Jason and the argonauts fills me with so much nostalgia

This is one of the best channels on KZfaq :) Cheers!

I like how the lava lamp in the foreground is unaffected by the cut takes.

Harryhausen's skeleton fight in Jason and the Argonauts is staggeringly brilliant. Even now it looks amazing.

when I was 10 or so, I was being babysat by a family friend during summer. we were watching one of the BBC channels I think. a really unsettling fantasy themed stop motion movie came on. a knight saved a long haired girl (a princess, maybe?) from a monster, who bled green blood whenever it was stabbed. I can't find it anywhere.

Excellent documentary, Georg. As an animator I was interested to seeing what you'd say on the subject. Just a heads up, I went to animation school with a guy who was friends with the Brothers Quay. It's pronounced like it's spelt i.e. like 'quake' but ending with a 'y instead of a 'k''. 'Key' is entirely wrong. Just a small nitpick. They apparently did little else but animate. Sleep, eating, girlfriends, socializing etc all meant very little to them. All they wanted to do was create art. As obsessives, no wonder they were so good. I met Ray Harryhausen shortly before his death and the models were incredible IRL.

Discovered your channel yesterday and I've hardly stopped watching since. Great really well thought out content. I wouldn't be surprised if this channel becomes huge :)

The Grand Master of stop motion is Jan Švankmajer

can't wait for the HP Lovecraft episode

No mention of Trap Door? Loved that show.

My dad used to watch these stop motion classics when I was a kid and they scared the shit out of me, especially the Terminator. Watching today, I can see there's something especially unsettling about the jerky way it moves and the way the compositing makes the Terminator's distance from Sarah and Reese uncertain. It's like a nightmare where the pieces don't all fit together logically but you're too scared to notice. CGI monsters can't be scary in this way anymore because those inconsistencies read as fake to modern audiences

Just discovered your channel, really great stuff dude.

The first six movies i saw with stop go motion was Jason and the Argonauts, Clash of the Titans (1980), and the first three Star Wars films. Later on i saw some Wallace and Gromit on VHS and was wowed and still enjoy stop go animation. Haven't seen any modern movies with stop go animation, maybe some viewers here have.

Tool did Stop Motion in the 90's for their undertow album. Particularly the songs Sober and Prison Sex. They were pretty creepy and there's some monsters in there that terrifying, yet, memorable.

This is absolutely one of the most interesting KZfaq channels. Keep up the great work Georg.

A WHOLE EPISODE ON STOP MOTION AND NOT A MENTION OF JAN SVANKMAJER? I AM APPALLED!

Great page! Your vids on Rob Bottin were amazing. Just found your page. Subscribed. Let the binge watching begin!

stop motion is hard

Stop motion work like the Jason and the Argonauts skeletons is just so charming and interesting to watch. Great video btw

This has quickly become one of my most favorite KZfaq channels. I really enjoy your content as well as your approach to it. Outstanding! I must say however, I was a bit surprised that in a video wholly dedicated to stop motion, that there was no mention of Jan Švankmajer. Nevertheless, fantastic as always. Please do keep it up. Cheers!

Your stuff is never boring, it should be but it's not!

I love your channel dude. Great content. Keep up the good work

Nor forgetting Jan Svankmajer, Jiri Trnka or to an extent Karel Zeman all inspirations for the Quays. Stop motion really had some great pioneers in the Czech Republic, especially it probably still is the #1 country for the art form today still cherished, as the first national tradition of animation.

awesome channel, my man! love your setup and your topics. Keep it up!

Great video! My new and favorite underrated channel.

love you videos and commentary, Subscribed.

This channel has such high quality content, hope you get more subs!!

Subscribed mate, one of my favourite channels on KZfaq , great stuff, this is what good TV used to be like

Watching your whole channel catalogue now: "13 hours well spent"

Wow your videos are fantastic! Thanks so much for the hard work you put into them

i'm studying stopmotion animation at the savannah college of art and design. thank you for the lovely refresher of what i love to do!

I love me some stop motion. It takes so much flipping effort to make the simplest of things not just for film, but with it's limited appearance in video game industry, such as in The Neverhood. Tons of respect for people who use it.

