Giving Life to the Unmoving
Stop-motion films never cease to entertain me. The very elementary process of arranging anything — no matter how inert originally — into a sequence with subtle differences can give that thing a wonderful life and meaning. You can take post-it notes, clothes, legos, murals, junk from your garage, or the art store, light beams, snapshots, parked trucks, and of course stationary people, not to mention puppets, and transform them into the most dynamic beings. With web cams and simple software, almost anyone can make a stop-motion sequence which gives life to the unmoving.
Recently artist Liam Stevens used pencil, paper, exacto knives and much time to craft a lovely retro stop-action music video. The juxtaposition of hand-drawn roughness and seamless hi-tech video is particularly charming.
A still from his short piece, and a collection of the characters he used above.
I am convinced that one could (and someday someone will) make a stop action film from anything visible.
