Janette Goodey and John Lewis’ short, The Story of Percival Pilts

Janette Goodey and John Lewis directed a stop-motion animated film, The Story of Percival Pilts (2015), and it’s narrated by Mark Hadlow. The film duration is 8 minutes total. Produced by an Australian film production company, Finickity Pictures. This film has released in Canada, Australia, Poland, and the USA also it known as winner of the Best Animation at the Oscar and received awards at various film festivals. The main character, a young boy named Percival Pilts, says, “Never again shall my feet touch the ground”. Percival made a pair of tall stilts for him to separate living from the normal society.

Goody and John started working The Story of Percival Pilts since 2011, and they completed it 2015. Why it took a long? Because Goodey and Lewis happily discovered Goodey’s pregnant during the process of making this film. An Internet newspaper, The Sydney Morning Herald, published an article titled Stop-motion magic at the Melbourne International Animation Festival 2015. The author, Jake Wilson, explains, “Most of the time was taken up by pre-production rather than animation. Lewis estimates that even with help from other crew members, each of the film’s principal puppets took roughly a month to complete. This includes the handmade costumes, with their tiny buttons and details of almost subliminal significance…” All puppets’ faces are artistic designs also the props and sets are detailed. Especially, their old classy European costumes are very attractive. These costumes are looking wonderful with the artistic designed puppets for this film.

One of the directors, Goodey, was born in New Zealand. Janette graduated at Unitec, Auckland and received her diploma in design major in painting. She went back the school in 2006 for learning animation. She is known as a director of her short film, Rip, Drip Tear (2010), which won an ATOM award for best experimental short in 2011. Another director, John Lewis, is known for working stop-motion films, Mary and Max (2009), and Gloomy Valentine (2006). Lewis was born in Australia. He graduated at Charles Sturt University in Wagga Wagga and received his BA degree in Multimedia. He has passions for animation, VFX, and puppetry.

Please check this beautiful short film, The Story of Percival Pilts, from below link.