Since those days, this short has become sort of an online Halloween favorite, and it’s easy to see why.

As brisk as a nursery rhyme, The Cat with Hands is a twisted tale (so deliciously Grimm) about a well-dwelling cat that steals human body parts. That’s where the hands came from, see? Amazing how creepy the film manages to be just by attaching our normal limbs to the body of a household pet. Narrated by a single voice throughout, the story takes the shape of a freaky folk tale, and even has the campfire-style twist to go with it. This ghoulish concept originated from a recurring nightmare the director’s sister used to have when she was young, which stacks another evidence for children being the best source for all things messed-up.

Writer-director Robert Morgan’s experience with stop-motion animation is impressive, having also done a couple of really great grotesque shorts reminiscent of Brothers Quay (take a look at his Separation). Nowadays, it’s rare enough that stop-motion animation is used at all—unless your name rhymes with Schmenry Schmelick—let alone used as an effect. Funded by UK’s Channel 4, Morgan was able to shoot a portion of the film in stark 35mm live-action and a portion in stop-motion figures. The latter is specifically used to render the eponymous cat. It gives that side of the film an otherworldly effect: cartoony enough to be fantasy (which helps with hiding the revelation) but not so cartoony that it takes away from the spooky atmosphere.

Having been around for so long, The Cat with Hands may not be a discovery anymore, but it remains a favorite for its memorably simple creature and myth-like attribute—like a bedtime story that won’t go away.

The story, like others about humankind’s impact on our natural world, must deliver a sermon without being overly pretentious. But Das Rad doesn’t bother with preaching. Rather, it does what great films do best—use a familiar face to reveal a surprising perspective. The familiar face here is a warm and lovable pair of rock buddies. Like Pixar’s WALL-E, the heavy environmental overtones are made palatable by the genuine innocence of the characters. The new perspective, however, takes a few moments to grasp, so I’ll give you a leg up. The two rocks see the passage of time, not as we do in seconds and minutes, but in months and years. Decades and centuries stream by as they discuss the annoyance of lichen. Truly, this is a film that touches on one truth that is easy to forget in our busy lives of traffic lights and grocery store lines—we are ephemeral things in a universe much bigger than ourselves.

Created using a killer combo style of stop-motion, puppetry, and CG, Das Rad is a student animator’s dream project. With so many different visual efforts to explore, the team must have had a blast. Sure, you could harp on some of their human character designs and find flaws in the compositing, but that’s all moot. Like Balance (another student stop-motion piece from Germany), when an idea is this strong, production value takes a back seat.

Ultimately, Das Rad passes the uber test for all great films in that you just have to watch it again… and again.

I went home and googled, dutifully looking out for all of you, our beloved fledgling audience,  but of course none of the short films were to be found. None except for the Animation Grand Jury Prize winning Photograph of Jesus! Hoo-Raaaaay.

Photograph for Jesus is of that weird genre hybrid, the animated documentary. Ryan or I Met the Walrus are examples in this mode, using recorded audio as the basis for the narrative. In this film an unseen photographic curator relates some of the odd and sometimes just plain daft requests he gets while working at the archive. We all get a chuckle via simple storytelling as he recounts his surprise, disbelief and exasperation at some of the things folk are looking for, while images catalogued in the vast wharehouse come to life via an impressive diversity of animation techniques. My personal favorite is the story of someone wanting an actual photograph of a Yeti.

The content of the short is heavily influenced by the reason for its creation. In 2008 Getty Images put on a contest for filmmakers, asking them to create a short film in which no less than 50% of the imagery was comprised of material from their London-based Hulton archive. Using image archives for the raw material in which to animate films is a neat idea and so far has produce some dynamite work—Run Wrake’s Control Master being the other example that comes to mind, but Laurie Hill took the premise of the contest and cleverly turned it in upon itself, creating a film out of the archive that itelf comments on the archive.

The Getty’s contest page displays some of the other worthy entries, including one by SotW-featured Ian Mackinnon, but Photograph of Jesus is the undisputed cream in my mind, only partly because of its perfection as a commercial. The film is also a delight of animation. It comes at a furious clip and blends photographic manipulation with collage, including a few instance of a bizarre but interesting kaleidoscopic montage, as well as stop motion of the physical space housing the collection. It’s visually arresting stuff, and the madcap feel of the action is a nice complement to the dry humor of the British narration.

Like most short filmed goodness on the web, our man Dek already scooped the film well before us, so visit if you want a personal copy.

In a sentence, Tomas has created a film that uses life-scale stop-motion (or pixelation) using found objects all shot against a gym floor. It builds from the thread of Pes and his stop-motion films that repurpose found objects in meaningful ways.

The big difference here is scale—a property that Tomas utilizes in his effects by holding up objects in front of the camera at a closer, foreshortened distance. This LoFi effect works surprisingly well and helps to solidify the notion that no CG was involved here. The LoFi effects + stop-motion + flat perspective create an amusing reference to the 2D adventure worlds of yesteryear’s video games.

