image at a time, each short sequence can represent many hours of painstaking attention to detail. Time consuming? Definitely! But the result can be mesmerizing and possess near universal appeal.
Frequently used in television and feature films, stop-motion animation has recently experienced a resurgence. Despite this, getting their work screened can still be a huge struggle for many artists. This is why we have decided to celebrate and encourage the efforts and talent of the many people working in this unique art form.
We hope you will come and join us for this new edition of the Montreal Stop-Motion Film Festival.
http://www.stopmotionmontreal.com/news.html
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Blue Ray JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH – SPECIAL EDITION
When producer Tim Burton crafted his now classic stop-motion film A NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS with director Henry Selick, it was unlike any other children’s film out there. Certainly there were echoes of HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS, but it was wrapped around Burton’s wild imagination and crazy, dark designs.
Burton’s stop-motion follow-up was 1996’s JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH which was once again directed by Selick.
This time, it was an adaptation of the classic Roald Dahl short story which mixed live action and stop motion in a failed attempt to capture that WIZARD OF OZ zeitgeist.
When I first saw it, I was terribly disappointed, but felt maybe the anticipation for the project did me in.
Watching it 14 years later however, and on Blu-ray, I’m struck by the same ambivalent feelings. JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH is an uneven and way too dark exploration of a young boy who escapes his wretched home life from his two horrible Aunts and finds himself on an adventure inside a giant peach.
There he meets friends of the garden variety – literally garden bugs such as a spider, a centipede, a ladybug, an earthworm and a grasshopper.
It takes awhile for the film to get to this stop-motion part – and once there, Selick does wring some occasional magic out of it. The shark attack is well executed and the pirate battle underwater (featuring a cameo appearance by NIGHTMARE’s Jack Skellington) is pretty cool.
But from the uninvolving songs by usually pitch perfect Randy Newman to the awkward voice casting, JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH never soars and doesn’t becomes the imaginative and wondrous world the original book once promised.
Instead it’s uneven and particularly the first live-action part, too freaky, strange and scary for even the little kids.
DIGITAL TRANSFER
Surprisingly, the digital transfer is not very good here. The images aren’t as sharp and clear as they should be. There’s grain, and the blacks are a little too dark. The brighter moments on the high seas have much more clarity, but it still feels like an upconverted DVD rather than a brand new digitally mastered print.
SPECIAL FEATURES
Not much here. There’s an archive featurette on the making of the film, the “Good News” video performed by Randy Newman (the best song of the bunch) and the theatrical trailer. There’s a new interactive game called “Spike the Aunts” that’s fun, but more special features would have been nice.
Like many of the recent Disney Blu-ray reissues, you also get a DVD version of the film on top of the Blu-ray disc which has added value.
This 1996 follow-up to A NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS and adaptation of the Roald Dahl book, still misses that special ‘magic’ on this Blu-ray release
Grade: C+
Writer(s): Karey Kirkpatrick, Jonathan Roberts, Steve Bloom based on the story by Roald Dahl
Director: Henry Selick
SRP: $39.99
Rating: PG
Distributor: Walt Disney Home Entertainment
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Montreal Stop Motion Film Festival!!!
Everybody get super exited now the Montreal Stop Motion Film Festival is back and ready for your movie! Lets spread the word of this great festival and help stop motion grow bigger and bigger every day!
I know there is some amazing work out there with amazing talented animators with fantastic stories to tell, so submit your work and lets all enjoy some great films! This is going to be crazy fun, don’t miss it!
Hot on the heels of the hugely successful first edition of the Montreal Stop Motion Film Festival, we are officially opening the Call for Entries for 2010.
To enter your film in the festival, download a submission form, fill it out, and send it, along with your film.
Deadline for film submissions is: September 10, 2010.
