Now we like traditional animation, but we also like CG animation. Which is better? There’s only one way to find out – FIGHT!!! Back in 2008, a group of students at French computer animation hothouse Supinfocom were putting together their graduation film and were struggling with exactly this dilemma. The solution? To pit old school stopmotion King Kong against a Jurassic Park style T Rex. We caught up with one the former students to find out more.

https://vimeo.com/5025456 StopMo: The Movie, directed by Adel Benabdallah, Brice Boisset, Vincent Secher, Romain Hua, Anouk Eyraud

How did you come up with the idea behind StopMo?
The idea come from a passion for stopmotion. When I was young I was a big fan of creature movies. I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of making a Stopmotion puppet creature and bringing it to life.
This was why I chose to create a movie by using old techniques and new techniques, stopmotion and CG, for my student project. In the history of SFX in cinema there are two movies that changed everything. For stopmotion there was the first Kingkong and for CG, ofcourse, it’s got to be Jurrassic Park. That was why we used those two reference on our movie to create StopMo the Movie.

What was the biggest challenge?
The first challenge was that our ambitions were too big. Our school, Supinfocom, is a 3D animation school and it doesn’t teach traditional animation. The biggest challenge was to use all the theory that we gleaned from our passion for stopmotion and combine it with our 3D experience.

The storyboard and the animatic was created with a lot of reflexion to anticipate all the problems that we could come across. We were shooting stopmotion real and integrating the footage with CG – which we didn’t really know how to do. Time was another big challenge as we only had to 6 month of production.

Are you still at Supinfocom? Or are you working now? What have you done since finishing Stopmo?
Know I’m graduated with StopMo in summer 2008, and i’m working in paris in a postproductions company for commercials.

Why did you decide to learn animation? Would you like to go into live action film?
When I was young, I was fascinated by behind-the-scenes documentaries about movies. My first experience in a theater was Jurassic Park – since then CG animation has always been a passion. That’s why I decided to learn animation, but yes I hope one day to work with live action.

What are your ambitions?
Maybe to become a director one day, but the the road is very hard. For now though my ambition is to be a character creatures artist or a SFX supervisor.

where are you from? What job did you want to do when you were a child?

I’m from France, like i said before i was a big fan of creatures and Fantastic or Scifi movie, and jurassic park was a choc for me not with the CG animation but more for the animatronics part and the puppet making and sculpting.
I when i was a child i will love to work in the StanWinston Studio, and this why we dedicated our movie when he died in june 2008 just when we finish StopMo The Movie