I feel honored that you mentioned an animator from my country, although I preferred his fairytales over that nightmarish "hand" story...

My favorite use of stop motion is in any Tool music video.

I could tell you were an educator. Its a great video. Its like a mojo list top things you didn't care about film.

First I see you have a video bashing recent WatchMojo videos, now I find you have a video about stop motion? This channel is great...

Missed opportunity to shout out the incomparable Laika Studios (known for such outstanding works as Coraline, ParaNorman, Boxtrolls, Kubo and the Two Strings; which all feel hella underappreciated). Outside of that, I've been legit enjoying your shows! 🤟🤟🖖

Another excellent video! I'm really enjoying your​ channel thanks to the quality content. I personally love stop motion in movies, with one of my favorites being from Beetlejuice. From the Sandworm creatures to the face warping of Barbara and Adam, there's a certain charm and mystique that stop motion has which CGI will never replace.

_"Naah, it wasn't the airplanes : It was BEAUTY that killed the Beast!"_ - That super-famous movie line has got to be one of cinemas earliest Historical memes!

Such a great episode!

Stop motion animation is very different and unique because the artists behind these films put so much effort into it that it looks like the film is coming to life, kubo and the two strings anyone?

I think Laika have taken stop motion to its logical conclusion. They use 3D printers to increase the amount of heads a puppet can have so the expressions can be as smooth as that of a CG character. The problem here is that you can no longer tell the difference between stop motion and CG. So stop motion when done as well as it can be done is basically analog CG, if that'sa thing, which it isn't but I have no other language to describe what I mean. This has convinced me that CG is the successor to stop motion. It's no good whining about how you love the skeleton fight, I love it too. I was a kid when I saw that and for me it was about as realistic a thing as I'd ever seen. But today it isn't. Today we see how jerky it is until its done as well as it can be by companies like Laika (Kubo and the two strings) and again, it just starts looking like CG. So perhaps stop motion is really more about the way a movie is created. Do you prefer moving real puppets in the real world or are you happy manipulating 3D models? Both will look almost the same, well not quite CG when its done as well as it can is indisginguishable from live action which throws up the question, is live action the successor to CG? Well no because live action isn't animation. So I'm waffling on too much I know but just wanted to say that stop motion has peaked and its peak is not pretty, its amazing technically but its not pretty. It's just very realistic, like CG is. And before someone says, well CG can be pretty. Well yes it can and so can stop motion but my point is that stop motion was seen as charming because it was so janky. People warm to stop motion, it's quant and old, it's Paddington and twee but when Laika do it, its a fucking amazing thing that you find hard to believe is even stop motion at all. In that way, its not pretty anymore, its just amazingly realistic. And that's what CG brings to the table. So given that both are now visually almost identical, one being torture to make with huge budgets essential, the other you can make in your bedroom, CG has taken over the animation crown. 2D still exists but not for long, CG is getting good at doing that too. Ultimately CG will consume all animation and maybe it will go on a rampage, climb the empire state building and be shot to death by stop motion and 2D animation fans in poorly animated planes, I don't know but I do know its time for me to shut up.

I have to say, the character of Talos from Jason and the Argonauts captivated me as a child when I first saw it on TV. I loved it so much that I would scan the TV Guide each week to see if any channel was going to broadcast it. It sounds nuts, but I loved that movie and a TV Guide was the only way to know what was going to be on. And since there were only 5 or 6 television channels at the time, it wasn't that time consuming.

Very interesting! Well done! Thank you.

Damn broski I subscribed at 3 thousands subs like 2 days ago and you just hit 5 Thousand. Congratulations mate, top self content.

This channel is awesome! 😎👍

I am excited for the Harryhausen video, I've been a fan of his work since coming across Clash of the Titans as a kiid. thanks for your channel :)

Jan Svankmajer is another stop-motion filmmaker that deserves a mention, he's somewhat akin to the Quay Brothers in style

You should check out the music video for Steven Wilson's "Routine". Steven Wilson regularly uses stop motion for his videos, but this is the most impressive and emotional one, with its subtlety and tie in with both 2d animation for the background and cgi for the sun and clouds. If you like that, you should also check out his videos for "Drive Home" and "The Raven That Refused To Sing", as well as a video for a song by his earlier band, Porcupine Tree, called "Bonnie the Cat".

