La Crisis Anima is a web site I found recently by an animator from Spain named Juan Soto. Juan posted images and videos from his award winning shorts, essentially promoting himself - but making a nice presentation of his work for everyone to see. The site is in Spanish, but clicking around is easy enough to find some great stuff.

Check out his site by clicking here.

Adriana Sanchez has created an interesting, dark and moody film called Bri Bri Bri. The sets, puppet designs and lighting all work well together to tell the story. You see, time is short - and the distracting bird is slowing down the main characters work. What will he do to solve the problem? Watch Adrianas film on Vimeo to find out.

Click Here to Watch

Not to dissapoint anyone by taking a brief break from news writing to tend to site changes - I found some great stuff to read through. Famous Monsters of Filmland is a magazine that used to promote stop motion and hand craft film arts for many years. Phil Kim who is now running the new web site and online version of the magazine plans to promote stop motion into the digital age according to what he has said.

Phil is also promoting Ray Harryhausens 90th birthday by creating some festival/convention of sorts. But for now, it is hard to get information from their site about it. It is all being spoken about quietly but the promotion isnt really out in the open just yet.

There are three really good articles on the FM web site commemorating some of stop motions biggest stars, and the hardest working guys behind the scenes. You can read all three below:

Phil Tippett
Jim Aupperle
Harry Walton

Attention all fans of animateclay.com! We will be re-making this web site using a new content management system. Right now we are using one called Zikula, but the support is lacking from the community for it. The technology behind it is already ancient, and what I would like is to start over. That doesnt mean there will be major changes, but the site will hopefully become more easy for everyone to register, add comments, share stories with friends, post videos possibly, pictures and more.

That said, I would like to know what you think of the current site. What do you dis-like about it and what would you change? I will consider everyone who has something to say about it. I made a comment in the facebook fan page where you can speak your mind here. I appreciate any feedback and hope to make animateclay.com better than ever!

Richard Svensson, also known asThe Lone Animator has been at it again! He recently created a really amazing comical puppet called the Blunderbat. Richard uses all kinds of materials and techniques, but doesnt like to cast his puppets in foam latex. He would rather use the build-up technique that is one of the more rare ways of making a character, but the final product is no less amazing.

Check out how he did it and see more pictures on Richards blog here.