i have never felt so personally validated and vindicated by a video essay conclusion before. for so many years i've wondered "why do i spend so long on my projects, only for them to stay unfinished, and for so little progress to be made despite the hours i've put in? when so many other artists/animators create such long and intricate works. is this even worth it anymore? am i just not cut out for it" and to realise that no, i'm not working slowly compared to others, i just haven't dedicated *every waking moment* to my creations like Yuri Norstein and Francheska Yarbusova, speaks volumes to just how much dedication you must have and the sacrifices you must make in order not only to make, but to *finish* your art. it's both heartbreaking and beautiful. it speaks to the undying drive of the human spirit.
It should be the patience of the stop montion animator instead of a saint it's really rewarding but also frustrating we had to at least try it in school so i appreciate it more than if i never did
So happy to see a little shoutout to Wendell & Wild, as it's even a miracle that we got it. It was nearly axed by Netflix but survived thanks to the contract Henry Selick had with Jordan Peele, then it survived a wildfire on top of that.
Yeah, I almost wrote a segment on Henry Selick's career and how he has kind of gotten a raw deal. First by having people erasing his work on films like Nightmare before Christmas even though Tim Burton contributed far less to the production. Then by getting kind of ousted from Hollywood following the commercial and critical failure of Monkeybone. Then by leaving Laika after Coraline to go work with Pixar, only for them and Disney to cancel all of his projects after people like John Lasseter heavily interfered with their development. Even though I ultimately found Wendell & Wild a little underwhelming, I can only hope that Selick and his team can continue to make the stuff they want.
@@HenryKathman Even if W&W is a little underwhelming, it has a ton of love to it, though it would have been better as a series. Sadly budget is king and Netflix isn't known for being mercyful with budget. Still this was the movie that revived Selicks spirit, and that's beautiful. And honestly, despite all the bullsh!t Selick has delt with throughout his career, he somehow always finds a way back up. Gotta admire that about him, just hope he can get out a few more classics! Also f*ck Lasseter and the CGI horse he rode in on.
as an artist who doesnt know yet how to make a living out of my craft, as someone who feels guilty everyday either by the time i spend on my proyects or on the time that i dont work on them, your conclusion seriously got me deeply and i even cried a little. i feel so seen now and less alone in this struggle. thank you so much for this video. and shoutout to all the stop motion animators in the world, to the uncredited, the unknown, everyone.
Thank You for that. I spent many days in Tippett's Studio pushing around those Mad God Puppets. There will never be another project for me that encapsulates the true meaning of Stop-motion animation. Entering the world of Phil Tippett and seeing his nightmares played out every day will be a constant reminder of pushing until you can push no more. Digging deep until you can dig no more. Even if Mad God never finished filming, even if we all walked away before the final shots, the process would have been worth it. Cheers. Just keep making.
My favorite paper cut-out animation is the Ukrainian show Adventures of Captain Vrungel, it’s 13 episodes long, it’s 40-something years old but it has aged very gracefully, much more so than many American shows from around the time period. I made English subtitles to an HD version of the show, but it got blocked here on RUclips except for the first episode, I gotta upload the series to the Internet Archive sometime, though you can find untranslated episodes here.
@@HenryKathman I just uploaded all the episodes to the Internet Archive, so look up “Adventures of Captain Vrungel English Subtitles” under the username “One in a Thousand” and you should hopefully find them.
Holy shit, wasn't expecting so few comments on this; this was wonderful! Loved every second of it. And I have to agree with you, Mad God might be a grisly film, but there's something beautiful about the sheer amount of labor it took to come to fruition
Thank you for giving due to credit to the crew of the Rankin Bass shorts. As someone who has spent 6 years experimenting with stop motion, particularly specializing in claymation, I can relate to this miraculous horror but I have a luxury those mentioned didn't have, and that's the time to make what I want. They still had to fulfill their obligations to their day jobs or deal with crew members who, too, had to move onto higher paying gigs. I will say I've yet to make any form of high art, and with that the ranks of these filmmakers are up there with Van Gogh, Mozart, and even Stanley Kubrick.
