Thread: Darkmatters' Puppet Theatre

Wait...That's being done?! Now I'm looking forward to that too! Frankenweenie was so adorable! I'm a bit of a nerd for TB's work...I think the only thing I haven't seen by him is Big Fish. I literally grew up off of his movies, and the spinoff cartoon to his movie Beetlejuice.
You have fantastic taste, sir. I tip my hat to you!

Thank you!

Big fish... I'd say you're not missing much. I don't know... it was meh... alright I guess. I didn't really care for it that much though.

No problem!
And I've heard that about it....But I still want to see it anyway

Very cool. The first thing I thought of was this old Tool video:

Oh yeah!!! Thanks Tausaur! Had to watch that one with the volume cranked up. Definitely one of my biggest influences.

Done by Fred Sturh (RIP) and Adam Jones. Sturh animated the video for Sober, then Jones (Tool guitarist) helped out on this and a couple more before Sturh's tragic death in a car accident, then Jones took over their videos from there. He's an artist (visual I mean as well as musical) and has some connection to movie special effects. True story... for the shot where the bee is crawling on the hand of the black puppet, they put the bee in a refrigerator for a while to slow its metabolism, then they just animated the hand and let the bee walk around really SLOOOOOooooooooow.

Ok, since you posted this here (and thankfully on the 2nd page where my work doesn't have to stand direct comparison! ) I think I'll put up a few videos by some other influences that are less familiar.

.. And Ludo, it's definitely worth seeing. Just didn't stand up to his better films.

Prepare yourself for this (if that's possible). Most. Intoxicating. Film. Ever. Made. There are no words.





Maybe people on Dreamviews will actually like this. The majority of people I show it to... even those who love the Tool videos, just get a pissed-off look after a few seconds and say "WTF is this??!!" This is actually the strongest influence on Fred Sturh for the Sober video as well as on hundreds of other artists (including Marilyn Manson).

... It's called SURREALISM people!! I KNOW you don't get the story - there ISN'T one!!
Actually it is based very loosely on the story of the same name by Polish author Bruno Schulz, which itself is a fantastic work of surrealism (and actually does have a recognizable story to it) - but the Bros went way afield here and just used the imagery and ideology from the book (plus another of Schulz's masterpieces - I believe it was Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass) and went completely nuts with it. I cannot get enough of this, and it will forever be my Holy Grail - the perfection towards which I will reach and never attain.



One of Schulz's innumerable amazing quotes:

"There are things than cannot ever occur with any precision. They are too big and too magnificent to be contained in mere facts. They are merely trying to occur, they are checking whether the ground of reality can carry them. And they quickly withdraw, fearing to loose their integrity in the frailty of realization. "
— Bruno Schulz (Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass)

I am stunned into silence.

Svankmajer is the leader of the Czech Surrealists (or was) and here he demonstrates their creed - they place strong emphasis on the violence and sensuality of childhood dreams and fantasy, elements that are normally ignored or fearfully repressed by society, and they look to Lewis Carrol as one of the seminal surrealists.

Svankmajer also served as the main inspiration for the Brothers Quay (above).

His visual style is abrupt and sometimes disturbing, there's a strong insistence on textures and surfaces and a chorus of natural sounds amplified to make them strange - and if you give in to the dreamlike spell of it and let it carry you, it will take you to a very dreamlike space.

As always, pleases click through to YouTube to see this fullscreen, and to see the other parts.

One of the most astonishing puppetfilms to come from the Czech Republic or all of Eastern Europe for that matter. Like most of them, this is entirely told through pantomime and has no dialogue aside from some gibberish language invented for the purpose. It uses a mix of semi-flat bas-relief style puppets and fully 3D ones plus some dead rats with wires jammed into them to make them animatable. Probably not the best idea.. many of the animators got violently ill and had to take sick days.

But the result is strange, surreal, and startlingly beautiful. Czech animation is meant for an adult audience and often delves into deep literary/philosophical areas and is unafraid to deal with dark frightening aspects of life.

God I love this stuff!!

...We've got another Tim Burton in the world
You have an amazing talent! DON'T STOP >:O

Why thank you sir!!

.. And Gaga!

Absolutely demented are your inspirations!
...And I love it!
Your inspirations are so sophisticated, making your art very fine. I'm kind of jealous! You drew from great and strange things, and created a very pronounced style for yourself with it! I always wanted to try my hand at puppets....But for now I either paint, illustrate, or make leather masks. I would love to see more work from you! And if you need any leather pieces for your puppets....I'm your girl! XD

I actually have mixed emotions about posting these influences/inspirations here. It's all so 'horrifically beautiful' and immensely powerful that it makes my own work seem pitiful in comparison!! But when I look at my early work and then the pictures of my most recent stuff I can see I'm getting there. Heh, so I'm glad this is on page 2 all grouped together.

I'm stunned that you make leather masks! Like Mardi-Gras type? Those are amazingly beautiful... I love anything made from natural materials especially using an old-world technique. Do you wet the leather and stretch it over wooden forms? I know there are other approaches, but that's one I really love to see. In fact - strange synchronicity maybe, but I was considering posting one more clip here - something done by Ladislas Starevitch, who was doing this stuff pretty close the the dawn of the motion picture itself and made tiny little garment-leather masks for his puppets that allowed the mouths to move and the facial expressions to be animated using tweezers...

Born Polish, emigrated to Russia and then to France - there are multiple spellings of his name as a result of all this chaotic cultural upheaval, but in any language, his work is pure genius!! As mentioned in the last post, he used garment leather to make the faces, stretched and sewn over wooden forms and then animated the facial expressions using tweezers (there are of course also wires inside).

