Hi fans of Animate Clay, it was a long three weeks that I was away in the Philippines, visiting my wifes family abroad. Luckily we are all back safe and sound which is the most important thing, but this is now the next phase for this site.

The plan is to complete the transfer of articles from our current site to the brand new site which is nearly completed. Once that happens I will most likely beta test it and we will go live with it so everyone can take advantage of the news features. The goal is to do this in June, but it will depend on a lot of things. We are also going to move to a new host, another big thing we will try to complete soon!

So to make a long story short, things will be a thousand times better once we can complete the new page. For now the store has all the items we removed such as puppet building supplies and armature kits. I will also be answering e-mails I couldnt get to while I was away as soon as I can.

Animateclay recently has been in contact with a company in Australia that created a webcam that they claimed was suitable for stop motion. There are a LOT of webcams out there, so why is this one important to our community? And is it as good as advertised?

Read our full review of this latest webcam on the market here.

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.

Animateclay.com now has a Facebook Fan Page. If you are a fan of the site and would like to connect with other fans to discuss your projects - Facebook might be the easiest way for you. Since it is still new, most likely I'll be making changes over time just like the main web page. But for now you can join, start discussions, upload images or talk to others.

To join up just log into Facebook here.

It's time once again to have another Animateclay.com sculpting contest! It has been a long time and we thought that we needed to give everyone an excuse to make some puppets.

If you haven't entered a previous contest, most of them have been a lot of fun for everyone. This time we'll be giving away a free copy of Secrets of Clay Animation Revealed 3 to the winner!

To read more about our contest, make sure to stop in our forums for the full details here.

UPDATE: The winner has now been announced! Check the forum thread to read who won and why we picked the winner. Thanks everyone for entering, it was a lot of fun to see everyones great puppets!