Posts tagged 'Stop Motion'

Before Your Very Eyes

Thom Yorke + Flea + stop motion animation? Yes, please. Wait, Andrew Huang – of Mutual Core and SOLIPSIST fame – directed it? YES, PLEASE!!

Full-screen HD in a dark room with a nice pair of headphones is absolutely required. ENJOY!

P.S. A massive thanks is due to Brooks Ryba for the heads-up.

P.P.S. Our stop motion feed is filled with super-rad watchables.

[ Atoms For Peace - Before Your Very Eyes ]

The Deep End

Jake Fried has been hard at work since we first posted Waiting Room last May. His latest, The Deep End (attached above), is exceptional. Enjoy!

[ The Deep End ]

Etcetera

I wasn’t sure where this music video – by director/animator/illustrator/designer Martin Allais – was headed but ceased to care once the flowing bursts of animation kicked in at 0:41. It’s bizarre in the best of ways, diverting any effort that might have been paid towards narrative into an all-in exhibition of constantly morphing visuals. The animation shifts between hand-drawn and computer generated but shares a textural sheen that, when combined with the paper craft infused stop-motion, creates an intimate, playful atmosphere.

Technically, this project was ‘unofficial’ which just means My Dry Wet Mess didn’t have to pay a dime for a killer music video. It turns out that the bill was picked up by some generous folks over at IndieGoGo so ‘Cheers!’ to everyone who invested money out of ‘pure trust’, having no idea what Martin would end up creating.

I rather like this new, crowd funded world; thanks (again), internet.

Speaking of which, we’re indebted to ‘Mark I’ for dropping this one in our inbox. Thanks!

[ My Dry Wet Mess - Etcetera ]

Waiting Room

Trippy, mane.

Jake Fried creates his unique style of bizarre, constantly evolving animation by hand using only ink and wite-out. Once you’re done watching this, head over to his website to see more.

Cheers to Sam Lillard for the heads-up.

[ Waiting Room ]

The Rifle’s Spiral

“Good night to these wretched forms; all them gray eyes on the subway.
So long before you were born you were always to be a dagger floating…
...straight to their heart.”

Jamie Caliri conjures up an ethereal, bizarre and magical gumbo of visuals (with stylistic nods to Edward Gorey and Tim Burton) in this excellent stop motion music video for The Shins. It’s a treat friends, don’t hesitate to dive in.

A big thanks goes to Benjamin for sending this our way…cheers!

[ The Shins - The Rifle's Spiral ]

Runaway

Runaway by Aubrey Longley-Cook. (http://spoolspectrum.blogspot.com/)

Diggin’ this embroidered stop-motion by talented craftsman Aubrey Longley-Cook. Check out his awesome blog, spool spectrum, to see more.

[ spool spectrum: Runaway via imgur > Reddit ]

Easy Way Out

“Seventeen seconds and I’m over it, ready for the disconnect;
Putting on a brave face, trying not to listen to the voices in the back of my head.”

Have you guys seen Midnight in Paris yet? I highly recommend you check it out. Anyways, there’s this one scene where Ernest Hemingway is asked to read a book by another writer and he preemptively responds that he hates it, even though he hasn’t read it yet. When asked why he says, “If it’s bad, I’ll hate it. If it’s good, then I’ll be envious and hate it even more. You don’t want the opinion of another writer.”

There’s this weird thing with creative people. We’re inspired to make stuff because we admire stuff other people have made and then, when we finally start to make stuff of our own, some weird deeply-buried insecurities start to rise up and the stuff that used to inspire us now breeds resentment instead.

But that’s just a tendency, not necessarily a rule; every once in a while an artist comes around whose work oozes pure creativity that temporarily severs us from our baser competitive nature, freeing us to relax and truly enjoy what they’ve made. You know, someone like Gotye. Every song he writes sounds completely unique; it’s almost as if he takes a few months off in-between each one to explore a different aisle in some eclectic, well-curated record store.

For example: compare the brooding and contemplative Bronte (which we posted back in December) with the intriguing, subdued, angsty and catchy-as-hell Somebody That I Used to Know (which we’ve been meaning to post) with the Odelay-era Beck dirty-funk-rock of Easy Way Out (conveniently attached to the top of the post).

See what I mean? Anywho, all of the aforementioned tunes are off of the infinitely excellent Making Mirrors which you can buy on iTunes and just about everywhere else. The excellent, perfectly timed stop-motion visuals in the video were directed by Darcy Prendergast and executed by lots of other talented folks at Oh Yeah Wow who, you might recall, also created the super-mellow Rippled so be sure to check that out if you haven’t seen it already. Enjoy!

[ Gotye - Easy Way Out - official film clip ]

Weird Fishes

I was sick recently – the flu, I think – and the fever dreams that gripped me as I tossed and turned during my first attempt at sleep were truly bizarre. I would describe them as neither pleasant nor nightmarish but simply visions; strange, poignant and fleeting glimpses into another world. They were rooted in reality but wholly separate from it; vague narratives populated by people, concepts and places that I knew but presented in an entirely new context, overflowing with cryptic, I-can-almost-grasp-it-but-not-really messages.

The attached reminds me of those sweat-soaked, unsettling hallucinations so I thought it was only fitting to share it here on my webzone.

It was created by Tobias Stretch – who we’ve featured before – as an unofficial music video for a little group called Radiohead (have you heard of them?) whose tunes, for me at least, are always a bit perplexing so the pairing is just right. Enjoy the ride!

Cheers for sending this one in, Kelsey Guerra!

