Dave Joly!
Dave is an illustrator and animator working in 2D and 3D and has been at the forefront of animation technology since its earliest days at Atari! For the last 30+ years Dave has been teaching university students how to create their own works of art!
Find Dave at:
Show Notes
Nice Shorts is…
Fu Yang
https://fuyang.wixsite.com/fuyang/about
https://www.instagram.com/cuckoostuff/
@cuckoostuff
Johnny Knittle
https://johnnyrk.com/
https://www.instagram.com/johnnyrk/
@johnnyrk
Stefie Gan studied architecture at Barnard College, Columbia University, and drew from her expertise in spatial awareness as she used environmental metaphors in her films. As an MFA graduate at the University of Southern California, Stefie has experience working with researchers and scientists at the USC Wrigley Institute of Environmental Studies where she made an animated video depicting Life at the Rocky Intertidal Zone and the importance of plankton to marine life. Her award-winning film, Plastic Ecosystem, using found plastic objects to address the issue of climate change, received second place at the Oscar-qualifying Odense Film Festival. Her work addressing Asian Hate during COVID was also featured by the Getty Museum. Stefie has made an animated holiday video for Barnard, a reading campaign for Scholastic, colored frames for Oscar nominee Bill Plympton’s latest feature film Revengeance, worked on a Curious George documentary, and drew and animated for the Dow Jones Media Group, home of the Wall Street Journal. Stefie is the first in her family to go to college, and it’s important to her to bring her cultural heritage to her drawings and films.
Today we have more with Lindsay Berkebile!!!! Lindsay is an LA and Portland based Stop-Motion Animator and Director working in tv, ads, and films. You may have seen some of her amazing work in Wendell & Wild, I’m a Virgo, Robot Chicken, Crossing Swords, or many other super awesome projects. Today we talk to Lindsay about how she created an incredible stop-motion vomiting mandible bumper for Adult Swim!
Visit the links below to watch her finished Maya and the Three and Centaurworld animations!
Today we have Lindsay Berkebile!!!! Lindsay is an LA and Portland based Stop-Motion Animator and Director working in tv, ads, and films. You may have seen some of her amazing work in Wendell & Wild, I’m a Virgo, Robot Chicken, Crossing Swords, or many other super awesome projects. Today we talk to Lindsay about the cutout animations she did with Netflix for Maya and the Three and Centaurworld as she walks us through how she and her team brought those into existence using a down shooter multi plane and binders filled with paper cutouts for amazing replacement animation shots
Visit the links below to watch her finished Maya and the Three and Centaurworld animations!
Cami Kwan is a stop motion director, producer, and one of the amazing partners at Apartment D Films, an animation studio in Burbank, California! Over the the last two episodes we talked to Cami about making the American Girl Doll short series and what it meant to Cami to help tell the story of their first Asian-American Girl of of the Year doll. She also told us about the origins of Apartment D and how she has transitioned from animator to overseeing a full production crew. We also got to hear a bit about her amazing work animating a music video for The Life I Know by the band The Itchy Worms
Follow Cami
Nice Shorts is...
Fu Yang
Johnny Knittle
Cami Kwan is a stop motion director, producer, and one of the amazing partners at Apartment D Films, an animation studio in Burbank, California! Over the next two episodes we’ll be talking to Cami about making the American Girl Doll short series and what it meant to Cami to help tell the story of their first Asian-American Girl of of the Year doll. She’ll also tell us about the origins of Apartment D and how she has transitioned from animator to overseeing a full production crew. We’ll also get to hear a bit about her amazing work animating a music video for The Life I Know by the band The Itchy Worms.
Terry Ibele is an award-winning stop-motion animator in Toronto, Canada. He’s produced and animated for television, short film, and digital media. He specializes in taking ideas from concept to completion – including design work, storyboarding, puppet/set fabrication, animation, and editing. He is also the host of the Animation Industry Podcast!
In part 2 of our interview, he shows us the sets from his Let's Go Luna shorts, teaches us about paper mache, and how to use good vs bad toilet paper for scenery. We talk about building his home studio during the pandemic along with supplies and budget needed. Discuss pitching his shows, working with a mentor, and how he balances hosting his podcast with his work schedule.
Links
Follow Terry
Shout Out
Nice Shorts is...
Fu Yang
Johnny Knittle
Terry Ibele is an award-winning stop motion animator in Toronto, Canada. He’s produced and animated for television, short film, and digital media. He specializes in taking ideas from concept to completion – including design work, storyboarding, puppet/set fabrication, animation, and editing. He is also the host of the Animation Industry Podcast!