I like your channel Georg. You have a straightforward manner and choose interesting topics. Cheers.

Pirates is another more recent great one by Aardman animation, really cool stuff. You do wicked topics, I'm really enjoying your videos.

Dont get me wrong, this is a nice video with enough information to get a fine grasp of the subject, nevertheless i think you pretty much centered the explanation in the most common and well-known nord american animators. And you barely mencioned the real influence that had trynka, Barta and the rest of the Czech animation in a quite substancial number of animators of the modern Stop Motion production (examples found in the Brothers Quay, or svankmajer, tim burton...). Nor you mentioned the presence of the technique in Spain (with Segundo de Chomón), France (with Émile Cohl) or Japan, with examples dating from the late sixties. Or the complex way the technique appeared around the world. You said "the first ever stop motion film", when speaking about the vitigraph studios, but i would have apreciated a mention of the fact that Stop Motion was a techinque that appeared more or less at the same time in different places of Europe and the States, not as a result of someone's invention (appart from the influence of Georges Melies), but as the product of a century focused on photographic and cinematographic experimentation, and still highly influenced by its cultural traditions; such as horror literature (and its influence on the French phantasmagoria cinema), the puppet theater (especially rooted in Czech culture), and all the optical toys such as the phenakitoscope that you mention in the video. Obviously this is a short video, with a informative intention which is a bit far from academic depth, that would require a much longer video, but even so I think it is important to even mention these details, because they favor a much more plural and rich reading of the phenomenon. Thank your for your effort, your videos are awesome. Keep it up, i hope you could see this and please feel free to tell me your opinion about it.

Great video man

Absolutley love your channel. You remind me of a British Dante Hicks from the movie Clerks. Your writing is sweet as well.

And then Legos became popular with it

I'm digging your videos, but I wish you would make them a little longer to go into more detail. You should have mentioned Laika, since they are the only stop motion studio ever to exist. Plus on top of that their work has been extremely well received, and with four films under their belt, their reputation is increasingly well cemented. They are responsible (For those who don't know) for Coraline, ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls, and Kubo and the Two Strings. Edit: apparently they also worked on Corpse Bride as well, though they were contracted for it, where as the other films were entirely theirs.

keep it up, man ... i love you long time

I'm eagerly anticipating your Harryhausen video.

That Home Improvement intro!

Home Improvement parody for the win

Thanks! Happy to see inclusion of Trnka (pronounced more like turn-ka). Stop motion is a hallmark of Czech cinema. Jan Svankmajer is a master, and Aurel Klimt is upholding the tradition. One of the world’s longest running TV series is A Je To, aka Pat and Mat, featuring a duo of hilarious half-assing stop-motion puppets.

This channel is the best in the explanatory category I've come across for art and social criticism. Thank you for your efforts.

How dare you not mention LEGO. The Magic Portal was the catalyst for a whole generation of amateur stop motion films, ESPECIALLY when KZfaq came around. It was hugely important in making the art form something kids could actively experience and participate in, and were many youngsters first foray into creating films in the first place.

Firstly I'm going to ape the comments praising your channel, your videos are always well produced, well metered and your scripts always have a perfectly nuanced balance of acerbicism and well explained points. I too am exceptionally glad to have found you. Secondly as a very long time fan of Mr Ray Harryhausen I have a small request. When you do make your retrospective video about his career, could you please make it one of your longer videos? I feel that with the attention to detail and very clear love (well usually) you have for the subjects you cover, it will be almost sacrilege for it to have less than 30 minutes run time. And finally I'm going to end this on a strange proposition, I would very much like to buy you a pint and have a long natter about film with you. Now I know know offering to socialise with people on the internet is generally a very unusual thing to do. But we seem to have very similar tastes and interest and I feel we'd get on like the proverbial house on fire. So if that's at all something you would be interested in (and I assure you I am absolutely not a mentalist) drop me a contact email on the one video I currently have uploaded to my channel (something I will delete as soon as I've made a note of it) and I will contact you through that. I hope you're doing well mate and with any joy I'll hear from you.

Damn, way to blast me back to '99 with that _The PJs_ clip. Why do I get the feeling that such a show would be too "problematic" for 2017's sensibilities? x)

The lava lamp moves like a stop-motion so fluidly.