Our mission:
From the charm of Gumby, to the wild adventures of Wallace and Gromit, through the zaniness of Jack Skelington in The Nightmare before Christmas, we have all fallen under the magical spell of characters brought to life by stop-motion animation! Laboriously created by artists moving puppets in tiny increments while recording one image at a time, each short sequence can represent many hours of painstaking attention to detail. Time consuming? Definitely! But the result can be mesmerizing and possess near universal appeal.
Frequently used in television and feature films, stop-motion animation has recently experienced resurgence. Despite this, getting their work screened can still be a huge struggle for many artists. This is why we have decided to celebrate and encourage the efforts and talent of the many people working in this unique art form.
The festival will be held in Montreal, from the 29th to the 31st of October 2010
Please visit the site at:
http//www.stopmotionmontreal.com
submission forms:
http://www.stopmotionmontreal.com/Entries.html
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Drinking and Drawing Miami: April
Over 150 people attended the event,
65 had the guts to make the film happen.
Ladies and gentlemen, Drinking and Drawing Miami 4
For those of you not familiar with Miami World it is The first non-profit film studio in Miami providing tools for filmmakers to ensure an increased production of high quality films. The major components of MWCC are to: Seek and cultivate creative talent, supplement film education, promote local filmmakers and develop projects for production
http://www.miamiworldcinemacenter.org/
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Chaisson: Rise of the Zerad Trailer
Kevin Ulrich brings clay to life, with help of $5,000 grant
Biola University senior Kevin Ulrich wasn’t an average 11-year-old, already writing stories and interested in producing them, he saved his lawn mowing money to buy Lego’s stop motion program to bring his stories to life. Graduating on May 29, 2010 from Biola’s Cinema and Media Arts program, Ulrich’s young creativity and ambition have carried him through high school and college. On Thursday, May 13, 2010, Ulrich’s stop motion animation film, “Chaisson,” funded by a $5,000 grant from the state of New Mexico, premiered in Anaheim, Calif. at Cinema Fusion theatre. Biola University’s student newspaper, The Chimes, reports Ulrich’s story.
Kevin Ulrich has wanted to be a storyteller as long as he can remember. This May, his dream will be realized on screen, in what he hopes will be two sold out showings at Cinema Fusion in Anaheim with his new film, “Chaisson: Rise of the Zerad.”
“I was homeschooled and I remember my mom teaching me how to write,” Ulrich said. “As soon as I learned how to write I wanted to write stories. My brothers would be in the other room playing video games and I would be writing stories.”
Ulrich’s writing turned to media when he and his brother began to make his stories into radio dramas. Together, they pooled their imaginative resources to use noises from their action figures, along with Star Wars music tracks, to create their own worlds and stories to play back later.
What began with a love for storytelling became a fascination with filmmaking when Ulrich was 11 and Lego began to advertise their stop motion program. After spending the summer saving his lawn mowing money to buy Lego’s program, Ulrich’s father offered him his old video camera so that he could begin bringing his stories to life. After that, he began to make short films of his Legos.
At 13, Ulrich decided to make his first feature length fantasy animation film with stop motion clay animation. When he arrived at Biola, he expected to begin doing something different, he said. Instead, he realized it was the medium he enjoyed most. While he thought that school would start him on a path towards “real action” films, he found that they bored him to death.
“I want to make movies of other worlds,” Ulrich said.
With that in mind, Ulrich began to work on a project he thought would become a 15-minute film. He said he was both surprised and excited when it turned into a half-hour long screen play.
The project became “Chaisson,” a stop motion animation fantasy, Ulrich describes as a mash up between “Wallace and Gromit” and “Lord of the Rings.”
The film centers on the fantasy world of Chaisson and the vendetta between the Elves of Enderen and the monstrous Zerad lizards. All-out war breaks out between the two sides and the elves must find a way to survive as they are doggedly pursued by the Zerad.
Soon after he began working his project, the state of New Mexico awarded Ulrich with a $5,000 grant toward his work, a result of the state’s decision to encourage independent filmmakers. Ulrich taught several filmmaking workshops under the grant’s stipulations and has been able to devote his summers entirely to his film rather than splitting his time between work and his project.
