Stop Motion Geek

Noah Harris and Andy Biddle take us on a breathtaking journey through time and space to explore the story of man and human nature, every facet of which they exemplify in collected detritus – knick-knacks and other odd artifacts – each item personifying a different aspect of humanity – from our most tragic flaws to our greatest achievements – in their new short film, Salvation . The origin for Salvation – the compilation of a series of eight interconnected films, created by Andy and Noah – began with a collaboration between the animation production company Blinkink and the record label Village Green Recordings to create a series of films featuring various songs from Village Green’s 2017 roster – a project which was supported by and premiered on Random Acts . Each film is short, ranging from 22 to 33 seconds long, and explores a chapter in the overall narrative arc of a poignantly poetic summation of humanity’s most spectacular nadirs and highpoints. It begins in the first film, “...

The trailer for Wes Anderson’s new stop motion film, Isle of Dogs , is finally here. The trailer offers us a glimpse at the aesthetic and milieu of the film, beginning with a Wes Anderson-style fast-paced montage of shots featuring a futuristic Japanese city. A narrator sets the stage, “The Japanese archipelago, twenty years in the future: canine saturation has reached epidemic proportions. An outbreak of dog-flu rips rips through the city of Megasaki. Mayor Kobayashi issues emergency orders calling for a hasty quarantine. Trash Island becomes an exile colony – the Isle of Dogs.” “I don’t think I can stomach any more of this garbage,” asserts Rex, voiced by Edward Norton, a dog exiled to the Isle of Dogs as several other dogs in the background feast on, well…garbage. The trailer boasts very much in a very short amount of time, spending the majority of its runtime focused on quick snapshots of the ensemble cast of characters, voiced and animated by top performers in both indust...

Last year a unique infusion of stop motion came to the wildly weird and zany Land of Ooo – the magical fantasy world of the popular Cartoon Network show Adventure Time . The 11-minute all-stop-motion episode was spearheaded by animator and filmmaker Kirsten Lepore and the talented crew at Bix Pix Entertainment – a California-based stop motion studio. In the making-of video for this season 7 episode – Bad Jubies – Kelli Bixler, executive producer on the project, explains that Kirsten was the ideal candidate to bring episode-length stop motion to the show because of the simplistic aesthetic of the show and its correlation to her prior work in animation. Her past work in stop motion, such as is employed in her short films Move Mountain and Sweet Dreams , has a unique aesthetic – one that is very minimalistic and yet charming, giving her work a very intimate feel. Rachel Larsen , Animation supervisor on the project and an artist at Bix Pix, elaborates concerning Kirsten’s work, “When...

Nearly two years ago, Star Wars: The Force Awakens hit theaters. Star Wars: The Last Jedi , the sequel to Awakens , is set to hit theaters this December. Beyond being revered for its use of homage and devotion to staying true to the tone of the original trilogy, Awakens was celebrated in the special effects community for its use of many state-of-the-art digital effects, innovations only recently pioneered, all of which were practically alien to the practical effects methods employed in the original Star Wars trilogy. However, Awakens did not yet completely forsake what many would today consider its humble beginnings in special effects, including the original film’s use of stop motion. One such homages in The Force Awakens to the original film can be seen for a brief moment when the character of Finn accidentally turns on a holographic chess board in the Millennium Falcon – an effect entirely created with stop motion. Chances are that you remember the scene from the original fi...

Aardman explores prehistoric times in Early Man , the studio’s new stop motion film. It is also the first solo directorial debut of Academy Award winner and Wallace and Gromit creator Nick Park, whose previous feature-length directorial outings were Chicken Run and Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit , which he directed alongside Peter Lord and Steve Box, respectively. Earlier today, the studio released a new poster for the film along with a trailer (both of which are posted below), which is the first real glimpse at the plot of the film that we’ve gotten. An official synopsis was also released, reading: Set at the dawn of time, when prehistoric creatures and woolly mammoths roamed the earth, Early Man tells the story of Dug, along with sidekick Hognob as they unite his tribe against a mighty enemy Lord Nooth and his Bronze Age City to save their home. Concerning the trailer, Nick Park said to the Hollywood Reporter : “Today we get to meet Dug’s tribe, a lovab...