Joaquim Dos Santos is one of the most influential and successful animators of his generation. Even if you’re not immediately familiar with his name, you’re no doubt familiar with a series or film he’s worked on.
23.02.2024 - 17:43 / polygon.com
On May 31, Robert Morgan’s queasy horror movie Stopmotion will start streaming on Shudder. But hardcore horror fans will have a chance to see the live-action/animation hybrid in theaters early, starting Feb. 23 — and they shouldn’t miss the chance. It’s best experienced in a theater because of the way its chilling visuals, twisty story, and especially gristly, grisly soundscape all set the tone.
Stopmotion follows a young stop-motion animator coping with the death of her domineering, celebrated animator mother, and dutifully trying to continue her work. But then she’s drawn into a disturbing new project that starts coming to life for her — maybe literally. Aisling Franciosi (star of The Nightingale, Jennifer Kent’s chilling follow-up to The Babadook, and a featured player on The Legend of Vox Machina and Game of Thrones) plays the animator, Ella, whose grief, defiance, and determination to make a name for herself all warp her in dark directions, which play out on screen via the animation she creates.
Director and co-writer Robert Morgan, a stop-motion animator known for his creepy shorts, including The Cat with Hands and Tomorrow I Will Be Dirt, makes his feature debut with Stopmotion, and he used his career in the field to give the movie a particularly tactile, detail-driven feel that balances out its gory horror elements. Polygon talked to him at the 2023 Fantastic Fest film festival in Austin, Texas, about where he put himself in this movie, how he managed all the animation himself, who he considers the pope of meat-puppet animation, and why stop-motion is a necromantic art.
This interview has been edited for concision and clarity.
Polygon: The title of this movie is ambiguous in an interesting way — there are a lot of different ways to potentially read “stop motion.” Were you focusing on those different layers?
Robert Morgan: Definitely. I spent a long time trying to think of the right title for it, and “Stopmotion” came up early on when we were writing it. I liked the directness of it, but I also like the fact that it has two or three other possible interpretations as well. There’s a contradiction in “stop” and “motion” — something that’s dead and alive at the same time. But also, you’re stopping motion. There’s a slightly ominous feeling about that, maybe to do with murder.
The line in the movie that hits hardest is about stop-motion animation being “the art of making dead things come to life.” Was that idea part of the genesis of this project?
It came about organically when we were writing it. I mean, the genesis was really to do with my own experience of making animation films, and having the sensation of them taking on a life of their own. When you get into a real creative groove on
Joaquim Dos Santos is one of the most influential and successful animators of his generation. Even if you’re not immediately familiar with his name, you’re no doubt familiar with a series or film he’s worked on.
Capcom debuted a new trailer for Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, an action strategy title with aesthetics inspired by Shinsekai: Into the Depths and Okami, showcasing more of the gameplay loop. It also confirmed that it would launch in 2024 and arrive on day one for Game Pass. However, it could be coming sooner than expected.
The Last of Us director and Naughty Dog president Neil Druckmann has described the studio's next project as "really ambitious" and is under no illusion that bringing it to life will be easy.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth has seen universal acclaim from critics, and even stands as one of the best-reviewed Final Fantasy games to date, sitting at a Metacritic score of 92. Achieving a 90-plus Metacritic score was, in fact, a goal that the game’s developers were expressly working towards- or, well, game director Naoki Hamaguchi was anyway.
In the face of ongoing conversations about which weapons are the best in the game, Helldivers 2's director has advised players to just "use the one you like the most" because there are so many stats players can't see anyhow.
Immortals of Aveum saw a very rough debut last summer, with the first-person magic-shooter from new studio Ascendant and EA reportedly suffering poor sales and mixed reviews - resulting in almost half of its developers being laid off mere weeks after its launch. Despite being a reported $125 million flop that “no-one bought”, its director believes that it could still go on to find an audience yet.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's director says the new action-RPG is reaching for a level that was never possible before today's technology, and that's just like the original 1997 game.
Immortals of Aveum is a game which will continue to be discovered by players for «years and years» like Dead Space, according to its director.
On paper, Saint Maud and Love Lies Bleeding don't sound like they have very much in common. Other than both being directed by Rose Glass, the former is a quiet horror-esque tale about a nurse who slowly loses her grip on reality after a terrible workplace accident, while the former is a violent, '80s-set romance-thriller packed full of synth-pop anthems.
Immortals of Aveum was one of those games that got swallowed by the unprecedented slew of triple-A releases that dominated gaming in 2023. A new IP from a new studio, the game didn't fare well at launch, sandwiched as it was between behemoths like Diablo IV, Baldur's Gate 3, Starfield, Armored Core 6, et cetera. This led to Ascendant Studios having to lay off around 45% of its employees just a few weeks after the debut of Immortals of Aveum.
Pentiment players on Xbox have noticed that the game doesn't feature 120 frames per second (fps) like the PlayStation 5 version, but Obsidian Entertainment has confirmed it'll be added in a new patch.
Helldivers 2 continues to sell well. The game had surpassed one million units sold just four days after its February 8 launch. Arrowhead Creative Director Johan Pilestedt has now confirmed it is around three million units just over two weeks after the release.