Yeah, it was honestly surprising to find so little information out there about Rankin Bass's stop motion production. Pretty much everything I was able to find out about the studio is thanks to Rick Goldschmidt's writing in books like "The Enchanted World of Rankin Bass". Big shoutout to him.
Thank you! Jacob’s work is infuriatingly good and one of my motivations to putting as much effort as I do into my essays is to match the quality of him and my other favorite essayists
Incredible video, as always. The transient nature of time and the beauty and horror of using that time for creation and art! I'm going to be thinking about this one for a long time.
@@ObliviousBen1 thank you! I don’t do the obligatory like comment and subscribe thing at the end of these videos so it’s always nice to have returning viewers
Thank you for bringing this topic❤ I believe it was hard to find the information, especially about foreign artists And a little bit more about Soviet animation: puppet technique/stop motion was actually very popular back than (it was much cheaper than drawn ones). Many (I mean like MANY) cartoons were made in this type of animation - mostly they were fairy tales I believe there are English subtitles on them - you can find them on RUclips channel of Союзмультфильм
i’ve always had a fascination with stop motion, this video has inspired me to relight this passion, maybe going back to my childhood and creating more stop motion videos! it’s amazing to see a more behind-the-scenes perspective of the art form.
I gotta try Harold the Halibut. I hope we will see an advancement in animation that uses photogrammetry paired with motion capture to help streamline the work. I've seen footage of new age Muppets being rigged to CGI & custom puppet video game controls that allow them to do so much with a medium that they so dearly love. I hope we will see a comeback of 2D Animation. I miss it so much. It was such a integral part of life growing up in the 90's. I didn't think so much of it would disappear at this point.. I loved the X-men the animated series, Captain Planet, Thundercats, He-Man, Little Nemo Adventures in Slumberland, Rockos Modern Life, Ah! Real Monsters, Ren & Stimpy, Courage the cowardly dog, Dexter's Laboratory, James and the Giant Peach, Batman, Batman Beyond, Spiderman, the list goes on.. I just wish these forms of art would make a massive comeback because in mmy opinion they are unbeatable. Nothing compares to what they are capable of.
I can definitely agree with that. I don't know if every stop motion production would benefit from photogrammetry, but I think that it would be interesting to see more filmmakers try it out.
Animator here. 2D was allowed to die because it was union and 3D, at the time, wasn't. Executives like it because it's the only form of animation that can be changed entirely from the ground up at the last minute on an executive's whim. It shouldn't be, but it can be. 2D was only brought to its heights because it could be scaled up to industrial scale in ways that stop-motion and cutout couldn't. I'm hoping we build an audience for animation again. The sad truth is that video games, algorithms, social media, etc. have literally changed the way the audience interacts, because of the biggest change of modern society: we used to be bored all the time, now we're stressed all the time. One seeks out different things in those moods.
Stop motion is onr of my favorite mediums to work in! I have a few projects buzzin around my brain rn. I just need time to do them.... My favorite will always be Jan Svenkmeyer's work, especially Alice
I'm a comics artist so, you know, also a sequential artist like animators. this video is really relatable because comics take a long time to make for a very little monetary reward. for example the most important literary award in my country is 25.000euros when the most important comics award is only worth 5000 euros. of course I don't make comics only because of money but that was the first example about the disparity that came to my mind. idk maybe I'm wrong for thinking about art in terms of money here? haha! Anyway, beautiful work.
Excellent documentary great on all fronts and very informative. Just want to bring up up the lifelong work of Ray Harry Harryhausen . His work on mighty Joe young to clash of the titans and everything in-between and he got a Oscar for it and don't forget Willis O'Brien who did original king Kong 1933.. great documentary!!!!!
