We at Stop Motion Magazine would like to express our deep sadness at the loss of Ray Harryhausen and would also like to send our condolences to his friends and family.

Without Ray Harryhausen the art form that we know as stop motion animation would most likely have never become the wonderful form of expression and art that we choose to release our inner most ideas and dreams.

The Ray and Diana Harryhausen Foundation has made the following statement which can be found on their FaceBook Page: LINK

“Raymond Frederick Harryhausen

Born: Los Angeles 29th June 1920
Died: London 7th May 2013.

The Harryhausen family regret to announce the death of Ray Harryhausen, Visual Effects pioneer and stop-motion model animator. He was a multi-award winner which includes a special Oscar and BAFTA. Ray’s influence on today’s film makers was enormous, with luminaries; Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Peter Jackson, George Lucas, John Landis and the UK’s own Nick Park have cited Harryhausen as being the man whose work inspired their own creations.

Harryhausen’s fascination with animated models began when he first saw Willis O’Brien’s creations in KING KONG with his boyhood friend, the author Ray Bradbury in 1933, and he made his first foray into filmmaking in 1935 with home-movies that featured his youthful attempts at model animation. Over the period of the next 46 years, he made some of the genres best known movies – MIGHTY JOE YOUNG (1949), IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA (1955), 20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH (1957), MYSTERIUOUS ISLAND (1961), ONE MILLION YEARS B.C. (1966), THER VALLEY OF GWANGI (1969), three films based on the adventures of SINBAD and CLASH OF THE TITANS (1981). He is perhaps best remembered for his extraordinary animation of seven skeletons in JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS (1963) which took him three months to film.

Harryhausen’s genius was in being able to bring his models alive. Whether they were prehistoric dinosaurs or mythological creatures, in Ray’s hands they were no longer puppets but became instead characters in their own right, just as important as the actors they played against and in most cases even more so.

Today The Ray & Diana Harryhausen Foundation, a charitable Trust set up by Ray on the 10th April 1986, is devoted to the protection of Ray’s name and body of work as well as archiving, preserving and restoring Ray’s extensive Collection.

Tributes have been heaped upon Harryhausen for his work by his peers in recent years.

“Ray has been a great inspiration to us all in special visual industry. The art of his earlier films, which most of us grew up on, inspired us so much.” “Without Ray Harryhausen, there would likely have been no STAR WARS”
George Lucas.

“THE LORD OF THE RINGS is my ‘Ray Harryhausen movie’. Without his life-long love of his wondrous images and storytelling it would never have been made – not by me at least”
Peter Jackson

“In my mind he will always be the king of stop-motion animation”
Nick Park

“His legacy of course is in good hands
Because it’s carried in the DNA of so many film fans.”
Randy Cook

“You know I’m always saying to the guys that I work with now on computer graphics “do it like Ray Harryhausen”
Phil Tippett

“What we do now digitally with computers, Ray did digitally long before but without computers. Only with his digits.”
Terry Gilliam.

“His patience, his endurance have inspired so many of us.”
Peter Jackson

“Ray, your inspiration goes with us forever.”
Steven Spielberg

“I think all of us who are practioners in the arts of science fiction and fantasy movies now all feel that we’re standing on the shoulders of a giant.
If not for Ray’s contribution to the collective dreamscape, we wouldn’t be who we are.”
James Cameron”

 You need to check it out if you want to see some great work from his collaborated team of stop mo misfits.

Epic Awesomeness but be warned it is very violent!

Watch it here: LINK

The Famed Oscar Award Winning Director  Daniel Greaves has launched a Kickstarter Campaign to finish his highly entertaining short film “Mr. Plastimime”. The short film is a hybrid of stop motion puppetry, CGI, and handdrawn animation. If you are unfamiliar with Daniel Greaves then you have missed out in a big way. His film Manipulation won an Oscar back in 1991 and was a major hit, he also Directed the 30 minute film Flatworld (a paper cutout Stop Motion film) which was released in 1997 and won a bunch of awards.

Definitely checkout his past work and give this Kickstarter a view. You will be very pleased with what you find.

Kickstarter Campaign: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tandemfilms/daniel-greaves-mr-plastimime-a-claymation-short-fi?ref=home_spotlight

Check it out here LINK

They also worked on a recent Arrowhead Spring Water Commercial. You should definitely check this out for the simplistic but yet effective use of plastic wrap to make water, bubble wrap for a road/sidewalk and lots of creative elements added to the piece.

