Sharing Animation - Madame Tutli-Putli ( Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski, 2007)

I wanted to get back to my animation sharings, so I decided I would choose one of my favourite animations!

This particular short is an incredible trip to the inside of a very deep character. The whole movie has a mistery to it and many feelings that are very intrinsic. The feelings of the movie are so important that the directors, Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski chose a very unique way to portray them on a stop-motion puppet.

The short I'll be sharing today is Madame Tutli-Putli.

The movie makes you feel very uneasy with all those uncomfortably small spaces and the too close up shots of the characters faces. It's never ment for you to feel confortable and the original score by David Bryant and Jean-Frédéric Messier is incredible successful to help the mood be spot on.

Although the animation is great, the sound is great and the visual is great, the one thing that make the short be so incredible are the way the eyes of the characters were done. The special effects man for the movie was Jason Walker and he ultimately made the short work, as the directors visualized.

Here's how it's explained on the official website for the short: "In the end, the solution arose when Jason tested the tracking and re-timing of live action human eyes onto a stop-motion scene. This test led to the creation of a remarkable production process whereby live action human eyes were added to almost 20 minutes of stop-motion animation in a manner that was perfectly seamless and completely unobtrusive. Jason developed a system of separating and analyzing the previously shot stop-motion puppet moves, choreographing, rehearsing and shooting a human actor's corresponding "eye performance" to match each puppet move, at the same time recreating as closely as possible all light and shadow passes original to the stop-motion. Once the human eyes were shot, each eye was individually positioned, scaled, re-timed and digitally composited onto the puppet scenes. As different actors were cast for almost all the characters, the requirement was not only to integrate the human eyes onto each puppet, but on a frame by frame basis, match the subtle movement of the puppets, the camera, and the train – all the while retaining the flow of the acting. "This required every trick in the book and more!" exclaims Mr. Walker. The creation of the film and this extraordinarily painstaking process took 4 years from concept to completion."

It was genius.

HERE you can find the Producer of the short talking about it in a 4 minute video.

And without further adieu, nominated for the Oscar here is Madame Tutli-Putli by Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski

Check out the other short movies from the Sharing Collection HERE!!

Hope to keep it up sharing with you all this incredible animations!

See you soon with another incredible animation!

No copyright and related rights infringements are intended with these sharings, all these animations are properties from their respective authors or studios always credited in the post.