We have some big news for visitors of Animateclay.com and Stopmotionmagic.com. To celebrate Ray Harryhausens 90th birthday, we'll be accepting animated contest entries in his name at stopmotionmagic.com soon. Leroy who takes care of the challenges will be helping. It may be part of our regular challenges - but might not. We need to work it out. Famous Monsters of Film Land will be hosting a festival in Rays name and will be showing the entries to a live audience. So this is big news and a possible way for visitors of all our sites to get noticed. Possibly by Ray himself!

Tony Dalton who is in contact with Ray directly said this about the contests:

(By all means proceed with the proposed competition based on mythology in Ray's name but he asks that we keep it Harryhausen-like rather than promoting something that is simply not Ray at all.)

According to Ron Coles blog, there are a few details that he says contestants must stick to. Every entry must be family friendly, so no blood and gore. He also says that the entries can be as long or short as the animator wants. I asked what the deadline will be, but that is unknown still. My guess is that since Rays birthday is June 29th, it will most likely be a few days to a week before that.

Once we get things ironed out I will post a link to the official contest page here. But if you would like to join, now is the time to start building some realistic Harryhausen puppets for the contest!

UPDATE! We have an official page set up with all the information you will need to take part in the tribute. Leroy Binks set it up on Stop Motion Magic here. There's no time to lose, if you want to be a part of it - everyone must get started as soon as possible.

Cam and Mike, the two creators of GooRoo Animation have a fun site with a lot of videos, stories and pictures. They are two new stop motion artists, and they have finished six films so far - with more in the works. You can read all about them on their site here. They are definitely a pair of people to keep an eye on in the future so make sure to bookmark their site.

The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb was one of those films that when you watch it, you never forget many of the unusual scenes. There is a lot of visual poetry going on and there is almost no dialogue. Real live actors are animated one frame at a time where items around them are brought to life. Including the stop motion puppets that inhabit the surreal world. Here is a brief description taken directly from the YouTube video where I found it uploaded:

The story follows the tiny Tom Thumb as he is abducted from his loving parents and taken to an experimental laboratory, and his subsequent escape. He discovers a community of similarly-sized people living in a swamp, who help him on his journey to return to his parents. The film is largely dialogue-free, limited mostly to grunts and other non-verbal vocalizations.

Watch all six parts below:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

There is a new program called ZU3D that is meant to be used on Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7 PCs. It is aimed towards kids, so is definitely something parents and teachers might be interested in - or, even beginners. Some of the things it can do is onion skinning, deleting frames, basic video editing, importing audio and working on a network. So everything you would need essentially all in one program as opposed to some programs where you need to buy other programs to put together a film.

You can read more about ZU3D and download it online by going here.

Electronic Viewfinder Interchangeable Lens - or EVIL cameras are somewhat new. They are camera bodies that allow you to put your DSLR camera lenses on them while eliminating the mechanical parts. In other words the only view finder is the LCD screen, and there is no mirror mechanism that swings down when you take a picture.

So what is so great about that? Nothing really. They take pictures in the same way as a DSLR by use of a little CCD sensor behind the lens. But for stop motion this is a really useful thing. By removing the mechanical aspects of the camera they are more suitable for stop motion. Animators snap away thousands and thousands of images over time, and the mechanism usually breaks eventually. It is during the middle of an animated shot, you are out of luck!

Read an article about the new bridge cameras here. Read a wiki page that also discusses the bridge cameras available on the market here.