Still, Ulrich said that the grant money doesn’t even come close to covering the amount of hours he has spent on his project.
“If I didn’t enjoy it, I’d be an idiot to spend so much time on it,” Ulrich said.
Ulrich said that he focused on doing the next thing that was in front of him to keep focus through such a long project.
“I always knew it would get done, just not how or when,” Ulrich said. “I’m a one stage at a time kind of person. When I’m shooting the opening sequence, I don’t think about the final scene.”
When working with stop motion, Ulrich said it was especially critical for him to focus on one scene at a time. Every second of his film included about fifteen individual, tiny movements to the clay figurines he made by hand for his film. He spent days taking thousands of photos of tiny movements he made in his figurines, sometimes moving an entire battlefield of figures, one at a time, for each shot.
In order to get the right dimensions between his figurines, Ulrich made them in different sizes, so they appear to be closer or further away on film. In reality, they are three different sizes: one inch, three inches and six inches. His largest figure, a “Chutuckien,” is a foot tall.
For his film’s sound effects, Ulrich and his co-producers took sounds from sites like findsounds.com and Biola’s sound effects library. Growls from bears and lions, even some elephants and whales, were mixed and changed to take on the unique form of his characters. All together, more than 125 sound tracks were used to complete the score and sound effects for the film — more than any previous film from a Biola student.
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Prince of Persia LEGO!!!
This link was sent to us by our good Twitter friend @StudioCGT (I recommend you check out their work its awesome!) Its Prince of Persia done with Lego stop motion, all of those combination can just say one thing… AWESOMENESS!!!
There are a few things I hope are written about me when I pass on. One of those — the naming of my child Wilford Brimley Cocoon Jacks — has yet to happen, but number two on the list is ready to be crossed from my bucket list. Over the past month, my colleague Matt Harper and I have been diligently re-creating the “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” movie trailer using nothing but Legos. It’s been a strange trip since I first laid eyes on a two-inch Ben Kingsley Lego figure at Toy Fair earlier this year, and I immediately knew it was my destiny to animate him.
Watch Prince of Persia Stop Motion and finish reading article
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Tom Ray 1919 – 2010
Tom started at Warner Bros. in 1937 and worked for MGM after WWII in the Hanna-Barbera Tom & Jerry unit. After stints at Sutherland and UPA in the fifties, he went to Warners where he earned animator credits on a number of Bob McKimson and Chuck Jones cartoons.
Over the following years he worked at one time or another for almost every major studio in L. A., including stints at Hanna-Barbera and Warners, and also founded his own shop, Archer Productions. He served more than once on Local 839′s Executive Board, most recently in the period leading up to his retirement in 1988. After retirement he moved to the East Coast where he taught animation and founded Tomstone Animation.
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Stop Motion coming to Disney/Pixar…
Thanks to our twitter friend @Caboomtweet it came to our attention that the Coraline director Henry Selick has been recruited to do a stop motion animation for the Animation Big-wigs and reuniting him with his old pals!
I am excited to hear more about the project, if anyone knows what the project is about or where I can get some insider info I would love to hear it!!
Here is the original article:
http://animationmagazine.net/article/11355
Hope you had a great Easter weekend!
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Kuky Returns
This movie will be amazing, now I don’t speak Czech so please if I made a terrible mistake anywhere please do let me know.
I did a bit of research to try to know what the movie is about and this is what I found.
Kuky is the plush pink bear, and his owner the little boy has asthma so he cant have him anymore. (I know its sad, but not for long). The mother of the child throws Kuky away only to release him to a world of magical adventures.
This movie looks amazing, the character design, the photography specially looks great. This movie is a bit of everything, it has live action, some stop motion and some live puppetry.
If you know anything else about this film that you want to share with us, I encourage you to send it and we will post it here.
Hope you guys enjoy it.
Please check out Kuky Returns website there are nice pictures of the making of
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