In part 1 of our interview, Terry walks us through his Let’s Go Luna shorts! He discusses creating “Evergreen Content”, teaches us the origin story of The Mouse, and shares his life-long hobby of creating an epic wizard tome!
Threadwood is a boutique animation studio that started in Burbank, CA and is now located in upstate New York. It's run by Emmy Award-winning animation professionals Alexis Deprey and Scott DaRos. Producing both client projects and original content, Threadwood brings unique, handmade design sensibilities to clay, stop-motion, and 2D animation projects.
In part 2 they share many more great tips like how to light a fireplace in stop mo, how they balance personal projects with client projects, and how they want to become a full-service animation studio from the spark of an idea to the finished product!!!
Threadwood is a boutique animation studio that started in Burbank, CA and is now located in upstate New York. It's run by Emmy Award-winning animation professionals Alexis Deprey and Scott DaRos. Producing both client projects and original content, Threadwood brings unique, handmade design sensibilities to clay, stop-motion, and 2D animation projects.
In part 1 of our interview, they take us on a deep dive into all things Magical Cat.. from doing their own theme song and sound design to nailing down the timing of animating a cat! So let’s take a stroll through their early careers together making animations for a furniture company and how that led to wedding rings!
Martyna Koleniec is an independent, self-taught animation director, animator and character designer from Warsaw, Poland. She mainly specializes in stop motion music videos that she created by herself from puppets, scenography to animation. Currently, she’s working on her debut feature film for children.
In part 2, we talk about Hidden -- a mixed stop-motion and 2d music video exploring creative lighting. Martyna talks about making the most of a project’s budget and dives deeper into her journey being a self-taught animator like learning new things while on the job. She even gives us a glimpse into the development of her top-secret full-length feature film!
Martyna Koleniec is an independent, self-taught animation director, animator and character designer from Warsaw, Poland. She mainly specializes in stop motion music videos that she created by herself from puppets, scenography to animation. Currently, she’s working on her debut feature film for children.
In part 1, Martyna talks about Photons, a stop-motion animated music video. She talks about working in small spaces with clay during a hot summer. We discuss her lifelong battle with good lighting and how hiring a cinematographer changed her life! Plus how it’s different doing a music video for festivals as opposed to a typical animated film. She even shares some stories about her time spent doing puppet workshops with many cool photos included!
CAMERA / LIGHTING
Clays used in the short: ASTRA Plasticine / JOVI Plasticine
Casey Follen is an LA-based creative producer and founder of Catalyst Castle Studios, her freelance practice. Casey also manages stop motion and mixed-media productions for many other studios. In addition she teaches at the College for Creative Studies as well as LCAD. On top of all that she is even a co-founder of Animation Wild Card!
In part 1 we’ll learn about how she made Stuck at home with Neville… and how making that during the pandemic led to starting Animation Wild Card with her friends! Which also led to making the Hello Stop Mo podcast So come along and meet Casey!
Join us as Jack walks us through the making of his animated short, Shi-Fu! Sharing tons of behind the scenes content from boards to animatics to 3D models to a finished product!
(This is a video-heavy episode so please find it on YouTube to get the most out of it!)
Find out why they only have to write one resume for the both of them, how LARPing is good for acting in animation, how they went from building worlds in long word docs to refined packets, the importance of representation, Stephanie’s color ideas, Eddie’s thoughts on obtaining joy from completing ideas rather than how many likes they get after, reworking content to fit the target audience, dealing with burn-out, getting their college to let them do a thesis film when that wasn’t part of the curriculum, their pitching process, and watch as they realize in real time how much work they’ve actually created. So come listen to Stephanie and Eddie compliment and complement each other!
Eddie Betancourt
Stephanie Rattanachane
Fu Yang
Johnny Knittle
Join us as Bailey and Natalie talk about rigs, project management, what working at a studio during their co-op taught them between their 3rd and 4th years as animation students, their experiences at Sheridan College, and then more about rigs… because they are obsessed with rigs… we mean it… obsessed! But in a good way!
Meet Mee! Mee talks about drawing inspiration from daily life such as her buff dog. She discusses applying to LCAD, being rejected, then flying from Iowa to California to find out why. An experience that pushed her to improve her drawing skills, skills that helped her overcome social anxiety and even allowed her to start using public transportation. Hear about her perfect timing of attending LCAD the one semester they had a stop motion professor from Open the Portal, then turned that opportunity into an internship at Open the Portal. She even learned to animate for her thesis while actually working on her thesis. So come meet Mee and find out why if you’re her roommate you will end up working for her somehow. Spoiler alert: Mee loves killing her puppets but it’s still adorable.
