Computer Animation Arts

Giant wonderful monster puppets!

This is gorgeous! Watch! Stems from ainslie henderson on Vimeo .

MANOMAN from Simon Cartwright on Vimeo .

Watch this lovely short film about rustic automata designer/maker, Blair Somerville, and ache for a simpler life... Lost & Found from Joey Bania on Vimeo .

A Portrait of the Puppet Master as a Young Man from Great Big Story on Vimeo .

A lovely insight into the craft and graft of puppet design and making at Laika.

Find twenty minutes of your time to watch this fascinating documentary on the various ways in which Jedi villain, Jabba The Hutt, was brought to life for the screen.  Perhaps you've picked up on it already, but there's a backlash against the use of CGI for everything in movies, especially for creatures and characters.  There's a debate getting started here: materiality vs virtuality - it's the stuff of dissertations...  

A nice 'behind-the-magic' featurette from the dinosaur-makers of Jurassic World : "It's a puppet!"

"Richard Teschner, (born March 22, 1879, Carlsbad, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary—died July 4, 1948, Vienna, Austria), puppeteer who developed the artistic potentialities of the Javanese rod puppet for western puppet theatre."

I saw this and thought about the second years' adaptation project... "A recent television commercial is standing out among the others, not as much for the product that it’s advertising, but for the story it tells about a seven year old girl named Emily. Blind since birth, Emily’s imagination runs free when she experiences movies, including her favorite: the 1939 classic film The Wizard of Oz .. . watch how a team of set designers, puppet makers, and filmmakers put together a collaborative version of Emily’s creative vision for what Oz and its beloved characters look like ." Emily's Oz - Making Of Emily's Oz

As you watch this incredible showreel of Gustav Hoegen's animatronic work for the movies, keep a tab on the number of times you think to yourself, 'f**k me, I thought that was cgi...'

This was posted on Last Exit to Nowhere' s Facebook page and after watching it I felt it was definitely something to share! Directed and animated by Paul Berry, this animation is full of German Expressionist influences and it's delightfully creepy. "The Sandman is a highly stylised puppet-animation, a beautifully crafted, but ultimately horrible interpretation of an old European folktale...Using the hallmarks of Expressionist cinema, director Paul Berry creates a darkly atmospheric film that evokes and preys on our childhood fears and nightmares ...The Sandman was nominated for an Oscar in 1992, and won the Best Short Film award at Annecy in 1993 ." - Caren Willig, BFI Screen Online

As part of the 'Notes from the Uncanny Valley' presentation, I referenced two stories in the 1945 portmanteau film, Dead of Night - The Haunted Mirror and The Ventriloquist's Dummy . Both short films are wonderfully atmospheric - perfect for a snowy evening - and both capitalise on the 'unheimlich' characteristics of mirrors and 'effigy objects' (dolls, puppets, waxworks, mannequins). Indeed, ventriloquism is an essentially 'uncanny' act - it appeals to our basic fascination/revulsion at the idea of inanimate objects having a secret life.