Gogol's "The Overcoat" is one of my favorite stories; I actually did a huge project on it in my literary linguistics class when I was in college. The story of the production of the film based on it sounds almost Gogolian in itself. It also reminds me of another Gogol adaptation, when the composer Dmitri Shostakovich attempted to adapt Gogol's play "The Gamblers" into an opera in the 1940s. As he wanted to adapt the full text of the play, he ended up composing hours of music, but eventually scrapped it because it was too long, although segments of it still show up in some of his other works. "The Overcoat," like many of Gogol's stories, relies on paradox between the tragic and comedic. Gogol was a master at deconstructing the concepts of tragedy and comedy through the grotesque and absurd, and "The Overcoat" is one of his most popular works because it embodies this element of his work so well. For those who are unfamiliar with the story, Akaky Akakievich Bashchmachkin is a caricature of the 19th century St. Petersburg "everyman"- a civil servant who is so dull and unremarkable that this unremarkability is extraordinary. Gogol's narration simultaneously ridicules and pities him because of this, both humanizing and dehumanizing him. Akaky longs for an expensive overcoat, and spends much of the story saving up money to buy it. When he finally buys the overcoat, his life is changed, as it brings him attention and confidence. However, he's eventually killed for it. He becomes a ghost by the end, haunting the streets and stealing people's overcoats. To me, the story of the animated film's production seems to mirror the story. You have this very long process towards an end goal, and while hopefully the filmmakers will successfully finish and produce the film, I also got the haunting impression of "ghosts" involved in its production, such as the deaths of collaborators, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the changes in Russian culture over the decades. And yet, like Gogol's story, there's something grotesque about it- the length of time it's taking to produce and the effort involved appears absurd. I sincerely hope it gets finished.
If you’re a fan of Gogol, I cannot recommend the documentary “making the overcoat” enough. Watching the interviews, clear that Yuri Notstein has a lot of thoughts on his writing
Whenever I think of horror and stop-motion, I think of George Pal and his Puppetoons. Simultaneously the most enchanting and ghoulish stop motion out there
@@HenryKathmanOutdated for sure, but at least they weren’t done out of any malice. And he did go on to make more progressive films for the decades that followed.
Thank you for being real. Thank you for reading off your script. Thanks for not staring into the camera like a goober. Thank you for your use of shadows in and lights in some shots when it comes to your eyes. Thank you for being a Autism Friendly RUclips Channel, even if it wasnt intentional. Love mad god. feel bad for tibbit. And also. lmao i didnt know Doug Walker Nostalgia Critic, had a son.
Has it occured to you that the process making the overcoat might be enjoyable , and that the couple dedicates their life to it because they enjoy it? I dont see why it has to be suffering.
Because both of them have said as much in the documentary ‘making the overcoat’ and in interviews. I imagine they enjoy aspects of it for sure, but working on anything for too long can diminishes the enjoyment
I don’t really have an insightful comment or anything to add to an already brilliant video but might I say I think you just invented the sibling to bisexual lighting: nonbinary lighting.
Yeah, I'm surprised more people don't try to use complementary colors outside of red and blue. Though it might feel a little weird to claim it as a cis dude.
I mean, he says it’s great Travis Knight is using his nepobaby status to prop up Laika, but it’s made more than questionable when he and he father kinda weaseled it out from Will Vinton while putting the animators through terrible working conditions and busting them when they tried to unionize.
That's absolutely fair. I was unaware of the union busting stuff happening at Laika and wouldn't have given either Knights too much credit had I known that.
@@HenryKathman To be fair, they kept it deeply under wraps. It's perfectly five to still praise the actual artists behind the movies, and leave the Knights out of it. Especially after Travis stole one of the movies half-way through production (Kubo and the Two Strings) and claimed he was the man behind the idea. There's a really great video essay about the history of Laika, it's movies, the good, bad, and complicated, and the more hopefull. It's called The Movies of Laika, well worth the watch!
Modern day consoles are not holding back the next elder scrolls, don't make me laugh, Bethesda games still look like they belong on the PS3, Bethesda hold themselves back because they rush everything and refuse to innovate
As a fellow Bathesda hater, you are absolutely right that Bathesda's games suffer from an overall rushed production. With my statement in the video, I was mainly going off of leaked documents from Microsoft's FTC filing in 2023 that talked about the game likely not being released for another five years, which would land it after the tentative launch of next Xbox console in 2028. Perhaps not an indictment of the game buckling under current gen hardware (their current releases already do that lol) but certainly indicative of something.