[ Weird Fishes by Radiohead ]

Accumulonimbus

“Natural and man-made objects on a spin cycle accumulate, disintegrate, and multiply. Created by stop motion animating clay on glass, the film is a meditation on motion and the life cycle of matter.”

Some very nice abstract, morphing stop-motion animation and sound design from the talented Andy Kennedy. If you’re interested in seeing how he put everything together then be sure to check out the making-of page on his website. It’s populated with lots of broken images but the process videos and text still load properly though so it’s definitely worth checking out.

[ Accumulonimbus ]

The Shrine / An Argument

How was everyone’s Thanksgiving? Mine was fantastic. I’ve been holding off on watching anything Christmas related until today but wanted to share the latest from cut-paper-stop-motion-specialist Sean Pecknold before I dive head-first into some of my favorite movies. We first featured Sean’s work back in June and this, like the former, is another stunning music video for Fleet Foxes. The partnership between Mr. Pecknold’s visual style and the Foxes’ unique sound makes sense – both exude a rare heady blend of warmth, earnestness and mystery – and this time around the abstract geometry has been swapped for a spiritual/nature narrative that deftly holds your attention for a full eight-and-a-half minutes. Full-screen and headphones are a must for this one. Enjoy!

P.S. I checked our suggestion box right as I was about to post this and was pleased to discover that Luke Beaton had recently written in, recommending we check it out. Thanks, Luke!

[ The Shrine / An Argument ]

I live in the woods!

Today’s dose of LOLWAT is served up by stop motion animator Max Winston who completed this project while studying at CalArts. Get ready for some bizarre whacked-out horror!

Cheers to Sam Lillard for another fantastic suggestion!

[ I Live in the Woods! ]

Ninja

The attention to detail is what makes this stop-motion animated short by Olivier Trudeau so fantastic. The inclusion of subtleties like swirling, hanging dust motes or a quick cutaway to an in-the-sand foot pivot plus some tight foley work make it a treat for the eyes and ears. This one’s a keeper. Full screen and headphones are mandatory. Enjoy!

[ Ninja ]

Love bird, hate bird

“Love bird is angry and has an axe. This HATE BIRD has to defeat the toys that are rising against him.”

File under: LOLWAT

[ Axe-Wielding Bird ATTACKS! via Peter Berkman > ceronprime ]

Neomorphus

A generous helping of bizarre courtesy of Animatorio‘s stop-motion wizardry. It’s very Burton-esque and just the thing to get you into the Halloween spirit. Enjoy!

P.S. Click here for a behind the scenes look into how Neomorphus was created.

[ Neomorphus ]

You Came Out

“The face paint animation film is made up of 4,816 separate stills. Each and every frame was hand-painted, shot, wiped off and redrawn, slightly differently for the next frame in order to create a seamless sequence. This time-consuming process involved the band members lying still for two consecutive days in a studio…more

Ida Gronblom & Fabian Berglund (of W+K) and David Wilson (one of the many talented directors at Blinkink) were tapped by We Have Band to direct/create this stop motion music video for their tune, You Came Out. We likey.

[ We Have Band - You Came Out (Official Music Video) ]

In The Summer

“I hear a noise, I put the spell, I put the coin,
Into the wishing well.
You make a point, I make a yell,
I am alive I make a yell into the wishing well.”

Tobias Stretch provides his bizarre directorial panache to this stop motion music video for multi-national indie dance outfit, Crystal Fighters. Prepare to soak in the strangeness, friends.

[ In The Summer by Crystal Fighters ]

Poisson Vert

Rogier van der Zwaag and Nobody Beats the Drum have teamed up again – y’all remember Grindin’, right? – to delicious effect. Headphones and full-screened HD is probably the most efficient way to ingest this strange, stop-motion journey through the forest backed with catchy electro-synth soaked grooves. Get up on it like this.

Fun Fact: This video was financed by the Dutch TAX fund and took over seven nights of shooting in the forests near Putten to complete. Click here if you’re interested in a behind-the-scenes peek of how it all came together.

[ Nobody Beats the Drum - Poisson Vert ]

Mykonos

“Brother you don’t need to turn me away, I was waiting down at the ancient gate;
You’ll go, wherever you go today, you’ll go today.”

Encourage your Saturday night mellow with this most chill of pairings: the delicious haunting harmonies of Fleet Foxes served alongside the abstract cut-paper stop motion visions of Sean Pecknold. Both Sean and ‘Foxes have been featured on The Tripatorium™ before which can be handily accessed through the following two hyperlinks: Knowledge / Grown Ocean.

A big thanks goes to Chris for the suggestion – cheers!

[ Fleet Foxes - Mykonos ]

Journey Through A Melting Brain

“Strata-cut animation is most commonly a form of clay animation in which a long bread-like “loaf” of clay, internally packed with varying imagery, is sliced into thin sheets, with the animation camera taking a frame of the end of the loaf for each cut, eventually revealing the movement of the internal images within.”

In the mid-90’s David Daniels revived and refined the stratacut animation technique that was originally pioneered in the 1920s by German animator Oskar Fischinger. The attached video is a montage of some of Daniels’ best sequences – prepare yourselves to bask in the weirdness. Enjoy!

[ Journey Through A Melting Brain (The Stratacut of David Daniels) ]

Rippled

“Painstakingly animated frame by frame, the piece is all shot in camera, by real people, in the real world, using long exposure techniques.”

Darcy Prendergast and the talented folks at OH YEAH WOW composed this chill, contemplative (and trippy) music video for All India Radio using long exposure light paintings. Serving Suggestion: lights dimmed and headphones on with phasers set to maximum mellow. Enjoy!

A big thanks goes to Tyler Vanston for the submission, cheers!

[ Rippled- All India Radio ]