millsworks

When I was a kid – the age of my son, actually – I and my best friend Bryan would make elaborate stop-motion animated films on Super 8 film in his mother’s garage and later in the back room office of our art teacher, Paul Jones. Massively elaborate productions – none of which, alas, have survived.

We were addicted to everything and anything related to stop motion, most notably the works of Willis O’Brien and Ray Harryhausen but also Georges Melies, George Pal, Norman MacLaren and others. Each new issue of Forrest J. Ackerman’s Famous Monsters Of Filmland would be devoured for any clues as to technique and process which would then studiously attempt to emulate with our feeble collection of tools.

All of this was long before I became a performer in theatre, television and film and a great many decades prior to being able to once again hold the reigns of my own productions (albeit in larger studios than Mrs. McCormick’s garage) and manipulate small figures to do my bidding and tell nifty stories.

What goes around comes around, I guess.

My wife, who is a puppeteer but also an artist, designer and animator, is currently doing a lot of work for a prominent stop-motion animation company here in Toronto. She sculpted a caricature animation figure of Harryhausen that was given to him as a gift when he visited town promoting his book. I was there but too shy to thank him for my life.

All of my studies and work have in one way or another always been linked or related to this form; from mime, commedia del art̩, clowning, acrobatics, dance, puppetry, special visual effects design, CG animation, script writing, directing, you name it Рall except being a plongeur at the Gavroche Gourmand or cooking burgers at the Brunswick House Рall these varied gigs were all connected with the means to tell stories through the visual and physical actions of characters.

Today, over at Flavorwire, I stumbled across Chloe Fleury‘s marvellous animated short which conveys the history and attendant magic of the art of stop-motion animation. It is very sweet.

Enjoy.

My own last effort at true stop-motion was this brief intro I submitted for Ze Frank’s The Show:

I love stop-motion.

Cheers.