stop motion

It’s somewhat strange for me to say that I have a favourite kind of animation. It depends on the individual film, on the individual artists. I love Studio Ghibli’s Spirited Away and Porco Rosso and The Tale of the Princess Kaguya. I love the vibrant, expressive, always surprising computer animation of the Spider-Verse films as much as that of WALL-E with its Roger Deakins-like, classically handsome lighting and cinematography. I love Brad Bird’s The Iron Giant, the Looney Tunes classics, the medieval inspirations of Cartoon Saloon’s The Secret of Kells and Wolfwalkers. The styles and techniques with which these films were made were meaningful choices, and they were the right choices.

There are films I love in all kinds of animation. But if I did have to choose a favourite between these styles and techniques, I would have to say it’s stop motion.

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Okay, today’s going to be short on words by me – and long on irony/hypocrisy/YouTube videos! (Well, I did say I loved YouTube, I don’t just hate it…) I’ve been looking at my book of Sandman dustcovers, and I remembered how much I like Dave McKean’s work. Not all of it – I was less than keen (yes, I did misspell that as ‘kean’ first) on Mirrormask, for instance – but much of it is beautiful and disturbing to me. Most of all his illustrations for Neil Gaiman’s Mr. Punch, probably.

The man himself - Mr Punch

So this is where I shut up and give you two YouTube videos. One is by McKean himself, and it combines my love of his work and of Shakespeare’s writing; the other is by Jan Svankmajer, an obvious influence on McKean. Don’t watch the latter if you’re easily freaked out – or if you like your animation quick and frantic.