Follow Mee
Nice Shorts is:
Fu Yang
Johnny Knittle
Join us as Zaldy talks about his passion for tinkering. He takes us through his journey from computer science major to stop motion animator— including surviving the Dot Com boom working in online advertising. He shares how he sees music and rhythm in all of his animations and their movements. We explore his fascination with dance and dramatic movements while he shows how he does rough mockup using 3d rigs in Maya to help him plan. Zaldy discusses temporarily moving to Burbank while animating at Stoopid Buddy and where not to stay, plus how he dealt with 24 Lego characters on screen at once using Dragonframe markers. We get a glimpse of how he lives vicariously through his puppets, having them do all the dance moves and perform the basketball ankle-breaking fun he can’t do himself. He displays the magnetic personalities of his puppets from Streetball, a short stop-motion animation he is currently working on. Zaldy generously shares his armature, 3D printing, and sculpting techniques, including things he learned along the way, and much more.
Join us as Nia talks about giving birth to a kidney stone, embracing creative momentum when it happens, growing up in Jakarta with her brother and making their own entertainment, fabricating to keep her hands busy, using set design and objects to tell stories, being a part of a government-funded crafting community, being inspired by murder documentaries and fashionable grandmas, planning set design around what can fit in an uber, and dealing with work visas for stop motion animation.
Links:
Follow Nia
Pebbles Short Film Credits
Shout Outs
Nice Shorts is...
Fu Yang
Johnny Knittle
Yu Yu shows us Froggy (her puppet-eating puppet), tells us about the Taiwan stop motion community, her approach to directing other animators and how she treats her films as collaborative efforts, explains her fascination with horror and all things eerie, dives a little into stop motion in VR, and many other wonderful tidbits! Join us as we take a tour through the world of Yu Yu!
0:00:00 - Intro
0:01:25 - Greeting
0:01:52 - Inspiration & Concept
0:04:06 - Yu Yu's Background before Stop Motion Career
0:09:35 - Film Lighting
0:13:03 - Collaboration in Sound and Music
0:19:00 - Set & Character Design
0:22:52 - Meet The Puppet
0:26:09 - Needle Felting Technique
0:27:47 - Wire Armature Technique learned from Stoopid Buddy
0:29:51 - Film Promotion
0:34:05 - Taiwanese Culture
0:36:49 - Potential Project Yu Yu Wants To Work On
0:44:38 - Ghost Month In Taiwan
0:50:04 - Director Leadership
0:51:34 - Acting Tip For Animators
0:57:18 - Collaboration with Fabricators and Animators
0:59:37 - VR Short in Stop Motion
1:05:48 - Next Pitch
1:09:12 - Teach And Bring More Artists Into Stop Motion
1:11:33 - Generate Leads For Freelancing
1:16:34 - Client Horror Story
1:19:12 - Answer Question From Previous Guest, Dux
1:20:52 - Yu Yu's Question For The Next Guest
1:22:37 - Icelandic Folklore Ending
Shadow Steps Stop Motion Studio Show Reel: https://vimeo.com/638550369
Press about "Sick Rose" VR Short
https://youtu.be/KCHAAo91nd4?t=13
https://youtu.be/u76gTNfEj_M?t=47
Follow Yu Yu
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yuyustopmo/
Contact: yuyustopmo@gmail.com
Credit
Animators
Yi- Chin https://www.instagram.com/petridish.s...
Pei-yu https://www.instagram.com/ooyuzz/
Composer
Mei Yi-Ting Chang https://meiytccomposer.mystrikingly.com/
Shout Out
Stoopid Buddy Stoodios https://www.leagueofbuddies.com/
Turn Rhino Original Design Studio https://www.facebook.com/turnrhino/
Justin Rasch https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcC0...
Lights Out https://youtu.be/FUQhNGEu2KA
* ADR https://www.masterclass.com/articles/...
* Extended Technique https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extende...
* Monstrum https://www.pbs.org/show/monstrum/
Fu Yang:
https://fuyang.wixsite.com/fuyang/about
https://www.instagram.com/cuckoostuff/
Johnny Knittle:
www.johnnyrk.com
https://www.instagram.com/johnnyrk/