Check it out here LINK

The legendary Stephen Chiodo will be teaching and animation master class at Laguna College of Art + Design. For those of you interested in taking the class you can contact the college at ANIMATIONMASTERCLASS@LCAD.EDU.

The deadline is April 15, 2013 and the cost of the class is $2500.

Sounds Super Exciting!

The gang over at Stoopid Buddy Stoodios located in Burbank California are now offering an introduction to character animation at their award-winning studio. Having just finished their production of Robot Chicken, Dinosaur Office, and MAD TVs SPY vs. SPY, the production facility has been decked out with some of the latest equipment at his home to some of the best stop motion animators in the industry.

To find out more about this awesome opportunity feel free to email getclassy@leagueofbuddies.com.

BENT IMAGE LAB the studio located in Portland Oregon has recently offered up another round of great adventures for the Portlandia comedic television series. Once again BENT has led us by our whiskers into the subterranean world of rats played by Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein. Director Rob Schall gives us more hilarious antics by Fred, Carrie, and John Rat. We also dive deeper into the aquatic habitat of Portland’s water fairing residence.

To learn more about this brilliant production checkout the official press release below.

Rats 2: Observations on the History and Habitat of Portlandia’s Most Unwanted Inhabitants
IFC’s hit comedy series, Portlandia, has returned with the beloved Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein as their anthropomorphic rat personas. Bent Image Lab and Director Rob Shaw resurrect Fred, Carrie and John Rat for season three of the series, whilst introducing us to a few new animated faces dotting the Portlandia landscape.
When audiences first met the rodents in Portlandia’s season two, the mischievous threesome tried to break into a non-packaging grocery store. This season the Portlandia creative team dreamed up an expanded storyline that includes multiple segments in two new episodes.
“This year we have a stand alone skit in one episode and three little skits in another episode,” says Shaw. “Those segments will be spaced throughout the episode so they have a real presence all the way through, which is really exciting!”
The new stories include a skit in which rat libel turns the rodents into revenge seeking DIY publishers and in another three part story arc where Carrie and Fred Rat search for a less gentrified hood to call home while anxiety stricken John interviews new roommates. The skits include a whole host of new creatures for the rats to interact with including stoner ants, a hipster owl and a scruffy old Warf rat.
“The ants are college stoners so we tried to use the stoner aesthetic,” says Shaw. “But I think the Warf Rat is going to be people’s favorite character because he’s so weird and funny and dirty. Fred did this British accent and this insane character comes out of it! It’s one of my favorite parts of the show.”
Another new character this season is the hipster owl. Sculpted out of foam, feathers and wire the owl also employs a cool fashion sense with red glasses, bow tie and a hipster hair cut. Splashes of red were blended throughout his feathers in order to give him more “pop” against the backdrop of the dark attic set. “I think the owl is one of our best puppets,” says Art Director Greg Arden. “He’s another character in Portlandia that’s a slave to fashion, with the wackiest hairdo and big glasses.”
A few Portlandia characters were added to the roommate candidates’ list including “Spyke Rat,” a nod to Armisen’s bike messenger character in the series, and “Lance Rat,” Brownstein’s greasy boyfriend in the show.
“I like the fact that the show takes all these little things that actually exist in Portland and dramatizes them,” says Bent Executive Director Ray Di Carlo. “But they all come from a kernel of an existing trait of the city, so it’s interesting to see.”
In addition to the rat segments Bent also produced another Portlandia stop motion segment called “Dolphin” in which Portland’s underwater inhabitants learn that plastic bags have been banned from the city. Also directed by Shaw, the sea creature puppets were created with a plush aesthetic as a nod to animated 80’s shows like “Fraggle Rock”. “I love having the Portlandia style dialogue with characters that are weird and cartoony looking and then having this human voice come out of them,” says Shaw.
“We get to do a lot of cool things on Portlandia,” says Di Carlo. “We produce the rat segments and pretty much all the animated segments that happen on the show, like creating talking tattoos and shattering Carrie as if she were a fallen iPhone.”
Though Bent produces various animated storylines and visual effects for Portlandia, their coup d’état are the adventures of Fred, Carrie and John Rat. Bent Producer Nate Baston worked closely with the Portlandia crew to meet their expectations of the rats “The confidence the Portlandia crew has given us has really helped us push through,” says Baston. “The producers and everyone there have been really great.”
“We love the rats and I couldn’t be happier with how these skits turned out,” says Shaw. “I think its better then last year, I think its funnier, the animation is better, the puppets got beefed up. Everything about it this season has really stepped up.”
The “Dolphin” segment aired in the January 25th episode of Portlandia; the rat’s DIY publishing segment aired on February 1st; and the rat’s search for a new home segments aired February 22nd on IFC.
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I personally can tell you I had no idea that this production was even happening. Nor had I even ever heard about it, but I can assure you that LAIKA has got it going on in terms of understanding what needs to be done for such an epic film. What we do know is that it will  be a Stop Mo / 3D adventure about cute little trolls that we will most likely fall in love with.

