Aardman’s latest feature The Pirates! Band of Misfits, directed by Peter Lord, debuted in second place in the US with $11.1 million. It’s Aardman’s weakest opening ever in the US. However, it was considered on a par with studio projections, and the film should end up with a respectable run, especially considering that no other animated films are set to be released in May.

For comparison, here’s how other Aardman features have opened in the US:

Chicken Run (2000): $17.5 million
Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005): $16 million
Flushed Away (2006): $18.8 million
Arthur Christmas (2011): $12.1 million

In this LA Times story about the resurgence of stop motion animated features, Travis Knight, the producer of Laika’s ParaNorman and one of its lead animators, had this to say:

“Stop-motion is probably the worst, most painful way to make a film. It’s a completely awful process to engage in, an anachronism.”

The one thing stop motion has working in its favor? It’s not computer animation. Knight, who is also the president and CEO of Laika, added:

“But the stories have a warmth and a charm. You’re not looking at ones and zeros. You’re looking at the hands of the artists who made it.”

Photo of Travis Knight, with his father, Nike chairman and Laika owner Phil Knight. (Quote via Kirsten Lepore)

Adam Ciolfi has been essentially working alone on his stop-motion feature The Lady of Names for the last 15 years. He’s done almost everything himself, from designing the sets to photography and animation; he even constructed the orchestral score. Is it a masterpiece or a misguided mess? Either way, you have to admire Ciolfi’s obsession in finishing the picture. In L.A. the film will be screened this Sunday, April 29th at 2:45pm at the Newport Beach Film Festival.

Simian Mobile Disco by Cerulean

Jack Featherstone and Will Samuel designed, directed and animated this abstract video at London’s ISO studio. (Thanks to Felipe Robles for the link.)

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Cpt. Metal by Die Arzte

Vienna, Austria collective LWZ, comprised of Martin Lorenz, Stefan Salcher and Markus Wagner, created Cpt. Metal for German punk band Die Arzte.

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Te Koop / A Vendre by Pree

Maxwell Sorensen animated this piece over the last two months, during evenings and on weekends. Created entirely in Photoshop and After Effects after scanning “a big pile of real paper textures to keep it more organic”. Sorensen spends his days interning on stop-motion projects at Hornet Inc.

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The Rifle’s Spiral by The Shins

That’s Jamie Caliri’s new video for Portland-based indie rock band, The Shins. Caliri, best known for his Lemony Snicket end titles, created this surreal stop-motion animation inspired by Edward Gorey illustrations and Martin Scorsese’s Hugo. Go here to watch the making of video.

The weary residents of a large residential complex want to get away from it all, until a young man with a musical instrument moves into the building. Jonatan Schwenk’s Maison Sonore is an engimatic piece with a simple concept and loads of atmosphere. The stop motion puppets successfully blend realism and caricature, and the wide-angle compositions and eerie calm heighten the film’s tension. Schwenk created the diploma project at the Offenbach University of Art and Design in Germany.

Making-of video and credits after the jump.
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Just in time for Easter, Oli Putland’s cute stop motion egg-stravaganza Easter Eggs. The film was shot using an iPad 2 and iPhone 4 equipped with Boinx’s stop motion software.

This brilliant piece of stop motion/pixilation from Buenos Aires-based Juan Pablo Zaramella was on the Oscar shortlist last fall. Visually clever, funny and sweet, it’s now online and worthy of your attention:

(Thanks, Jason Sondhi)

The Museum of Modern Art in New York continues to be one of the most animation friendly museums in the US. This week they announced an exhibition and accompanying film retrospective celebrating the work of the 64-year-old identical twin animators Stephen and Timothy Quay, better known as the Brothers Quay. The show, “Quay Brothers: On Deciphering the Pharmacist’s Prescription for Lip-Reading Puppets,” opens on August 8, 2012. The show is being organized by Ron Magliozzi, who has also co-curated MoMA’s hit exhibitions on Tim Burton and Pixar. More from MoMA’s website:

Internationally renowned moving image artists and designers, the Quay Brothers were born outside Philadelphia and have worked from their London studio, Atelier Koninck, since the late 1970s. For over 30 years, they have been in the avant-garde of stop-motion puppet animation and live-action movie-making in the Eastern European tradition of filmmakers like Walerian Borowczyk and Jan Svankmajer and the Russian Yuri Norstein, and have championed a design aesthetic influenced by the graphic surrealism of Polish poster artists of the 1950s and 1960s.

Beginning with their student films in 1971, the Quay Brothers have produced over 45 moving image works, including two features, music videos, dance films, documentaries, and signature personal works, including The Street of Crocodiles (1986), the Stille Nacht series (1988–2008), Institute Benjamenta (1995), and In Absentia (2000). They have also designed sets and projections for opera, drama, and concert performances such as Tchaikovsky’s Mazeppa (1991), Ionesco’s The Chairs (Tony-nominated design, 1997), Richard Ayre’s The Cricket Recovers (2005), and recent site-specific pieces based on the work of Bartók and Kafka.

In addition to their better known films, this exhibition will include never-before-seen moving image works and graphic design, drawings, and calligraphy, presenting animated and live-action films alongside installations, objects, and works on paper.

“Van Gogh to Rothko in 30 Seconds” is the title of Michael Langan’s new spot for Art.com‘ s artCircles iPad app. Not only is it a cool visual effect, but the ad does a good job of promoting artCircle’s function, which is to allow people to search for fine art and photography by color and words.

The Box: Poltergeist is a delighful throwback to older animated films where personality animation and movement itself were often the source of entertainment. The film, the first in a proposed series by Milan-based Dadomani Studio, barely has a setup. For a three-minute short though, I’m perfectly happy with “a man and his dog watch TV.” What makes The Box special is how the filmmaker and animator present the gags and thoughts of the characters through a purely visual language. They uncover a surprisingly full range of motion (and emotion) for characters that one would expect to have a limited range because of their design. It’s quite an accomplishment, not to mention great fun to watch.

CREDITS
Idea, Production, Animation supervision, Direction: Dadomani Studio
Screenplay: Stefano Armeni
Director of photography: Patrizio Saccò
Animation: Dario Imbrogno
Sound: Enrico Ascoli
Fluid simulation: Dario Cavaliere

Artist/animator Gabriela Fernández from Buenos Aires, Argentina, started this spacey little stop-mo short in 2008 and it’s been on her computer all this time, until today – when she decided to post it online. And I’m glad she did.

When done well, the tactile quality of stop motion is one of the true joys of animation. I can’t take my eyes off of this beautifully articulated and brilliantly caricatured stop motion animation of Sigmund Freud created by Rio de Janeiro-based Campo4 Studio. More impressive, Stop Motion Works suggests that the animation was achieved primarily through low-tech means with no jointed facial armature mechanisms, computer printed facial masks, or cable controls. Bear in mind, there’s a few wires and greenscreens in the video above because the animation was later composited into a TV mini-series called Afinal,o que querem as mulheres?, a show that I know absolutely nothing about except that it’s better than anything on American TV.