#stop-motion

#stop-motion

From pieces of everyday white paper, a series of delightful stop-motion animations illuminates how a simple material can be transformed into a sophisticated design. Created by Japenese designer Tomohiro Okazaki, who runs a studio called SWIMMING, "Paper Study" is a series of short intervals in which pieces of cut, folded, and sculpted paper appears to move on its own. Flat sheets transform into voluminous structures before collapsing back into a single plane, and arches, circles, and myriad other shapes move in sync.

Out of Words is made from clay, fabric, and glue: a love story literally crafted by hand that even caught the attention of Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima (The biggest praise we could imagine, game director Johan Oettinger says.) Oettinger dreamed of making a stop-motion video game since he was 12, when he first played 90s point-and-click claymation game The Neverhood.

A Conan the Barbarian action figure ad doesn't sound like the setup for great cinema, but stop-motion legend Justin Rasch (Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, Paranorman, Kubo and the Two Strings) has turned it into something special. His short film, created to launch a new Conan the Barbarian figure from Heroic Signatures, feels less like a commercial and more like a lost scene from one of the best stop-motion animated films.