Fans of Henry Selick (Nightmare Before Christmas) and Neil Gaiman (American Gods, Sandman) will be excited to know that Coraline.com, the official site detailing the attempt to bring Gaiman’s novel Coraline to the screen, has updated with some interesting stuff.
Enter the key BUTTONEYES in that cool little widget at the site to see a nice little vignette of characters under construction. Ah, stop motion… Oh, speaking of, here are some more codes for you:
stopmotion
moustachio
puppetlove
armpithair
sweaterxxs
Also, see the post at Drawn for a look at the super-cool PR kit Selick’s production house Laika sent out to the animation press. Rats – I KNEW I should have kept AnimWatch alive for a little longer!
I’m very excited to learn more about this film, and green with envy for the guys who worked on it. Hand-made in Oregon… roll on, Laika.
Thanks to Tom Dell’Aringa for the tip…
What are the odds: my daughter was telling me all about the book last night on the way to dinner. She started it yesterday, currently up to chapter five, and absolutely can’t wait to finish the rest of it. I’ll have to let her know, although I’d bet my paycheck the button eyes give her nightmares…
I’m really looking forward to this film. The short clips I have seen looks gorgeous! And the book is really nice aswell if you haven’t checked it out yet. It’s well worth a reading.
Also… it’s VERY creepy.
Looks amazing. I would love to work on miniature sets like that… beautiful stuff.
Thank you for posting that Steve, I needed that today
I love it, and I’m creeped out by it, at the same time.
On another note – how’d you figure they erased the line between the eyes and the face after they shot the film? Digital magic?
I would imagine that the line is removed digitally. No matter what kind of film you are making, there is always a certain amount of post processing.
And yeah, those button eyes creep me out also.
If I remember right, there was once this website dedicated to animated films like this one. I believe it even had a forum where liked minded people could come and discuss these things.
It was run by some “Steve” guy. Eh, maybe I’m mistaken *shrug*
jk
ha ha, Jase. And don’t think for a minute I don’t think about starting it up when these sorts of films cross my desk.
Amazing stuff. I’m so glad there are such talented people working on stop motion of this caliber.
Yeah, definatly creepy aswell.
On a sidenote: Not sure if the website Jason’s thinking about is http://www.stopmotionanimation.com
There’s a whole bunch of resources on their site aswell as the messageboards.
I’ll be there opening day! I love the dark yet colorful look of this film. Plus I’m a huge fan of stop motion. It’s the whole reason I got into 3d in the first place. Well, once I found out stop motion isn’t exactly a thriving industry in my area.
Also, hearing about stuff like this makes me miss animwatch that much more. Reading an interview on this film would have been awesome.
Mathias – I think Jase was making a joke about AnimWatch, but that stopmo site is groovy, too.
Sky – I know. I miss AnimWatch, too. I wasn’t just the editor, I was a fan, too.
If one of you guys have access to a secret stash of Extra Time, I’ll take some. Meh.
“Mathias – I think Jase was making a joke about AnimWatch, but that stopmo site is groovy, too.”
Ah! When I reread Jasons post just now, that’s pretty obvious. I must have had alot on my mind at that time when I made that kind of reply… It’s not the first time that happens though.
Anyway, in the absence of animwatch, it’s cool to see posts like this in your blog. Keep that up
Just curious steve, but have you thought about bringing animwatch back but this time using a volunteer staff to help out, instead of doing it yourself? It’s far too much work for one person, especially with how much your cranking out. It was such a valuable resource.
I think about it all the time. It would be much more easily done as a Blog with several contributors. But mostly it comes down to a question of quality control. If I don’t have to write the articles, that saves time. But if I have to edit them, we’re back to spending time on it again and that defeats the purpose.
The problem is that the best writers don’t want to do it on a volunteer basis, or they don’t have a good eye for what makes a great film. On the other end are guys who have a great eye, and want to volunteer but don’t even use spellcheck on their articles for some reason (I have yet to figure that out).
If you can figure out a solution, let me know. But I’ve been thinking it over for a year now, and when I think about what I’ve been able to get done without AnimWatch cluttering up my life, I think I’m still better off without it even if the animation community isn’t.
Meh. Keep those cards and letters coming, though.
Actually, you bring up a good point. Maybe the best way to do things is in blog format, with many contributors. We do that with an art blog at work. Here http://avalanchesoftware.blogspot.com/.
And it’s pretty much self regulated, some guys are better artist than others. But all the contributors are trusted to post. And no one has complete ownership. If someone has a bad art post it lies squarely on their shoulders.
I’ve just been thinking about animwatch lately because I’ve been adding links to other short films on my own shortfilm homepage now that I’ve redone it. And it’s been a huge pain trying to track down short films. Animwatch was so nice because any valuable project could be found there. I’d love to see something similar come back.
Anyways, sorry to go completely off topic.