Sunday, October 5, 2014

The Loneanimator Stop-Motion Puppet Book

I've been making puppets for dimensional animation for the past 20 years or so. For the past 10 years I've been documenting the creation process by snapping lots of photos, and some of them have ended up on my web page or blog, but most of them have just been saved in digital folders.
This summer I started looking through those folders with the intention of collecting most of them in a self-published book. I'm still at it, since I have at this point made over 100 puppets. Not all of them have survived the natural decomposition of latex materials, though, and not all of them have been thoroughly documented during their creation.


This book is very simple in its design and structure. It'll be mostly large images, with some explaining texts. My aim with this book is to provide inspiration for those of you just starting up their stop-motion film projects, to show what's actually possible to do with very limited means. Then there are people who are just interested in the craft of stop-motion animation and puppet building; hopefully this book will be of interest to those too.

There will be more updates about this project soon.

10 comments:

Luffy said...

This will be great...I'd really like to see this happen. Have you possibly thought of creating a crowdfunding campaign? On Kickstarter, or Indiegogo? It might help.

Richard Svensson said...

I've done a bit more than half of it, so I might be able to finish up at the end of this month. And the cost for self-publishing this book is really low, so I hope I don't have to go the crowdfunding route.

Luffy said...

That would be great!

Langley said...

I can't wait to see it!!!!

Kelston Hubler said...

It is awesome you are making a scrapbook, you are a truly awesome stop motion artist.

I was wondering, have you ever considered doing The Time Machine? I'm checking it out, and it would be perfect for film. I also find it odd all adaptions of the project only focus on the Eloi and Morlocks, completely ignoring the other, weirder creatures, like the giant crabs and grey men.

I hope to read it soon. Also, have you read the sci-fi thriller RELIC? It's a really cool book, another awesome monster story.

Kelston Hubler

Richard Svensson said...

I was considering making my own version of "The Time Machine" a long time ago, but since there are two decent versions of it (I especially like the George Pal production) I though I wouldn't bother. There are other stories that I'm more interested in.
Yes, I have read "Relic". It's a very nice old-fashioned monster tale :)

Luffy said...

I cannot recommend enough "The War of the Worlds" or "The House on the Borderlands" for your puppet attention (and you have, evidently, read both). But I'd REALLY love to see you do "Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book". You said that you were "planning to film my own version using a muppet representation of the demon, rather than an animated puppet. It never materialized..." I hope it happens eventually...or, at least, an illustration! :)

McTodd said...

A How-To book? What a splendid idea! Meanwhile, I second Brian O'Connell about you having a crack at The War of the Worlds. I've been meaning to do some stop-motion test shots for years (decades!) and still haven't got around to it, though I have made a couple of abortive attempts at sculpting a Martian (I've never been happy with my efforts) - I'd love to see your take on them. A Wells short story I think would be a great project, and feasible for a low/no budget film-maker is In The Abyss, which is a magnificent tale (and has some affinities with one or two of HPL's fishy creations).

Richard Svensson said...

I've been sniffing around the "In the Abyss" story too :)

McTodd said...

Have you read Stephen Baxter's excellent short story The Ant-Men of Tibet? It's a very clever sequel to Wells's The First Men in the Moon and would make an excellent short film.