Awesome video, I totally agree! As a stop motion animator I can get turned off when stop motion looks to slick, and I love it when everything's handmade. It just embraces the style instead of hiding it.

Yes, I do think it can be too slick, and you used the perfect examples. Kubo absolutely loses the charm of stop motion due to it’s insanely high quality and polished perfectionism, while Wes Anderson’s animated films do the opposite. On the Criterion Collection edition of Fantastic Mr. Fox, there’s a special feature where they talk about the animation. Wes specifically wanted the kind of imperfections inherent to stop motion, like how the fur on the animals is inconsistent and “jumps around,” as he liked and was inspired by the old Rankin Bass specials where that kind of stuff happens. They also used everyday items for effects, like cotton for smoke, blue plastic for water, and real animal hair for fur despite it’s difficulty. It retains a charm and a look unique to stop motion, while also being incredibly detailed and visually appealing. And it would only get better with Isle of Dogs. And don’t get me wrong, I totally respect the technical aspects of Laika’s work, it’s the highest quality stop mo in the world. But we have to ask ourselves if it’s necessary to do these films in stop mo, if the chosen medium is justified and enhances the work, and for Laika I’d say it isn’t at this point.

I’m late to the party, but this is a great vid XD I love Isle of Dogs! They did an amazing job and still has the charm of stop motion. Not going to lie, I didn’t even know Kubo was from Laika or was stop motion. I never saw it, just clips and trailers, but I thought it was cgi. One does have to wonder if putting in all the art and time and effort it takes to do stop motion is lost if the audience can’t tell the difference? My young nieces bought me a Stikbot for my birthday, so I made a little video for them, but I enjoyed doing it so much, I’m trying to branch out and make my own characters, which brought me here to your armature and puppet videos :)

I found what I saw of Missing Link to be indistinguishable from CGI.

I’m not that turned off by it. Although I will say I see your point because when I first watched Kubo I thought the film was just a normal 3d animated film.

Thanks Gordon! Great video, great channel. I agree entirely and really liked the whiskey analogy. I took my producer to see Kubo when it was in theater and he and I were under the exact same opinion. It's too perfect. The element of naturalism that actual human hands creates is exactly what CGI lacks and renders it sterile and dead. I believe the Japanese call it wabi sabi (look it up if you're unfamiliar - I think you'll like the philosophy of it). I happen to be an enormous fan of Laika and their films, particularly Box Trolls, but I do think they are unintentionally doing a disservice to the art of stop motion by attempting to compete with CGI animation. If stop motion is to flourish - which I know it will - it must remain it's own unique genre of animated storytelling. If it's "just as good as CGI" then what's the point? It's far too tedious and expensive to compete fairly and it doesn't have to anyway! That's what I think. Thanks for the dialogue, and keep the videos coming! Cheers!

Great video!!

Kubo/box trolls/etc has zero charm. If it's indistinguishable from CGI, what's the point of making it stop motion. Wes Anderson/Wallace and Gromit are fantastic because they don't shy away from the fact it's stop motion.

So you are implying that Ray Harryhausen and Hery Selick did a terrible service for stop motion by focusing on making animation as smooth as possible that they set the standard for smoothness. I bet you that if we go out there to ask every single animator what is what they want to achieve while they work on a puppet they will say that expression is their priority, followed immediately by smooth movement. Because it's more pleasant to watch; it requires more discipline to be achieved therefore it has more merit and value. The real problem here is not smoothness, but how it is achieved, using computers to model and print the puppets is absolutely CHEATING, and it destroys what stop motion animation is all about, which is defined as the art of "bringing an object to life" only by using human hands. Thats why I always prefer stop motion movies over CGI ones, because I see handcraft artistry. I used to love Laika because it impressed me with their ultra smooth animation, I thought they put a lot of extra effort to make it that smooth using their hands, but when I found they just printed the puppets parts, and not only that, that they modeled in a computer. All that merit collapsed, and I no longer admire them. I call them CHEATERS. They destroy the purpose of stop motion which I repeat, is to be 100% handmade and... to be as SMOOTH AS POSIBLE. When I watch an animation that is supposed to have 24fps and I only see 5fps it takes me out of the thing. Again, what's the purpose of animation? The illusion of movement? I bet it is, so don't you think that having less frames in it, less posing, objectively makes it less animated? Like wine, the more effective time you put into making something, the better will be the result. But you decide to use one specific kind of alcoholic drink to illustrate your point, probably just to justify laziness or artsy fartsy mediocrity of people that want to get the same recognition of professional animators but don't want to go through the same discipline that the others had to go through in order to achieve it. I am an amateur too, but I want to achieve professional quality; as any amateur does, thats why I always go for no less than those 24fps. Saying that I understand that some people may not have the time to make their animation smooth and that's why they only animate 5 frames or less, that doesn't disqualify them as animators, but don't tell me that that makes their animation "better" for having less frames in it. If you use only one picture to show one scene, then you show one picture for the next one, and so on, does that count as a stop motion animation or is just a slideshow presentation? Isn't smoothness, but handmade smoothness what we all want? Do we want our animation to have flaws? No, we want it to be perfect but we want that perfection to be achieved by hand. Right? Think about it.