Kubo impressed the hell outta me

I just found your videos, this makes my third I just happened upon, here have a sub

why doesn't this channel have more subscribers

Very interesting video. I simply love stop motion, all because of "Wallace & Gromit" and "Chiken Run".

Did I miss a mention of Davey and Goliath? I know you can't cover them all, but D&G was my introduction to it and the epiphany that I just might be able to do something like it!

I love the Rankin and Bass Christmas specials. I would think they must be among the most influential stop motion films ever made (at least for my generation).

No mention of the one advance that revolutionized stop motion. Video preview, first with analog video then digital capture, allowed animators to do what ink and paint animators have always done... flip through their work to compare frames.

maybe I'm feeling pedantic but I've only just suddenly realized that if King Kong really did fall of a tall building like that, can you imagine the absolute SEA of blood and gristle that would fill several blocks of city streets

I'm really digging your videos and I'm sort of binging your channel right now, just wondering what's your opinion on Jan Svankmajer (hopefully I spelled it right). I had the luck to watch a retrospective of his some years ago in the city where I live and I was mesmerised by his works, Alice in wonderland was really creepy!

Those ruddy skeletons! The reason I started a number of hobbies!🙂

For great stop motion (especially with almost zero budget) see The Wizard of Speed and Time. Not to mention just a great movie.

no mention of jan svankmajer ?

I want to learn how to do stop motion now Also, 13 hours???? But I still want to learn it

When the Talos (?) statue turns to look at the hero I get a chill, something about it is just SO creepy! 6:33 O_O

Was hoping you would mention Svankmejer, he's amazing

I wish you delved into how Stop motion began a rennisaunce with the advent of Laika, bringing consistently good (if well animated alone) movies and causing other studios to hop in, ranging from being able to bring aardman back to the big screen or helping Warner Bros to fully embrace the stop motion style they tried for in the Lego Movie (even if it's fully Computer rendered)

And today stop-motion animation is alive and well amongst independent film makers...such as myself.

I am commenting so late, but Allison Schulnik is a visual artist who makes animation films. I especially like « Eager » from 2014.

Disappointed that you didn't bring up Gremlins and the way the stop motion adds to their craziness, but great video nonetheless

Glad you mentioned Peter Gabriel but Frank Zappa used it in the stink foot music video around a decade before

I'm amazed there's no mention of kubo.

How about the early TOOL videos? Great channel man.

I actually like it when stop motion movies look a bit "stuttery" because of a lack of motion blur.

The Lava Lamp speaks to me!

Any people of culture remember Crapston Villas? Legendary recommendation for you...

I love stop motion. That Sledgehammer video gave me nightmares as a child, but I loved it anyway. I have so much respect for the amount of work and precision of the medium. One of my favorite youtubers, Cranbersher, is a stop motion animator who creates his own sets/puppets. He occasionally uploads short tutorials as well. Check him out if you're interested!

Is it just me or does this guy look like Morrissey? Also, excellent channel!

Never change.

Great video but you are missing a lot of History key points notably in the Eastern Europe animation scene like Studio Zagreb or Jan Svankmajer (ok you did menton Jiri Trnka but the amount of weird stop motion films over there was phenomenal). And no mention of the first stop motion animation feature film " Tales of the Fox" (1933) ? Ouch.

This mostly is an american history of stop motion, although I am glad Starewitch and Trnka got mention. But the art flourished in eastern europe and russia, and there were some things done artistically that we never saw done in the west, due to different kind of thinking on producing, entertainment etc. Search for example Yuri Norshtein's Tale of Tales, Karel Zeman's Inspiration or documentary about him using his tehniques ( In Inspiration he uses glass figurines that are m e l t e d between the shots), or Jan Svankmajer. I will have to highlight that to talk about Quay brothers, while not mentioning Svankmajer or the eastern tradition in general is a bit uncivilized in the context of the whole art.

No mention of Morph? Minus 1000 likes!

Wallace and Gromet -- the early years. Haha! Brilliant! Incredible British humor.

I'm always going to prefer stop motion over CG anyday

Harry Howsen is the name of the restaurant in the movie. "Monster Inc"