On set, the film is shot from a balcony looking down on to a gym floor.

Let me take the chance to explain the appeal of the LoFi aesthetic (low fidelity) that is growing increasingly more prevalent. It’s a backlash against the ultra-real CG of today that tries to cover its tracks. Instead, it reveals the maker’s hand (in this case, quite literally). The more ghetto the special effects, the greater the props. But as much as it is a statement against big budget effects, it’s also a statement for the home-spun ingenuity of our YouTube generation. A sort of nose-thumbing that says, “look what I can do with what little I have.” However, as the French filmmaker Michel Gondry could tell you, LoFi effects are not necessarily the fast, cheap methods most make them out to be. No, in fact, LoFi most always requires more time and often burns a bigger hole in your pocket. So why do it? Craft. The LoFi aesthetic reveals a customization, dedication, and level of care that none can match.

Shotlist and storyboard all in one—looks like a game level.

If you’re interested in learning more about how Sorry I’m Late was made, drop by the Making Of page and view the many animation tests. Turn back the page from Sorry I’m Late, and you’ll see that Tomas has created another short stop-motion film called Little Big Love. Check this, and other entrepreneurial endeavors out on his personal website.

I’ve heard Jasper Morello described as a gothic horror, but there’s certainly a strong connection to science-fiction drawing from the genesis of the genre in the vein of Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. The sub-genre is a newer category, steampunk, which—for those unfamiliar with the term—is essentially a 19th century vision of the future where steam powers all. The allure is both a nostalgia for the Victorian-age aesthetic and a fascination with mechanics all set in a fantasy world with few limitations.

The unique style of animation is truly something to behold and reminiscent of the oldest surviving animated feature, The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1927). The simplified characters are reduced to silhouettes diverting our attention from the character to the action in the background—intricate workings of steampunk machinery and soft, ethereal skyscapes. Lucas created the characters out of various found materials and shot them in stop-motion—the silhouette effect, he says, was the result of a “happy accident” when a light blew out. The machines and backgrounds were created with the aid of a 3D computer rendering and all was composited together to created a very seamless, very unique combination.

Jasper Morello ran the festival circuit a couple years back until it reached the pinnacle of short film—an Oscar nomination— where I saw it for the first time. It did so well, that Lucas has three more Jasper adventures in the works. If you’ve already seen this film, it’s a great second-viewing. If you haven’t yet seen it, you’re in for a real treat.

All writers know the block, the periods of inactivity when the creative process simply dries up. Budapest, a city poet Billy has never visited, is the title of Julian Grey’s response to the challenge of Sundance. A hand clutching an old fashioned pen—the sort with a sharp nib that needs to be dipped into an ink pot—is seen like some disembodied beast with a mind of its own. With the camera low, cast in a blue hue, it scribbles in desultory fashion, page after page, the passage of time denoted by a change of arm from green sweater to plaid shirt,. The pen also acquires a mind of its own, requiring a little firm handling. Overlaid animations complement the live action and stop motion as insects crawl from the nib, a bird drinks from the puddled ink. In a nice touch during the close, we see the blue momentarily change to sunset yellow as, through a window, golden Budapest appears to be reflected in the now 3D puddle of ink, a distraction and relief both.

Billy Collins is a tad more accessible, not to say enjoyable, than some Poet Laureates from some other countries I might mention. He reads his own poems with a weary assurance that suits his subjects to perfection. Canadian animator Julian Grey has contributed two other poems, of which Forgetfulness is a moving response to waning powers. He and partner Steve Angel founded the award winning Toronto-based Head Gear in 1997.

Should you delve further and wish a pick-me-up, do view Today from the remarkable Californian studio, Little Fluffy Clouds or, in a different mood entirely, No Time from New York’s very distinctive Jeff Scher.

A purple -bearded woodsman is our protagonist, running and jumping throughout the forest, singing of his joy and freedom. His freedom simply happens to consist of a lot of butchering of hapless woodland critters; that is until he sets his sights on bigger prey…

The violence, though bloody, has an insouciant charm throughout as the Woodsman revels gleefully in the massacres he perpetrates. He seems to be sprite-sized, which brings about an effective juxtaposition of his magical, marvelous nature with conventional depictions of faeries, gnomes, elves and other woodland dwellers, imparting a wonderful sense of transgressive irony.

Originally conceived as a comic book, the film retains much of the the comic’s feel and design. The creative irreverence of I Live in the Woods, is something that I feel the comic form does best, but Winston has successfully made the conversion. Still certain elements fared better than others.

