The journey for Michael Sanks Rebooted was a tricky one. He presents this piece as “A stop-motion breakdown, a production breakdown and my emotional breakdown.”
His goal was to “see the history of special effects creatures coexisting in the same frame”. Getting a 2D animation, a rubber suit monster, a CG animation, a stop-motion animation and an animatronic monster hanging out in a bar was surreal.
In the original idea, Phill was going to talk; Sanks reflected that making the skeleton silent could make the audience empathize with him more. The acting on Phill is spot on, with only his physical expression and 11 replacement eyebrows to rely on.
Also, the lighting study to apply to the real life set and then replicate it into the stop motion set. Bonkers. The result is, as you saw, excellent.