Thanks for reminding me of this Mark, my laptop re booted itself and i lost it. Great compilation, a few new ones to me. Did you like the Russian asteroid attack all in one take, from film Mia 2022? x Mike.
quirino cristiani mention 🧉🇦🇷 (also my beloved lotte reiniger! and jiri trnka! and i hadnt heard of norstein and yarbusova, what a great new pair of artists to find) its been a while since ive scoped out the latest new entries in the stop motion genre, so this was a really great video for that!! i had heard of mad god and im waiting to see it on a big screen, but also the idea of a stop motion videogame is so fascinating, and the end result is absolutely gorgeous. also Yes. they didnt have to put moving grass, but they did. animators and especially stop motion animators are nothing if not delightfully ambitious. im sorry, i know ive done this before on the community post, and you probably already know about them: but just in case someone else reads this, for those interested in horror as it relates to stop motion, i urge them to discover the art of jan svankmajer, the quay brothers, and the duo of Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña. Svankmajers Alice, Quays The Street of Crocodiles, and León and Cociñas The Wolf House are among my favorite pieces of art ever made, each one creepy in their own way, all of them unsettling in a manner only stop motion can be. stop motion has been for decades one of my special interests, and the possibility of more people finding out about its history and incredible potential is so exciting to me. sorry for extending this comment so much, but the phrase "vampiric entity" referred to art is just wonderfully interesting. it is vampiric, but its also devotional and a labor of love, the most proper comparison i think of an art piece as a "child". one can abandon the project, and get rid of the so-called "parasite", but does one really want that? it gives ones life meaning. obsessions often give a sense of purpose, and i reckon animators (ones who are not coerced, ones properly compensed for their work, ones who arent exploited to finish someone elses product) find that sense of purpose through their art... all artists, really. artists become obsessive because they might seek immortality sometimes, yes, but also because they love the art they produce, love it so much that it has become synonymous with their own lives. i understand what you mean in the conclusion, but i dont agree that this devotion is horror. its just devotion and sacrifice, pure and simple; and while it has a certain dark side, i think its a very normal thing, not something that breaks through normalcy. its par for the course for those who love what they do, though this may seem like an extreme.
oh my god… got halfway through the video expecting this to have hundreds of thousands of views because of the production quality… amazing and captivating job! i’m so lucky to have been recommended you! you’re on a path to success! 🤍🤍
Thank you! I tend to not do the obligatory like, comment and subscribe thing, so it's always nice when people appreciate my work like this. I'd encourage folks to share this around with folks who might be interested.
![The History of Analog Horror [ft. Kris Straub, Nexpo, NightMind & others] | Documentary (2022)](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/-I_4ph-L19U/mqdefault.jpg)
![FORTNITE CLASSICS IS BACK! Fortnite Item Shop [November 15th, 2024] (Fortnite Chapter 5)](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/RbQURbeFwqs/mqdefault.jpg)
Intensely relatable vid for someone with an 11-year old animated project 🥲
🤘🤘🤘
i have never felt so personally validated and vindicated by a video essay conclusion before.
for so many years i've wondered "why do i spend so long on my projects, only for them to stay unfinished, and for so little progress to be made despite the hours i've put in? when so many other artists/animators create such long and intricate works. is this even worth it anymore? am i just not cut out for it" and to realise that no, i'm not working slowly compared to others, i just haven't dedicated *every waking moment* to my creations like Yuri Norstein and Francheska Yarbusova, speaks volumes to just how much dedication you must have and the sacrifices you must make in order not only to make, but to *finish* your art. it's both heartbreaking and beautiful. it speaks to the undying drive of the human spirit.
It should be the patience of the stop montion animator instead of a saint it's really rewarding but also frustrating we had to at least try it in school so i appreciate it more than if i never did
Yeah all the respect to those mad bastards
So happy to see a little shoutout to Wendell & Wild, as it's even a miracle that we got it. It was nearly axed by Netflix but survived thanks to the contract Henry Selick had with Jordan Peele, then it survived a wildfire on top of that.
Yeah, I almost wrote a segment on Henry Selick's career and how he has kind of gotten a raw deal. First by having people erasing his work on films like Nightmare before Christmas even though Tim Burton contributed far less to the production. Then by getting kind of ousted from Hollywood following the commercial and critical failure of Monkeybone. Then by leaving Laika after Coraline to go work with Pixar, only for them and Disney to cancel all of his projects after people like John Lasseter heavily interfered with their development.
