Stop Motion
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Cotton Balls, Cling Film and Unashamed Composites: DP Tristan Oliver on Isle of Dogs
In Isle of Dogs, Wes Anderson’s Japan-set return to the world of stop motion animation, there is a character with a face full of freckles. This seemingly incidental attribute required the film’s lead puppet painter Angela Kiely to place 297 freckles on each of the puppet’s many interchangeable faces. All told, she painted over 22,000 freckles for the film. That is the painstaking diligence required for the art of stop motion animation, a form demanding an obsessive attention to minutia perfectly suited to Anderson’s fastidiousness. In a Wes Anderson film, no detail – not even a single freckle – is […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Apr 11, 2018 -
Watch: Radiohead’s New Single “Burn the Witch,” A Stop Motion Music Video
After doing a masterful job of getting the entire internet’s attention by simply deleting their entire social media presence, Radiohead dropped an honest-to-goodness new single and music video this morning. Chris Hopewell, who previously directed “There There” for the band, is behind this stop-motion clip (which bears traces of what appear to be 16mm scratches). In keeping with the song name “Burn the Witch,” the video draws on imagery from The Wicker Man and other manifestations of the “old, weird Britain.”
by Filmmaker Staff on May 3, 2016 -
Anomalisa, Stop-Motion Animation and How 3D Printers are Changing Filmmaking
Remember stop-motion, that venerable technique of animated films ranging from old-time children’s classics by Rankin/Bass to sword-and-sandals epics by Ray Harryhausen? Given the success of Pixar’s movies, Minions and other computer-animated features, you might have thought that 2D, hand-drawn, and traditional stop-motion has been relegated to the dust bin of history. Well, if you are a fan of these styles, don’t lose hope just yet. Opening just before the New Year was Charlie Kaufman’s much-anticipated directorial follow up to 2008’s Synecdoche, New York, Anomalisa. Directed by Kaufman and Duke Johnson, it’s being touted for its unique amalgam of animation processes […]
by Christianne Hedtke on Jan 11, 2016 -
Animals, Masks and the Horror of the Abject Object: The Power of Stop Motion Animation
In a world where media makers are acutely focused on creating narratives filled with empathetic characters in relatable environments, it seems worthwhile to look at the role artifice has played in the past and what is being lost due to its absence. Myth is filled with hard-to-relate-to characters that evoke tension and mystery. The anthropomorphic animals of Aesop, the half animal/half human gods of ancient Egypt, the half god/half mortal heroes of Greece, and the living dead of Haitian folklore are all creatures that defy simple quantification. In these creatures we see more than just a reflection of our outer […]
by Nicholas D'Agostino on Sep 11, 2014 -
Animating 1000 Parts: Creating the Short Day Shift
Ian Timothy, 18, is about to graduate high school — applying to art schools hoping to study animation — but he already has several years of animation experience under his belt. He created his first stop motion at 12 using a DV camera, and quickly discovered he liked doing it so much that it became “pretty much a full-time thing.” Timothy won a Silver Telly Award for animation in 2013, has created animation for music videos, and is currently working on an animation for Adult Swim for the Cartoon Network. In the following interview Timothy talks about the short Day […]
by Michael Murie on Feb 27, 2013 -
Animating the Inanimate: Interview with Charlie Collier
At 20 years of age, Charlie Collier of Zapamation may be a young filmmaker, but he’s already got almost eight years of stop-motion experience behind him. A self-taught animator, he says he was able to get into this partly because of the flexibility he gained from being homeschooled; he was able to incorporate animation into the curriculum. When he finished high school he decided to try his luck as a full-time freelancer. He hopes to attend film school some time in the future when he has built up “a little bit of a portfolio.” Collier has already created animations for clients […]
by Michael Murie on Jan 31, 2013 -
The Week in Cameras: The Software Edition
After the excitement of the last two weeks of camera announcements, here are some software announcements and updates that you might have missed. Prelude is unbundled One of the new apps to appear in Adobe Creative Suite 6 is Prelude, an ingestion and logging tool that is a separate application but works closely with Premiere. Prelude lets a user scan through the clips on a camera or memory card and select the ones they want to transfer or transcode. Metadata can be added, and it’s also possible to create very simple rough cuts within Prelude. The rough cuts and the […]
by Michael Murie on Sep 7, 2012 -
Tatia Rosenthal, $9.99
ALBERT (VOICED BY BARRY OTTO) AND THE ANGEL (VOICED BY GEOFFREY RUSH) IN DIRECTOR TATIA ROSENTHAL’S $9.99. COURTESY STRAND RELEASING. Being an independent filmmaker is difficult enough without adding the further challenges of animation, so it’s always a pleasure to see the emergence of a visionary talent like Tatia Rosenthal. The Israeli writer-director and stop motion animator was born in Tel Aviv in 1971 and explored some very diverse avenues before deciding on her current profession: Rosenthal was in the Israeli Defense Force for two years, spent a period of time at medical school and then studied photography in Paris […]
by Nick Dawson on Jun 19, 2009