The great news is that we have the press release and if you want the facts you should check it out below!

“PORTLAND, February 7th, 2013 – Marking their third project together, LAIKA and Focus Features, the two companies behind the current Academy Award-nominated animated feature ParaNorman, announced today that LAIKA has begun production on The Boxtrolls. The new movie will be released nationwide by Focus on October 17th, 2014. Focus CEO James Schamus and LAIKA President & CEO Travis Knight made the announcement today.

As on the previous animation collaborations ParaNorman and Coraline, Focus will hold worldwide distribution rights to The Boxtrolls, and Universal Pictures International will release the movie overseas (with eOne Distribution handling Canada). Coraline (2009) earned Golden Globe, BAFTA, Critics’ Choice, and Academy Award nominations for Best Animated Feature Film; and was named one of the year’s 10 Best Films by the American Film Institute (AFI). In addition to its Academy Award nomination, ParaNorman (2012) is in the running for the BAFTA Awards’ animated feature prize. ParaNorman has won two Annie Awards (the animation community’s Oscars equivalent) and been cited as best animated feature film by 14 critics’ groups, more than any other 2012 animated feature.

The Boxtrolls is a 3D stop-motion and CG hybrid animated feature based on Alan Snow’s bestselling fantasy adventure novel Here Be Monsters. The Boxtrolls is being directed by Anthony Stacchi (co-director of the hit animated feature Open Season) and Graham Annable (story artist on Coraline and ParaNorman), and produced by David Ichioka and Mr. Knight. The voice cast includes Academy Award winner Ben Kingsley, Academy Award nominee Toni Collette, Elle Fanning (marking her fourth movie with Focus), Isaac Hempstead-Wright (Game of Thrones), Emmy Award nominee Jared Harris (Mad Men), Simon Pegg (Star Trek), Nick Frost (of Focus’ upcoming The World’s End), Richard Ayoade (The IT Crowd), and Tracy Morgan (30 Rock).

The Boxtrolls is a comedic fable that unfolds in Cheesebridge, a posh Victorian-era town obsessed with wealth, class, and the stinkiest of fine cheeses. Beneath its charming cobblestone streets dwell the Boxtrolls, foul monsters who crawl out of the sewers at night and steal what the townspeople hold most dear: their children and their cheeses. At least, that’s the legend residents have always believed. In truth, the Boxtrolls are an underground cavern-dwelling community of quirky and lovable oddballs who wear recycled cardboard boxes the way turtles wear their shells. The Boxtrolls have raised an orphaned human boy, Eggs (voiced by Mr.
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Hempstead-Wright), since infancy as one of their dumpster-diving and mechanical junk-collecting own. When the Boxtrolls are targeted by villainous pest exterminator Archibald Snatcher (Mr. Kingsley), who is bent on eradicating them as his ticket to Cheesebridge society, the kindhearted band of tinkerers must turn to their adopted charge and adventurous rich girl Winnie (Ms. Fanning) to bridge two worlds amidst the winds of change – and cheese.

Mr. Knight said, “The Boxtrolls is a visually dazzling mash-up of gripping detective story, absurdist comedy, and steampunk adventure with a surprisingly wholesome heart. It’s Dickens by way of Monty Python. Tony and Graham have crafted a strange and beautiful world replete with fantastical creatures, good-for-nothing reprobates, madcap antics, and rip-roaring feats of derring-do. But at its core, like all LAIKA films, The Boxtrolls is a moving and human story with timelessness and powerful emotional resonance. We’re thrilled to partner with Focus Features and Universal to bring this remarkable story to family audiences around the world.”

Mr. Schamus commented, “Following our successful collaborations on ParaNorman and Coraline, we are delighted to be embarking on a third wondrous adventure with the LAIKA artisans who transform everyday materials into living creatures infused with dimension, humor, and soul. With a wonderfully appealing menagerie of fun characters, and a generous, open heart at its center, The Boxtrolls will be a must-see for family audiences.”