Even though I ultimately found Wendell & Wild a little underwhelming, I can only hope that Selick and his team can continue to make the stuff they want.
@@HenryKathman Even if W&W is a little underwhelming, it has a ton of love to it, though it would have been better as a series. Sadly budget is king and Netflix isn't known for being mercyful with budget.
Still this was the movie that revived Selicks spirit, and that's beautiful.
And honestly, despite all the bullsh!t Selick has delt with throughout his career, he somehow always finds a way back up. Gotta admire that about him, just hope he can get out a few more classics!
Also f*ck Lasseter and the CGI horse he rode in on.
as an artist who doesnt know yet how to make a living out of my craft, as someone who feels guilty everyday either by the time i spend on my proyects or on the time that i dont work on them, your conclusion seriously got me deeply and i even cried a little. i feel so seen now and less alone in this struggle. thank you so much for this video. and shoutout to all the stop motion animators in the world, to the uncredited, the unknown, everyone.
Thank You for that. I spent many days in Tippett's Studio pushing around those Mad God Puppets. There will never be another project for me that encapsulates the true meaning of Stop-motion animation. Entering the world of Phil Tippett and seeing his nightmares played out every day will be a constant reminder of pushing until you can push no more. Digging deep until you can dig no more. Even if Mad God never finished filming, even if we all walked away before the final shots, the process would have been worth it. Cheers. Just keep making.
Has anyone else watched "The Sandman"? I believe it's still on RUclips. Very atmospheric & quite disturbing (especially the end!)
As a life long lover of stop motion, I adored this
My favorite paper cut-out animation is the Ukrainian show Adventures of Captain Vrungel, it’s 13 episodes long, it’s 40-something years old but it has aged very gracefully, much more so than many American shows from around the time period. I made English subtitles to an HD version of the show, but it got blocked here on RUclips except for the first episode, I gotta upload the series to the Internet Archive sometime, though you can find untranslated episodes here.
OOh thanks for the recomendation
@@HenryKathman I just uploaded all the episodes to the Internet Archive, so look up “Adventures of Captain Vrungel English Subtitles” under the username “One in a Thousand” and you should hopefully find them.
HE DID THE PBS THING AT THE BEGINNING. HE DID THE PBS THING AT THE BEGINNING.
What can I say, I'm a man of culture 😎
Holy shit, wasn't expecting so few comments on this; this was wonderful! Loved every second of it. And I have to agree with you, Mad God might be a grisly film, but there's something beautiful about the sheer amount of labor it took to come to fruition
Thank you for giving due to credit to the crew of the Rankin Bass shorts. As someone who has spent 6 years experimenting with stop motion, particularly specializing in claymation, I can relate to this miraculous horror but I have a luxury those mentioned didn't have, and that's the time to make what I want.
They still had to fulfill their obligations to their day jobs or deal with crew members who, too, had to move onto higher paying gigs. I will say I've yet to make any form of high art, and with that the ranks of these filmmakers are up there with Van Gogh, Mozart, and even Stanley Kubrick.
Yeah, it was honestly surprising to find so little information out there about Rankin Bass's stop motion production. Pretty much everything I was able to find out about the studio is thanks to Rick Goldschmidt's writing in books like "The Enchanted World of Rankin Bass". Big shoutout to him.
This feels a lot like a Jacob Geller video... please keep doing what you're doing you've earned my subscription, good sir
Thank you! Jacob’s work is infuriatingly good and one of my motivations to putting as much effort as I do into my essays is to match the quality of him and my other favorite essayists
Wow, your conclusion was beautiful.
Thank you, I’m tempted to make a behind the scene video showing how I made that shot
Incredible video, as always. The transient nature of time and the beauty and horror of using that time for creation and art! I'm going to be thinking about this one for a long time.
Thank you so much!
Loved the video. I get excited every time I see you upload a new essay.
