Nice Shorts

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!)

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 

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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 

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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: [email protected]

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/