About LAIKA
Fueled by the vision of its owner, Nike co-founder and Chairman Philip H. Knight, and its President & CEO Travis Knight, LAIKA (www.laika.com) is an animation company specializing in feature films and commercials. LAIKA, located in Portland, Oregon, has a 30-year history of presenting the artistry of award-winning filmmakers, designers, and animators in the field of animation. In addition to its division focused on feature films, LAIKA has a short-form division, LAIKA/house, which produces some of the most iconic animated content across all mediums for advertising clients worldwide. The company has won two Academy Awards, 11 Emmy Awards, 11 Clio Awards, two Bronze Cannes Lion Awards, three London International Advertising & Design Awards, five Mobius Advertising Awards, nine Annie Awards, and two Annecy Cristals.

About Focus Features
Focus Features and Focus Features International (www.focusfeatures.com) comprise a singular global company. This worldwide studio makes original and daring films that challenge the mainstream to embrace and enjoy voices and visions from around the world that deliver global commercial success. The company operates as Focus Features in North America, and as Focus Features International (FFI) in the rest of the world. Current and upcoming Focus Features releases include Joe Wright’s epic love story Anna Karenina, nominated for 4 Academy Awards; Paul Weitz’s comedy/drama Admission, starring Tina Fey and Paul Rudd; Derek Cianfrance’s drama The Place Beyond the Pines, starring Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, and Eva Mendes; Closed Circuit, the suspense thriller directed by John Crowley and starring Eric Bana and Rebecca Hall; and The World’s End, the third installment of Edgar Wright’s trilogy of comedies starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost.
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Focus Features and Universal Pictures International are part of NBCUniversal, one of the world’s leading media and entertainment companies in the development, production, and marketing of entertainment, news, and information to a global audience. NBCUniversal owns and operates a valuable portfolio of news and entertainment television networks, a premier motion picture company, significant television production operations, a leading television stations group, and world-renowned theme parks. Comcast Corporation owns a controlling 51% interest in NBCUniversal, with GE holding a 49% stake.”

We can’t wait to see the progress of this film!!!

Issue #18 of Stop Motion Magazine is now available for Free Download on our Issues Page!!! Click Here

In this issue you will find:

John Dods Interview – A Forest Story

Neville Buchanan – Stop Motion Dramatics

Hope you enjoy this issue.

Are You Ready Kids?!?!?!

I’m excited to tell you that Sponge Bob has a new special done completely in Stop Motion Animation!!! From Nickelodeon, CBS, and Screen Novelties come Sponge Bob and all his friends in Bikini Bottom straight to your TV screen for this holiday season.

The animated special is amazing fun for everyone. Upon watching this show you will have to admit that it is an instant Christmas Classic that will continue to entertain generation after generation for years to come. Having seen the special I can tell you it’s an event you won’t want to miss and whats even better is it will air on CBS on November 23rd!!! Checkout the press release below for all the details!!!

Straight from the Press Deck:

CBS CELEBRATES THE HOLIDAYS WITH A NEW SPECIAL FROM NICKELODEON, “IT’S A SPONGEBOB CHRISTMAS!,” FRIDAY, NOV. 23

CBS will present a new stop-motion animated special, IT’S A SPONGEBOB CHRISTMAS!, based on the hit Nickelodeon animated series “SpongeBob SquarePants,” on Friday, Nov. 23 (9:30 – 10:00 PM, ET/PT). John Goodman lends his voice to Santa Claus in this special.
As the first stop-animation feature for “SpongeBob SquarePants,” IT’S A SPONGEBOB CHRISTMAS! is inspired by the popular song, “Don’t be a Jerk, It’s Christmas,” by Tom Kenny (voice of SpongeBob SquarePants) and Andy Paley. In this new special, Mr. Krabs’ nemesis, Plankton, vows to get his Christmas wish – obtaining the Krusty Krab’s secret Krabby Patty formula – by turning everyone bad in Bikini Bottom with the help of his special jerktonium-laced fruitcake.

“SpongeBob SquarePants” chronicles the nautical and sometimes non-sensical adventures of SpongeBob, an incurably optimistic and earnest sea sponge who lives in a two-story pineapple in the sub-surface city of Bikini Bottom.

Since its launch in July 1999, “SpongeBob SquarePants” has emerged as a pop culture phenomenon. The series has been the number-one animated program with kids 2-11 for more than 12 consecutive years on Nickelodeon. Over the past several years, it has averaged more than 100 million total viewers across all Nickelodeon networks.

IT’S A SPONGEBOB CHRISTMAS! was created and executive produced by Stephen Hillenburg and executive produced by Paul Tibbitt, with stop-motion animation directed by Mark Caballero and Seamus Walsh and produced by Chris Finnegan of Screen Novelties.