@@ObliviousBen1 thank you! I don’t do the obligatory like comment and subscribe thing at the end of these videos so it’s always nice to have returning viewers
Thank you for bringing this topic❤
I believe it was hard to find the information, especially about foreign artists
And a little bit more about Soviet animation: puppet technique/stop motion was actually very popular back than (it was much cheaper than drawn ones). Many (I mean like MANY) cartoons were made in this type of animation - mostly they were fairy tales
I believe there are English subtitles on them - you can find them on RUclips channel of Союзмультфильм
Oh yeah, it’s definitely an area that I would like to learn more about.
Thanks for the recommendation
i’ve always had a fascination with stop motion, this video has inspired me to relight this passion, maybe going back to my childhood and creating more stop motion videos! it’s amazing to see a more behind-the-scenes perspective of the art form.
Heck yea bruther! Follow them dreams!
I KNEW there was going to be a transition from live action to stop motion animation in here somewhere, it's nice to be vindicated
Hope it delivered on that anticipation.
MAD GOD MENTIONED!!!!
Hell yea bruther
Stop motion takes so much time. It is no laughing matter. So amazing.
AI will make this much easier
@OctoberSurprise11 👎
I gotta try Harold the Halibut. I hope we will see an advancement in animation that uses photogrammetry paired with motion capture to help streamline the work. I've seen footage of new age Muppets being rigged to CGI & custom puppet video game controls that allow them to do so much with a medium that they so dearly love. I hope we will see a comeback of 2D Animation. I miss it so much. It was such a integral part of life growing up in the 90's. I didn't think so much of it would disappear at this point.. I loved the X-men the animated series, Captain Planet, Thundercats, He-Man, Little Nemo Adventures in Slumberland, Rockos Modern Life, Ah! Real Monsters, Ren & Stimpy, Courage the cowardly dog, Dexter's Laboratory, James and the Giant Peach, Batman, Batman Beyond, Spiderman, the list goes on.. I just wish these forms of art would make a massive comeback because in mmy opinion they are unbeatable. Nothing compares to what they are capable of.
I can definitely agree with that. I don't know if every stop motion production would benefit from photogrammetry, but I think that it would be interesting to see more filmmakers try it out.
Animator here. 2D was allowed to die because it was union and 3D, at the time, wasn't. Executives like it because it's the only form of animation that can be changed entirely from the ground up at the last minute on an executive's whim. It shouldn't be, but it can be.
2D was only brought to its heights because it could be scaled up to industrial scale in ways that stop-motion and cutout couldn't.
I'm hoping we build an audience for animation again. The sad truth is that video games, algorithms, social media, etc. have literally changed the way the audience interacts, because of the biggest change of modern society: we used to be bored all the time, now we're stressed all the time. One seeks out different things in those moods.
glad to see you back!
1:43 OOOOO sat and watching now instead of listening!! This is gorgeous!!!
Amazing video :')
Love the stop motion for the title.
I want to play that game now, it looks beautiful!
Thank you!
Harold halibut is on game pass if you have that
@@HenryKathmanI played it on Gamepass, absolutely wonderful game, really hit close to home
Stop motion is onr of my favorite mediums to work in! I have a few projects buzzin around my brain rn. I just need time to do them....
My favorite will always be Jan Svenkmeyer's work, especially Alice
Yeah, I like what I've seen of Svankmajer's work, though none of them seemed to fit in with the specific stories I've covered in this vid.
This is the first video that I watched from your channel...
Thank you for the experience, it was wonderful 😊
Hope you’re able to enjoy the other stuff I have to offer
I'm in a class with your sister. I'm really impressed by the quality of your work, especially for a small channel.
@@stardust1815 😎
Boosting this!! Incredible essay! Keep it up! I have subscribed!
Thank you! I hope you enjoy some of my previous work if you haven't already.
I'm a comics artist so, you know, also a sequential artist like animators. this video is really relatable because comics take a long time to make for a very little monetary reward. for example the most important literary award in my country is 25.000euros when the most important comics award is only worth 5000 euros. of course I don't make comics only because of money but that was the first example about the disparity that came to my mind. idk maybe I'm wrong for thinking about art in terms of money here? haha! Anyway, beautiful work.
btw I'm from Finland. thanks for the Moomin vids! I love Tove Jansson a lot though so does every comics artist here so that's nothign new lol!
