Stop Motion Love

I have a new obsession; the tedious, beautiful, whimsical world of stop motion animation.

I started searching you-tube to understand what stop motion is, how it's made. I came to realize it's created by making tiny movements, shooting each move, and making the final product look like a fluid movement or gesture. I sounds so easy, right? Well, the videos are labors of love, all time consuming labors of love.

In particular, one artist stands out for amazing stop motion short films, PES. I found some of the work on youtube, check out this 2009 "Honorable Mention" at Sundance titled Western Spaghetti.



I love the way PES uses objects like yarn as cheese, or pick-up sticks as raw noodles, its sort of Michel Gondry-esque. I have so much appreciation for this art form. Looking into it further, I discovered that stop motion is used much more than I thought. Here's another piece PES did, for Sneaux Shoes.



I didn't realize that tons of ads I see are done in stop motion, probably because the actions are so perfected, they look like they were done with conventional film. Some of my favorite movies, like Coraline were done using stop motion. I cannot even fathom how long a feature length film would take to shoot.

I am in love with the stop start stop start stop start world of stop motion.

stop.
ame

See more of PES's wonderful videos here.