Lee Hardcastle is a British clay animator.
Hardcastle studied at the Northern Film School of Leeds Beckett University [1] and started to release clay animations on YouTube in the mid-2000s. [2] Hardcastle was selected as the 26th director of the 2011 film The ABCs of Death , to which he contributed the animated short T is for Toilet. [3] He directed and animated the music video for the Kill the Noise song "Blvck Mvgic (Kill the Noise Pt. 2)". [4] In 2012, Hardcastle released the animated short Pingu's The Thing to YouTube, a mashup of animation series Pingu and horror movie The Thing that quickly became viral on the platform [5] and for which he was praised by The Thing director John Carpenter. The video was subsequently removed from Hardcastle's YouTube channel at the request of Pingu owners HIT Entertainment, to which Hardcastle reacted by uploading a shot-by-shot recreation of the video entitled Claycat's The Thing, featuring cats instead of penguins. [6] Hardcastle lists the works of filmmakers Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, and Sam Raimi, as well as animated series The Simpsons and Family Guy as major influences. [7]
Stop motion is an animated filmmaking technique in which objects are physically manipulated in small increments between individually photographed frames so that they will appear to exhibit independent motion or change when the series of frames is played back. Any kind of object can thus be animated, but puppets with movable joints or plasticine figures are most commonly used. Puppets, models or clay figures built around an armature are used in model animation. Stop motion with live actors is often referred to as pixilation. Stop motion of flat materials such as paper, fabrics or photographs is usually called cutout animation.
Aardman Animations Limited is a British animation studio based in Bristol, England. It is known for films and television series made using stop-motion and clay animation techniques, particularly those featuring its plasticine characters from Wallace and Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, and Morph. After some experimental computer-animated short films during the late 1990s, beginning with Owzat (1997), Aardman entered the computer animation market with Flushed Away (2006). As of February 2020, it had earned $1.1 billion worldwide, with an average $135.6 million per film.
Courage the Cowardly Dog is an American animated comedy horror television series created by John R. Dilworth for Cartoon Network. It was produced by Dilworth's animation studio, Stretch Films. The eponymous character is a dog who lives with an elderly couple in a farmhouse in the middle of Nowhere, a fictional town in Kansas. In each episode, the trio is thrown into bizarre, frequently disturbing, and often paranormal or supernatural adventures. The series is known for its dark, surreal humor and atmosphere.
William Gale Vinton was an American animator and filmmaker. Vinton was best known for his Claymation work, alongside creating iconic characters such as The California Raisins. He won an Oscar for his work alongside several Emmy Awards and Clio Awards for his studio's work.
Pingu is an animated children's television series co-created by Otmar Gutmann and Erika Brueggemann that first aired in Switzerland. It was produced from 1990 to 2000 by Swiss companies The Pygos Group and Pingu Filmstudio in Switzerland. It was later revived from 2003 to 2006 by British companies HIT Entertainment and HOT Animation. The series focuses on a family of anthropomorphic emperor penguins who live in the South Pole; the main character is the family's son and title character, Pingu.
Claymation, sometimes called clay animation or plasticine animation, is one of many forms of stop-motion animation. Each animated piece, either character or background, is "deformable"—made of a malleable substance, usually plasticine clay.
The California Raisins were a fictional rhythm and blues animated musical group as well as advertising and merchandising characters composed of anthropomorphized raisins. Lead vocals were sung by musician Buddy Miles. The California Raisins were popular from 1986 to 2002 through claymation TV commercials and animated specials, winning an Emmy Award and one nomination.
Frederick G. Seibert is an American television producer and media proprietor. He was the first employee and creative director of MTV in 1980, and later founded Frederator Studios in 1998, as well as its spin-off companies Frederator Networks, Channel Frederator Network, and Cartoon Hangover. Having held numerous executive positions for Viacom Media Networks, he was the final president of animation studio Hanna-Barbera from 1992 to 1996. He has since co-founded Next New Networks, Bolder Media, and the production company FredFilms by 2020.
"Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" is a song by French duo Daft Punk, released in October 2001 as the fourth single from their second studio album Discovery. A live version of "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" was released as a single from the album Alive 2007 on 15 October 2007. This version won a Grammy Award for Best Dance Recording in 2009. In October 2011, NME placed it at number 132 on its list "150 Best Tracks of the Past 15 Years".
Passion Pictures is a British film production company established by Andrew Ruhemann in 1987. The company has studios in London, Melbourne, Paris, Toronto, and New York City.
Eric Fogel is an American director, writer, animator, producer, and voice actor who is best known as the creator of Celebrity Deathmatch. He also created cult shows The Head, Starveillance and Glenn Martin, DDS. Fogel also directed several episodes of Daria.
Neil Stephen Cicierega is an American filmmaker, YouTuber, animator, and musician. He is known as the creator of Potter Puppet Pals, "The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny", and multiple music albums under the name Lemon Demon. He also released a series of mashup albums under his own name that have since gained a cult following.
Eliot Fette Noyes, Jr. was an American animator most noted for his stop animation work using clay and sand. His 1964 work, Clay or the Origin of Species, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film and established claymation as a medium. He designed animated sand pinwheels for the Nickelodeon show Pinwheel and the sand alphabet for Sesame Street.
Aardman Animations is an animation studio in Bristol, England that produces stop motion and computer-animated features, shorts, TV series and adverts.
Jack Stauber is an American musician, animator, and internet personality based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is known for his VHS-aesthetic live-action, stop motion, and computer animated music videos, which have been featured in internet memes.
Jaiden Dittfach, known online as Jaiden Animations, is an American YouTuber and animator, known for her story-time animations. Her videos explore a variety of topics, spanning from her experiences to personal stories. She now primarily creates videos centered around video game stories.
Daniel John Hardcastle, known online as Nerd³ or NerdCubed, is a British YouTuber, author and actor. Created in 2011, his YouTube channel primarily consists of video game-related content. As of September 2023, it has approximately 2.44 million subscribers and 1.34 billion video views. He is the author of The Sunday Times bestseller Fuck Yeah, Video Games: The Life and Extra Lives of a Professional Nerd.
David Firth is an English animator. He created the Newgrounds animated web series Salad Fingers in 2004 and co-wrote the 2017 live-action feature film Kuso.