Excellent documentary great on all fronts and very informative. Just want to bring up up the lifelong work of Ray Harry Harryhausen . His work on mighty Joe young to clash of the titans and everything in-between and he got a Oscar for it and don't forget Willis O'Brien who did original king Kong 1933.. great documentary!!!!!
How come you didn't even mention Jan Svankmajher?
Mostly because Svagmeijer, as creepy as his stuff is, never struggled on a production level like the three stories I chose
Gogol's "The Overcoat" is one of my favorite stories; I actually did a huge project on it in my literary linguistics class when I was in college. The story of the production of the film based on it sounds almost Gogolian in itself. It also reminds me of another Gogol adaptation, when the composer Dmitri Shostakovich attempted to adapt Gogol's play "The Gamblers" into an opera in the 1940s. As he wanted to adapt the full text of the play, he ended up composing hours of music, but eventually scrapped it because it was too long, although segments of it still show up in some of his other works.
"The Overcoat," like many of Gogol's stories, relies on paradox between the tragic and comedic. Gogol was a master at deconstructing the concepts of tragedy and comedy through the grotesque and absurd, and "The Overcoat" is one of his most popular works because it embodies this element of his work so well. For those who are unfamiliar with the story, Akaky Akakievich Bashchmachkin is a caricature of the 19th century St. Petersburg "everyman"- a civil servant who is so dull and unremarkable that this unremarkability is extraordinary. Gogol's narration simultaneously ridicules and pities him because of this, both humanizing and dehumanizing him. Akaky longs for an expensive overcoat, and spends much of the story saving up money to buy it. When he finally buys the overcoat, his life is changed, as it brings him attention and confidence. However, he's eventually killed for it. He becomes a ghost by the end, haunting the streets and stealing people's overcoats.
To me, the story of the animated film's production seems to mirror the story. You have this very long process towards an end goal, and while hopefully the filmmakers will successfully finish and produce the film, I also got the haunting impression of "ghosts" involved in its production, such as the deaths of collaborators, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the changes in Russian culture over the decades. And yet, like Gogol's story, there's something grotesque about it- the length of time it's taking to produce and the effort involved appears absurd. I sincerely hope it gets finished.
If you’re a fan of Gogol, I cannot recommend the documentary “making the overcoat” enough. Watching the interviews, clear that Yuri Notstein has a lot of thoughts on his writing
@@HenryKathman Thanks; I'll have to watch it!
Whenever I think of horror and stop-motion, I think of George Pal and his Puppetoons. Simultaneously the most enchanting and ghoulish stop motion out there
Yeah, those old Jasper cartoons are impressive on a technical level, especially for the 1940s, but boy howdy do they leave a bad taste today
@@HenryKathmanOutdated for sure, but at least they weren’t done out of any malice. And he did go on to make more progressive films for the decades that followed.
Thank you for being real.
Thank you for reading off your script.
Thanks for not staring into the camera like a goober.
Thank you for your use of shadows in and lights in some shots when it comes to your eyes.
Thank you for being a Autism Friendly RUclips Channel, even if it wasnt intentional.
Love mad god.
feel bad for tibbit.
And also.
lmao i didnt know Doug Walker Nostalgia Critic, had a son.
I'm curious to know that constitutes someone being an Autism Friendly Channel, but thank you!
harold halibut sounds suspiciously close to snowpiercer
@@Ipsifendis the parallels are there but they have distinctly different plot trajectories and tones
definitely check out Junk Head!
Oooh it looks rad as heck
I like turtles
🐢
Has it occured to you that the process making the overcoat might be enjoyable , and that the couple dedicates their life to it because they enjoy it? I dont see why it has to be suffering.
Because both of them have said as much in the documentary ‘making the overcoat’ and in interviews. I imagine they enjoy aspects of it for sure, but working on anything for too long can diminishes the enjoyment
@@HenryKathman haha fair, I stand corrected. For me, its both anguish and bliss...
Definitely, that’s how it is for me as well
I don’t really have an insightful comment or anything to add to an already brilliant video but might I say I think you just invented the sibling to bisexual lighting: nonbinary lighting.
Yeah, I'm surprised more people don't try to use complementary colors outside of red and blue. Though it might feel a little weird to claim it as a cis dude.
