Director Dannah Nayblat Could Use A Little Help To Heat Things Up.

Director Dannah Nayblat could use your help and support to finish her labor of love, a stop-motion animated music video. It's true, I get many submissions about projects on kickstarter, but it was her explanatory video asking for help, and the goodies with which she rewards her backers, that got my attention. Of course her personal note to me, gushing with praise about my blog and my readers, didn't hurt.



Some Like it Hot is the song title of an animation music video that she's been working on in her spare time (and sleep time :) for the last couple of years, for a band named Club Des Belugas. The technique she's using is stop motion, but rather than taking a series of still photos and editing them in a sequence, which is traditional stop motion - she takes photos of the actors and place them in virtual sets that she designs on her computer.



There are several stages to the process - first she selects the photos she'll be using and edits a sketch of the scene (they shot hundreds of photos for each little scene). Then she does the artwork. Aside from creating the backgrounds, she may need to place items in the actor's hands, change the color of their shirt, re-style their hair or change their whole head... There are also many adjustments that need to be made in terms of scale and color correction so that all the components work together. Finally, she exports the final frames and place them in the video.

The whole thing is EXTREMELY time consuming (as many creatives know)!

You can see part of her work process, in the video below, to better understand what takes so long... and hopefully you'll think that the results are worth it and help fund her on kickstarter.



"Visually striking, imaginative & funny stop-motion animation video for a great song!" is the description of her kickstarter project that launched a couple of days ago and instantly became a STAFF PICK.



The band - Club Des Belugas - is based in Germany, the singer, Brenda Boykin, with her unique (award winning) deep voice, is American, and the band members are from different countries. Danna is based in Israel, but the leading male, Starskee Suave and Gilad Koriski, the photographer who captured him, both live in Los Angeles (she directed those sessions in the middle of the night, via skype...)



The israeli team includes photographer Shiran Carmel and the lovely Ester Rada, who is the female lead. Ester is a known Israeli actress, and though she isn't the performer of this song, she's a great singer in her own right (her single Save a Little Love for Me from the new Club Des Belugas album, is one of the rewards offered for your pledges). The hair and makeup artist is Zion Ashkenazi and the wardrobe was contributed by Hila Aharon.


above: Director Dannah Nayblat

Learn more about her project here, and help her turn her dream into a reality, on kickstarter.

Fresh Guacamole, The Follow Up to Spaghetti Western by Adam Pesapane, aka PES.

The latest stop-motion short, Fresh Guacamole, by Adam Pesapane, the artist known as PES, is a feast for the eyes. The follow-up to his Spaghetti Western is a claymation stop motion film in which he crafts homemade guacomole from random household objects, everchanging during the preparation.



If you never saw his most famous stop motion video, Spaghetti Western, which won several awards including *2009 Sundance Film Festival Winner, *TIME Magazine voted #2 Viral Video of the Year and the *2009 Audience Award, Annecy Animation Festival, watch it below:


PES is one person, not a film collective or a production company.

"Clicking on a PES film is to open a safe and suddenly see a million ideas glittering and exploding," says Director Michel Gondry. "The only reason you close the door is to re-open it just after and discover what will pop this time." - Paste Magazine

PES Channel on YouTube

Office Toy Satisfies His Cabin Fever In This Animated Short by Director Tom Jenkins.

'Address Is Approximate' is a sweet little stop motion animated short made as a personal project by director Tom Jenkins. A lonely desk toy longs for escape from the dark confines of the office, so he takes a cross country road trip to the Pacific Coast in the only way he can – using a toy car and Google Maps Street View.

The short was shot using a Canon 5d MkII, Dragonframe Stop Motion software and customised slider. All the screen imagery was animated - there are no screen replacements.



Music by Cinematic Orchestra. The track is Arrival of the Birds and the album can purchased on itunes here.

Produced, animated, filmed, lit, edited and graded by Tom Jenkins of The Theory

You can view 'making of' pics on Facebook here.

Marcel The Shell Sequel, Book, Activity Kit and Mobile Apps Continue The Cuteness.

I was thrilled to learn that director/writer Dean Fleischer-Camp and commedienne, writer (and Marcel's voice) Jenny Slate have produced another short film starring the lovable and quirky Marcel the Shell With Shoes On.



Along with the release of this sequel, Penguin has published a book for children (and enjoyable for adults, too) about the impish stop-motion shell named Marcel called Marcel the Shell With Shoes On: Things About Me



To learn about how Marcel The Shell came to life and see the first video, go here.

Now there's even a Marcel the Shell mobile app for both the iPhone and iPad:



And a downloadable PDF Activity kit with a maze, a word puzzle and coloring pages (art for the kit by Amy Lind):


Download the Marcel the Shell Activity Kit

Buy the new Marcel The Shell With Shoes On book here.

See who voices Marcel the Shell and how he came to life here.

Kia uses Nail Art in a Stop-Motion Animation Film to Market the Picanto.

To market the new KIA Picanto, Kia Motors of Korea came up with a novel way to say "small." Using painted fingernails as stop motion animation to serve as a metaphor for packing things into a small vehicle.













The project took 25 days (and nights), 900 fingernails, 1200 bottles of nail polish and 2 hours to complete each piece of nail art.







The result is a video (cut as a :21 second teaser, a 1:13 second spot and a 2 minute director's cut)



Full version:





The director's cut, shown below, includes nails painted to call out features -like those shown below- as well as for the stop motion animation:





Images from the director's cut only:









Kia Picanto microsite