He's generally credited with being one of the first people to actually make and animate puppets specially designed for the purpose... simultaneous with (but completely independent from and with no knowledge of) Jiri Trnka in the Czech Republic and one or two others - I'm too lazy to check on that right now but I believe one was Willis O'Brien, Irish/American most famous for his pioneering work on King Kong.

This folk tale brought brilliantly to life is one of the most gorgeous films ever made in many people's opinion (including my own).

I do wet the leather, but the lather-scrap I buy is a bit thick for stretching. In my case, I shape the wet leather to the contours of a persons face (usually when it's custom for them), or I shape it to the face of my styrofoam head who I have named Chuck Norris. After that, they are propped up in the oven and painted when they are all baked through. The masks can be mardi-gras, certainly. So far the masks I've made are just the eye-maks tied with a ribbon, and two custom-shaped ones (a 'Phantom of the Opera'-esque half-face mask and a Gaga-esque mask with a strange custom cut....It's hard to explain. It covered her left eye, the brdige went across her nose, and then it only covered her right cheek down to her chin....Pure hell to shape and stand for baking, let me tell you!) I can certainly show you some samples. At the moment, I am beginning to put up some masks on eBay soon. Otherwise the ones I've made were for people for my Junior prom and as gifts. But yes, I can certainly show you samples of those as well! Just shoot me a message!

And by the by- you shouldn't feel self-concious with your inspirations. Think of it as motivation- and you're doing well! Your work isn't pale in comparison, it shines and showss character!

Just wondering around DV until I stumbled upon this thread. This is epic man! I salute you! Anyways, how many frames per sec is this?

Thanks!! I started off working at 15 FPS, which is just about the lowest number that still looks like actual smooth movement. Then after a while I graduated to 24 FPS - which is actual movie film framerate. Heh I know, I know... I don't plan to ever actually shoot anything on real movie film, couldn't afford it anyway! But now with Blu -Ray you actually can watch at 24p, and I feel that framerate gives the animation a more "film-like" look.

Team America !! heheh. nice work man. I wish i had a decent internet connection so i could watch more of the clips you posted... (including your inspirations) I really liked your signature picture, took me a moment to be less oblivious and realize that you actually created it's contents. Awesome.

F**k Yeah!!

Thanks Shawn! And I'm glad you mentioned my signature pic, cause I have to admit - I didn't actually make those heads. I did make everything else in my clips, and I made the bodies under the heads, but they were actually made by an amazing sculptor/marionette maker named Scott Radke. I'm a huge fan of his work, and I still can't believe I get to animate these crazy things!! Here's his website: Marionettes by Scott Radke

And just to be clear - I did make the head in my avatar pic!

What's up DarkMatters, I'm looking at your animations ..very good. Reminds me of James and The Giant Peach lol. If you want to work together let me know, I make music scores your animation films

Meh ..j/k

Oh shit. I didn't realize this was you. I've come across your stuff before. I think I stumbled across your website a while back while browsing art and animation websites. I recognized the hammer .gif you had for a while as your avatar, but didn't think you actually made it. Wow, you're totally famous in my mind.

Do you do anything related to this, professionally? Or is this a hobby? You should definitely be doing this professionally if you are not already.

Hey thanks Robot_Butler!!

Well I'd have to call it more than a hobby, I consider myself a serious amateur. This isn't any kind of insult - really the main difference between professional and amateur is whether you do it for money or not. And often the amateurs are really the ones who do the most interesting work, because they're doing it strictly for love of the craft and aren't bound by constraints of time and "rule by committee" that can cook all the life out of a professional production, even though it has almost unlimited budget and talent. I decided early on that I would never do this professionally, because as soon as you're doing it for money you become a slave to the money man. I used to make airbrushed T shirts and I learned the hard way that letting other people make decisions that you as an artist have to obey means you're selling out your integrity. And I refuse to do that in my animation.

Basically the only way a stopmotion animator could make a decent living today is by working on shows like Robot Chicken (hey, any relation? ) and the like, which doesn't appeal to me at all. Yeah, there are the big movies like Coraline and Corpse Bride, but guess what? The animators and crew who work on those are basically recruited form the talent poo (lol I meant pool - but I'll leave that rather humorous Freudian slip there!) who have to make Robot Chicken! It's the same as Nightmare Before Christmas - believe it or not, when they formed a production company and started hiring talent, they recruited form the pool of animators and fabricators who were working on Gumby! Yeah, those guys are doing what they love for a living too, but most of them are happy just to push puppets around and have no ambitions toward directing or writing their own material, or being in charge of lighting and set design etc. Personally I don't even want to do this unless I can make films that really appeal to me, and I think looking at what I do you can see I wouldn't be happy with the cartoonish look and lighting and the slapstick mentality of Robot Chicken (as much respect and admiration as I do have for the talented people who make that show). Some of the guys hwo work there also make their own films in their free time, and it can be astonishing how different their personal work is!

But to me, I'd rather work a day job in order to be able to afford to do what I want with my time (if I can ever break away from my DV addiction long enough that is!! ) and then labor for months or years to make a single short film that I can be proud of.

I know exactly what you mean. Humans are cursed with this problem. As soon as you start doing what you love for money, you stop loving it. I always joke about it with my friends. Even if you work in a creative industry, you always have to keep something separate that you do only for yourself. I only ask, because stop motion seems like one of those things that requires an impossibly huge skill set. I can't imagine how you could get into something like that without having a day job that is somehow related. I am impressed.

Your stuff reminds me of some of Dave McKean's darker work. In fact, I think he even illustrated a Punch & Judy comic book a few years ago.

Yeah! Mr. Punch! I've got that one, and I love it!!!