StopMo, Music and Music Videos

I usually listen to music when animating. For the Vitruvius project I’ve been enjoying a mix of recent releases from bands such as Dungen, His Name is Alive, Simple Minds, Daniel Lanois and Wolf Parade.

Speaking of Wolf Parade, I found the following music video of their song “Modern World” on YouTube. It looks to be stopmo and/or puppet animation. I like it, particularly the animated machine at the end of the clip.

Michael Granberry at Red Hatchet Films is in production on a stopmo music video and the Vines animated video was making the rounds not too long ago.

It would seem to be a good time for stopmotion animators and music videos.

5 responses to “StopMo, Music and Music Videos”

  1. Great clip, Grant. I’ve never seen real faces imposed on a puppet before. Very nice. I’ve also noticed a lot of stop motion in music videos, some of it outstanding and creative. My favorites so far are the sweetly tender and sad paper cows for the Shins’ vid called Pink Bullets (I downloaded it from itunes last year but a fuzzy copy can be seen here; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diOPMdC_MDs) I also liked the clever one with the tons of knitting and yarn? Something “…man”, can’t think of it.

  2. Thanks for the mention, Grant :)…I’ve noticed (at least here in L.A.) that a lot of music groups and animators are hooking up in the name of artistic symbiosis. It’s win-win: music groups get a cool video and animators get a chance to have their work seen by many different sets of eyes. Plus, most songs average about 3 minutes, which isn’t an impossible amount of material to deliver.

    Speaking of cool stop motion videos, check out “There There” by Radiohead the next time you are on YouTube. It features some great pixillation combined with stop-motion forest animals, and a human-to-tree metamorphosis at the climax that has to be seen to be believed…stunning!

  3. Oh my god, Michael! That Radiohead video is one of the best things I’ve ever seen! Thanks so much for mentioning it! It reminded me of what I want for my project more than anything I’ve seen so far. And I went crazy over how masterfully who ever made it animated the human to so perfectly imitate a stop motion puppet’s movements, especially in the pseudo-rig-look running! This was crazy good. Magical.

  4. Thanks for spotting the Radiohead video MG. It has great atmospheric quality about it…plus I’ve always liked that song. Bjork also likes running through a forest. 😎

  5. Who’s cuter than her? No one, that’s who.

    There was a spate of giant plush toys in videos for a while. I chalked it up to the effects of X, which people report seeing giant plush toys whilst on.

    This clip seemed driven by the concepts our little human pixie was expressing rather than a crafted visual style like Hopewell’s stop-mo wonder. Rougher but still cool too.