Stop Motion Geek

Bristol-based stop motion artisan Aiden Whittam, after recently graduating from the University of the West of Bristol, England, where he earned a Bachelors Degree in Animation, has hit the ground running in the industry, embarking on a few very exciting projects, one of which was Edith Piaf (Said It Better Than Me) – the music video for the band Spark’s hit song – on which he worked as both an animator and a set-maker. Edith Piaf (Said It Better Than Me) – regarding which we published our first in a series of posts about the project last week, featuring our interview with the film’s director, Joseph Wallace – is nothing short of a treasure of the stop motion medium, having successively received a wealth of accolades and praises, perhaps the crown jewel of which coming from Sparks themselves, who hailed the video as, “Perhaps Sparks’ best video ever.” Seated among his accrued stop motion work, Aiden has worked at Aardman on Nick Park’s upcoming caveman stop motion film...

Neon feathers fly and a midnight chase ensues in a 1930s’ Paris imagined by BAFTA Cymru nominated director Joseph Wallace, traversing through streets, cafés, and across rooftops sporting tilted chimneys and scaly shingles in the music video for legendary American pop-alternative band Sparks’ latest hit, “Edith Piaf (Said It Better Than Me),” praised by the band as, “Perhaps Sparks’ best video ever.” Puppet immortalizations of Ron (left) and Russell Mael (right), as seen in the final video The video is a gorgeous and somewhat psychedelic romp through the stylized 1930s’ Paris cityscape – “Piaf’s Paris,” as dubbed by Wallace – through which we follow stop motion versions of the Mael brothers, Ron and Russell, whom together comprise Sparks, as they follow a large, neon-colored bird – a sight that provides a stark contrast to the otherwise moody, muddy color palette of Wallace’s Paris, composing a beautiful and exciting ambiance of 3-and-a-half-plus minutes of pure cinematic bli...

With four days left to go on Kickstarter, the documentary about the Oscar-winning filmmaker and Claymation filmmaker, Will Vinton, Welcome To My Daydream , climbs steadily towards its goal of $35,000 with 10k left to raise. Will Vinton, one of the stop motion industry’s most undervalued pioneers – who, in 1978, coined and trademarked the term “Claymation” – was the founder of Will Vinton studios, under which he contributed to creating iconic Claymation characters such as the California Raisins , ‘80s Domino’s mascot Noid , the non-Claymation Red and Yellow M&M’s, as well as having spearheaded Claymation films such as The Adventures of Mark Twain and A Claymation Christmas Celebration , as well as dozens of other feature-length and short films. Welcome To My Daydream tells the little-known saga of Will Vinton’s career and the and rise and fall of Will Vinton Studios, a stop motion production company founded with high hopes only to eventually fizzle out in the early 2000s, bere...

Donning a heavy winter coat, a young girl in a desert plants a protest sign among a forest of other such placards in the opening image of Father John Misty’s new music video, Things It Would Have Been Helpful To Know Before The Revolution . The words of her sign, “No big thing to give up the life we had,” – lyrics from the song – appear just as “Father John Misty” – the moniker of American singer-songwriter Joshua Tillman – sings the words, a motif frequently returned to throughout the video. The stop motion music video, produced by production company Jacknife Films, creates an interesting and very unique tone, one that is the effect of the song and film itself, both of which are, in many ways, a celebration of a incredibly bleak future. This theme is one that is embodied throughout the film often in little ironies – a winter coat worn while romping in the desert, a skeleton rotting next to a sign proclaiming “life is sweet,” an enormous city populated only by rats and cockroa...