The Boogey monster, in stop motion!!

My boy friend Terry has been at it again, he's made a new stop motion short film, using figurines he made himself, going as far as sewing the clothes himself and building this small bed/monster himself too!

He's getting better and better, it's not quite Nightmare before Christmas or the Aardman studios yet, it still needs a little more polishing, and we need to find a way of keeping the camera perfectly steady (ie buy a tripod) but he's on his way there.

I think he's very talented considering that he is working on a zero budget, but that's for you to decide I guess:

Bionicle pig, the movie!

My boy friend Terry has got me very excited about stop motion.

For those of you who don't know, stop motion is a technique that involves taking stills after stills of a creature, moving it ever so slightly in between each still, and then playing all those stills one after another to give the illusion of movement.

Before meeting Terry, all I knew about stop motion was old Ray Harryausen movies such as Clash of the titans, which had their charm but looked a bit naff. Before CGI, this was the only ay to create any sort of monster! I found this very good compilation of his best moments:



A few more recent examples were the Wallace & Gromit movies and The nightmare before Christmas, and the painfully perfect technique, where it looks like it took a few weeks just to get an arm to move.

However there has been a surged of interest in this technique, due to the modern viewers getting tired of CGI and the relative ease to create your own stop motion short, indeed, there has loads of them in Youtube, my favourite being this beauty, an amateur masterpiece if you ask me

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Terry, ever so creative, has spent a lot of time creating pasliticine figurines and experimenting with this technique recently. I think he's got a lot of talent. Here are his first attempts, they are very rough around the edge as he needs to get a tripod and polish them but I find them very promising, I am going to help him make some proper ones. Beware reader, the second one is very gory!

Persepolis, a surprise win?

I am pressed with time today, however I am pleased to report that Persepolis, that French animation about the Islamic revolution in Iran in the 70's, has had a 20mn standing ovation at its Cannes presentation, the director Marjane Satrapi was in tears.

I talked about it a few days ago so scroll down for that and the trailer, I was predicting at the time that due to its original style and topical subject, the film could be a sleeper hit... We'll just have to wait for Sunday! The new "Triplettes de Belleville", with added political satire?

Obviously this film has attracted the anger of Iran, who has been playing political ping pong with the French governement, accusing him of interfering with the festival to ensure the film was being screened... The Festival is well above any kind of political pressure (or I'd like to think so...)