We previously posted some stills from Teclópolis, an amazing short film from Can Can Club, a stop-motion studio located in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Now we can share the entire film. We suggest going full-screen and turning the volume up. This inventive, impassioned film deserves our full attention.

Can Can Club switched to Dragon Stop Motion towards the end of this project, and now they use it for all of their projects. Here is what they had to say about their experience:

Thank you, Can Can Club, for making an amazing film.

If you understand Spanish (or even if you don’t) you might like to check out this behind-the-scenes look at the film:

The Astronomer’s Sun is a short film directed by Simon Cartwright and Jessica Cope, and produced by Duchy Parade Films. It is currently on the festival circuit, and was recently awarded Best Film at the Northern Futures Awards.

We asked Jess Cope what her experience was using Dragon Stop Motion on this project. She had a lot of great things to say!:

“The main thing I would like to say about DSM is that it actually saved our film! I had wanted to use it right from the start but we had been put in touch with another company who were working on a new piece of software and as this was part of a funded scheme we wanted to keep costs down and help a local company out. Sadly this turned out to be a massive job and it was causing delays in our very tight schedule so we had to look else where.

“Not only was Dragon affordable on our tiny budget but it was SO clear to use whilst still feeling very professional and slick. I know I did not even scratch the surface of what it could do but it did exactly what I needed it to do at the time. We had so little time and I would recommend this software to EVERYONE!

“Another thing which I found INCREDIBLE was the brilliant customer support. I would send out an email to your selves and within half an hour I would get a reply…it baffled me that you could be so good due to the time difference between America and England.

“Dragon Stop Motion is quite simply FANTASTIC and so was the customer support. We could not have been more pleased.”

Thank you Jessica, for the kind words, and for making such a fantastic short!

The Astronomer’s Sun was shot using Dragon Stop Motion animation software and a Canon EOS 450D (Digital Rebel XSi).

http://www.astronomerssun.com/
http://theastronomerssun.blogspot.com/

Dried Up from Cecil on Vimeo.

Jeremy Casper, Stuart Bury, and Isaiah Powers co-wrote and directed “Dried Up”, a six minute stop motion animation shot with Dragon Stop Motion. Recently, they were awarded the Silver Student Academy Award in the Animation category. The award was presented by Henry Selick.

“Dried Up” is the story of a quiet old man who, surrounded by desolation and apathy, perseveres to remain true to the nature of his own beliefs and character. He toils daily to forge a last ditch effort to bring hope and life to a faithless, drought ridden old town.

As students of animation at Kansas City Art Institute, they were early adopters of Dragon Stop Motion software, and they are some of its biggest fans.

We asked Isaiah Powers about using our software for this film:

“I think first I would simply like to say, thank you. We used Dragon Stop Motion to shoot every frame of our film and the longer we used it the more excited we got about it. Any time we got to a point where we needed a specific feature it was already there. I have never used a bit of software that was so intuitive and allowed us to get straight to work so fast. In the stressful environment of stop-motion production it was a relief. At one point we were ready to start animating Cecil playing his organ and we thought, we need an x-sheet so we can sync his motions to the music… you know I bet there is one programmed in here, so far it has had everything else we wanted. Within a few clicks we found the Dragon X-Sheet and were busy loading music in and setting up the shot.

“Another thing I found especially helpful was the ability to easily switch between the high res photo taken and the preview photos. Our sets were highly detailed and made it possible to keep up with everything. It also helped realign the camera if I accidentally bumped the set in an impromptue dance.

“We had basically no budget for our film. I made a hand cranked camera dolly for about $30. We used clamp lights and waxed paper for diffusion. The most expensive thing we used was hot glue. We scavenged for cardboard and built our sets with found objects. The main character in our film, Cecil builds his creations out of junk he finds around town so we figured if it was good enough for him, it was good enough for us. Dragon is a pro application priced for everyone, and I tell that to anybody who asks me about shooting stopmotion, you gotta use it! “

Here is what Jeremy Casper had to say about our software:

“Dragon is affordable for both the professional and student. We basically created our film with very little to no money, so being able to buy such an amazing program made the experience tangible. I could go on and on about Dragon, but seriously who has that kind of time on their hands. To anyone who asks me, Dragon is the only program for this kind of medium, period.”

“Dried Up” continues its way through the animation film festival circuit. Next up is the Melbourne International Animation Festival.

Jeremy Casper’s Blog
http://cazpear.wordpress.com
Isaiah Powers’s Site
http://isaiahpowers.com
Stuart Bury’s Blog
http://stuartbury.blogspot.com
Dried Up Blog
http://driedup.wordpress.com

Burning through the animation festival circuit, Max Winston’s “I Live In The Woods!” picks up awards and kudos. Cal Arts grad Max Winston’s thesis film is a high energy stop motion feast of colors and colorful characters. Max bravely and seamlessly weaves together on-set stop motion with live actors and exterior shots, creating a short film with an unexpected and fresh esthetic.

Check out “I Live In The Woods” site

Check out a time-lapse making of.

The ambitious stop motion short “Zero” picked up a NSW Gold Award from the Australian Cinematographers Society in the Experimental and Specialized Category. Zero director Christopher Kezelos gives credit to the exceptional work of the film’s director of photography Mathew Horrex. The film was shot using Dragon Stop Motion software.

Christopher had this to say about using Dragon Stop Motion:

“We shot Zero using a Canon EOS 450D and Nikon prime lenses. Due to the manual nature of this setup, we spent a lot of time using Dragon’s Cinematography tools to set up each shot. I found these tools to be an essential part of our shoot as we spent a lot of time tweaking the camera settings and picture framing before capturing valuable stills. Having the flexibility to shoot hi-res images and quickly flip between them to decide on our final settings was invaluable”.

Writer/Director: Christopher Kezelos

About Dragon Stop Motion and post production:

“The most obvious conundrum one can face when shooting a stop motion animation is how to effectively manage the thousands of image files and hundreds of directories required. Dragon made this a breeze. It automatically created a directory structure based on our scene and shot numbers. This sped up our work flow dramatically as it allowed us to cross reference our story board numbers with our directory structure to quickly find the shots we were after. Handy during production, a godsend during post”.

Make sure to check the Zero site to see it at a film festival near you.