Eh.. Yeah.. About Laika…
What about Laika?
I mean, he says it’s great Travis Knight is using his nepobaby status to prop up Laika, but it’s made more than questionable when he and he father kinda weaseled it out from Will Vinton while putting the animators through terrible working conditions and busting them when they tried to unionize.
That's absolutely fair. I was unaware of the union busting stuff happening at Laika and wouldn't have given either Knights too much credit had I known that.
@@HenryKathman To be fair, they kept it deeply under wraps. It's perfectly five to still praise the actual artists behind the movies, and leave the Knights out of it. Especially after Travis stole one of the movies half-way through production (Kubo and the Two Strings) and claimed he was the man behind the idea. There's a really great video essay about the history of Laika, it's movies, the good, bad, and complicated, and the more hopefull. It's called The Movies of Laika, well worth the watch!
Modern day consoles are not holding back the next elder scrolls, don't make me laugh, Bethesda games still look like they belong on the PS3, Bethesda hold themselves back because they rush everything and refuse to innovate
As a fellow Bathesda hater, you are absolutely right that Bathesda's games suffer from an overall rushed production.
With my statement in the video, I was mainly going off of leaked documents from Microsoft's FTC filing in 2023 that talked about the game likely not being released for another five years, which would land it after the tentative launch of next Xbox console in 2028. Perhaps not an indictment of the game buckling under current gen hardware (their current releases already do that lol) but certainly indicative of something.
Dude, eat a hamburger.
Very cool, AI video will make this so much easier.
👎
You need to include Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Ji...
Jiří Trnka and the brothers Quay. I hope you do in your next upload
Thanks for reminding me of this Mark, my laptop re booted itself and i lost it. Great compilation, a few new ones to me. Did you like the Russian asteroid attack all in one take, from film Mia 2022? x Mike.
quirino cristiani mention 🧉🇦🇷 (also my beloved lotte reiniger! and jiri trnka! and i hadnt heard of norstein and yarbusova, what a great new pair of artists to find)
its been a while since ive scoped out the latest new entries in the stop motion genre, so this was a really great video for that!! i had heard of mad god and im waiting to see it on a big screen, but also the idea of a stop motion videogame is so fascinating, and the end result is absolutely gorgeous. also Yes. they didnt have to put moving grass, but they did. animators and especially stop motion animators are nothing if not delightfully ambitious.
im sorry, i know ive done this before on the community post, and you probably already know about them: but just in case someone else reads this, for those interested in horror as it relates to stop motion, i urge them to discover the art of jan svankmajer, the quay brothers, and the duo of Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña. Svankmajers Alice, Quays The Street of Crocodiles, and León and Cociñas The Wolf House are among my favorite pieces of art ever made, each one creepy in their own way, all of them unsettling in a manner only stop motion can be. stop motion has been for decades one of my special interests, and the possibility of more people finding out about its history and incredible potential is so exciting to me.
sorry for extending this comment so much, but the phrase "vampiric entity" referred to art is just wonderfully interesting. it is vampiric, but its also devotional and a labor of love, the most proper comparison i think of an art piece as a "child". one can abandon the project, and get rid of the so-called "parasite", but does one really want that? it gives ones life meaning. obsessions often give a sense of purpose, and i reckon animators (ones who are not coerced, ones properly compensed for their work, ones who arent exploited to finish someone elses product) find that sense of purpose through their art... all artists, really. artists become obsessive because they might seek immortality sometimes, yes, but also because they love the art they produce, love it so much that it has become synonymous with their own lives. i understand what you mean in the conclusion, but i dont agree that this devotion is horror. its just devotion and sacrifice, pure and simple; and while it has a certain dark side, i think its a very normal thing, not something that breaks through normalcy. its par for the course for those who love what they do, though this may seem like an extreme.
svankmajer Faust too
oh my god… got halfway through the video expecting this to have hundreds of thousands of views because of the production quality… amazing and captivating job! i’m so lucky to have been recommended you! you’re on a path to success! 🤍🤍
Thank you! I tend to not do the obligatory like, comment and subscribe thing, so it's always nice when people appreciate my work like this. I'd encourage folks to share this around with folks who might be interested.