Visually, the film is top-notch and innovative. The outdoor scenes are fun, and the sets are cool and well-designed. Mr. Winston put up an awesome time-lapse video of his shooting process here. However there was not a lot of content in the comic in which to go off of, therefore the narration is a bit sparse. Sometimes it was a poem, with rhyming couplets, other times it was song. Still at other times, the action took over and there was no narration at all. Stronger writing could have helped tie the story together more effectively, which is important in a story that is so short to begin with.

That shortness is thus the other factor. I most often complain about short films being too long, I Live in the Woods however was too short! That is a compliment of course, I was captivated and enjoying what I saw on the screen so much that I wanted more, but also a critique as well. While no amount of padding could have made the Woodsman’s leap into the clouds logical, I felt a little more time with him in the woods would have made made the climactic scene more resonant.

Still, we love stop-motion here at Short of the Week, it’s the stubborn little art-form that refuses to die. With young practioners like Max Winston, may it live long and prosper.

A Sundance 10/10 film: currently offline

Blu, a street artist based in Buenos Aires, isn’t new to animation. In past work he’s explored animating across the white walls of unfinished rooms—characters morphing as they move from surface to surface. Muto takes his pioneering style a step further by bringing his characters to life in the public streets. Painted in large scale across the public walls and buildings of Buenos Aires and Baden over this past summer (Argentinian winter), Muto is a mad mash-up of man and machine where the body’s mechanics are distorted and deformed across graffitied brick walls and sidewalks.

In true street art fashion, Blu allows the limitations and obstacles of the environment to shape the action. He looks at his canvas not as a large blank sheet, but as a complex 3-dimensional surface—a setting. The weather and lighting shift with the day, pedestrians make split-second cameos, cars blur by unknowing—all unchoreographed occurances of the natural environment. Muto takes the true spirit of street art and brings it to life.

Blu is no newcomer to large-scale public work. His art is finding a larger audience, and you can now find his mutilated bodies on such respected establishments as the Tate Modern Museum of Art in London.

It commences with a giant stork-like, metal bird, beautifully crafted—there can be no other word for all the prop and puppet design here—sweeping down over a wooden carcass of a ship, the struts and frame boat and the skeletal system of a giant animal. The ship is floating on strips of wood, like complex pedals of a vast cathedral organ, the gently undulating lathes forming the sea. We become aware of a bespectacled figure immersed in the innards, studiously working on the cogs and wheels of his wooden clock. When the bell rings it is with the resonance of the giant metal bowls in the heights of Notre Dame. There is no Quasimodo figure however, just an old man hard at work, the passage of time and the disease revealed in his transparent, emaciating figure. The soundtrack is the bells and ticking of the clock.

Visually, this stop-motion movie is stunning even in the reduced quality available. Building the set and puppets took one year alone. The studio set is remarkable—artfully lit, providing ample scope for the camera to pan around. We see the clock-maker from different angles—his face sculptured from wood cast in the warm glow from his lantern; or we look down from above and marvel at the symmetry of the boat beneath.

Veteran actor Barry Otto narrates the story of Dik’s relationship with his father with such sincerity I believed, until I read the credits, that it was the director himself speaking. It is a complex work involving guilt over the death of his younger brother, John, who died at the age of five, 14 years before Dik was born. The consequent sadness in the family was one from which Dik felt excluded. Unlike the sudden death of a road accident the slowness of cancer allowed the son to say goodbye and “hello”. When his father dies his ashes are buried with those of his long dead son. In a moving passage of commentary the difference in quantity of the ashes between the two, boy and man, achieves both reconciliation and a release.

Dik was courteous in replying to questions from one of my students, Adam Fadra, in an extended interview for my school website last year and provides ample detail about the production. For example, the “hero bird” was assembled from brass, aluminium and bits of one of his father’s clocks whilst the process involved Dik constructing a thousand moving parts and making 22,000 images.

I see a lot of animated movies. Dad’s Clock stands out for a number of reasons, its candour being one. I have never seen a set of this complexity, a work of art in itself. The supreme craftsmanship allows Dik to form striking tableaux: the skeleton figure peering into his telescope out to the stars on top of the symmetrical alignment of timber, figure and ship viewed in front of the backdrop of the cosmos. When the old man descends for a final time into the machine and the mechanism closes around him it is an obvious metaphor but an effective one.

Dik’s personal and dignified tribute deserves greater recognition than it has received other than the director’s Australian home. His design and architecture company Studio 505 is situated in Melbourne.

In Game Over, Pes (rhymes with “yes”) has recreated these iconic games using ordinary household items through the process of stop-motion animation—objects chosen not only for their formal characteristics but also for their interpretive meaning. In displaying Pac-Man, for example, all the characters are created using food items (pizza, eggs, etc.). Pes’s amazing attention to every detail makes this short so special (just look at the flame on the back of the Asteriods spaceship!) . You can view more Pes films online at his website Eat Pes.

Game Over is touring as a closer to the popular Animation Show 3, but you can save yourself $10 (and a long wait) and view it online for free.