The eerie stop-motion game that’s ‘better than sex with Jesus’

When I first talked with Anders Gustafsson and Erik Zaring in 2012, they promised their creepy, psychedelic, stop-motion game, The Dream Machine, was going to be "better than sex with Jesus." They had a lot of work ahead of them -- they were building...

‘Harold Halibut’ brings back stop-motion video games

Remember the days when games were willing to experiment with stop motion characters and real-world backdrops, like Mortal Kombat or The Neverhood? They're back. Slow Bros. is working on Harold Halibut, an adventure game where both the characters and...

The ‘Star Wars’ holographic chess game is nearly a reality

"Let's be real: Any article you read about Magic Leap or any AR platform, the first thing they talk about is Holochess." That's Mike Levine, former senior effects specialist at LucasArts and current CEO of mobile game developer Happy Giant. Levine i...

How 3D printing changed the face of ‘ParaNorman’

How 3D printing changed the face of 'Paranoman'

We drive around in circles trying to find the place. There's no signage indicating our destination -- no giant, looming cartoon characters or even a logo, just a faceless building in a maze of industrial parks, about 17 miles outside of Portland. It's a beautiful drive of course, sandwiched on a vaguely winding highway by dense Pacific Northwest foliage, past Nike's global headquarters. Compared to the world-class tracks and fields dotting the shoemaker's campus, Laika's own offices are an exercise in modesty (in spite of financial ties Phil Knight), virtually indistinguishable from the densely packed businesses that surround it. There are, perhaps, certain advantages to such anonymity -- for one thing, it helps the studio avoid random drop-ins by movie fans hoping to chew the ear off of their animation heroes. It also means that our cab driver does a good three passes before finally getting out of the car and asking a smoker standing outside a nearby building where to go. He thinks about it for a moment and indicates a building -- a large, but otherwise indistinguishable space.

The lobby doesn't scream Hollywood either, but it certainly offers some less-than-subtle hints that we've found the place: a wall-sized black and white image of classic film cameras (ancient devices, someone tells me, that were utilized on the company's previous film), and in one corner, a tiny room encased in glass, with Coraline seated at a table in its center. This building is the house that she built -- or at least kept the lights on; "Coraline" was released after its planned successor "Jack & Ben's Animated Adventure" failed to materialize. Inside, the cavernous space in excess of 150,000 square feet has become a bustling small town of creatives, laboring away in its recesses, many having traveled through several time zones to be in its rank, like carnies hopping from town to town. Stop-motion animation, after all, isn't the most prevalent of professions, and while we've arguably entered a sort of golden age for the infamously labor-intensive art form, thanks in large part to the success of projects like "Coraline," the number of studios actually investing in the form can be counted on one hand.

Continue reading How 3D printing changed the face of 'ParaNorman'

Filed under:

How 3D printing changed the face of 'ParaNorman' originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Aug 2012 14:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Stop-motion music video relies on OpenOffice and Excel, finds formula for success (video)

Mystery Guitar Man makes stopmotion music video in OpenOffice, finds a real formula for success video

It's already considered a grind to produce stop-motion video -- imagine creating a clip using the spreadsheet app that many dread seeing at work every morning. Joe Penna, better known to the internet as Mystery Guitar Man, isn't afraid. He and his team recorded a performance against a greenscreen, gave the video a mosaic look in After Effects and proceeded to recreate 730 of the frames in OpenOffice (and occasionally Excel)... by hand. We don't want to know how long it took Penna and crew to wrap up their work, but the result is probably the liveliest you'll ever get out of an app meant for invoices and corporate expenses. The fully produced video is above; click past the story break if you want to smash illusions and see how the pixelated rumba came to be.

Continue reading Stop-motion music video relies on OpenOffice and Excel, finds formula for success (video)

Filed under: ,

Stop-motion music video relies on OpenOffice and Excel, finds formula for success (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 11 Aug 2012 04:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Microsoft News (Twitter, pulled)  |  sourceMystery Guitar Man (YouTube)  | Email this | Comments

Charlie Kaufman’s stop-motion project, Anomalisa, turns to Kickstarter for funding

Charlie Kaufman's stopmotion project, Anomalisa, turns to Kickstarter for funding

There are few more bizarre or successful pairings in cinema than Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman. Now, the two aren't teaming up again (at least not just yet), but the writer of Adaptation and Being John Malkovich is teaming up with stop-motion studio Starburns Industries on a new project called Anomalisa. The animators, whose past credits include Moral Orel, don't want any interference from the traditional studio system and have turned to Kickstarter to fund the film. The roughly 40 minute feature will follow a motivational speaker whose life has become "hollow and meaningless." Sounds like a right, fun romp! There's little doubt that the movie will get made -- it's more than half way to its $200,000 goal and there's still more than 50 days left to the funding period. Kaufman is hardly the first big name in Hollywood to turn to crowd-sourcing, but he's part of a growing trend of artists bucking the traditional system and sustaining themselves and their craft with direct support from fans. Check out the plea for funding after the break.

Continue reading Charlie Kaufman's stop-motion project, Anomalisa, turns to Kickstarter for funding

Filed under:

Charlie Kaufman's stop-motion project, Anomalisa, turns to Kickstarter for funding originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 13 Jul 2012 01:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Laughing Squid  |  sourceKickstarter  | Email this | Comments