A baker's assistant throws a handful of dough at a rat. The dough sticks to the side of a barrel and the assistant proceeds to sculpt the dough into various faces and shapes. There is some experimental use of stop motion.
A caveman falls victim to a prehistoric prankster, but he is avenged by his pet chicken.
Sculptress Virginia May is seen making a clay model of a tyrannosaurus rex, which is animated using stop motion, and then fights a stop-motion triceratops. Although Miss May's only known relationship with the movies is this particular short, her contemporary, Willis O'Brien and his student Ray Harryhausen certainly made the field a lively one until computer animation caught up in the 1990s -- and arguably their artistry is still unsurpassed. (IMDb)
Blocks of clay become vignettes from Washington's life.
In 1955 Tadahito Mochinaga was asked to create commercials for Asahi beer, which he created using stop-motion, followed by the 1956 short film "Beer Mukashi Mukashi" (Beer, those were the days...), created specifically for theatres. With the help of Kikachiro Kawamoto and Noburo Ofuji, this is the first animated short/commercial in stop-motion made for Japanese cinemas!
When a princess is shrunken by an evil wizard, Sinbad must undertake a quest to an island of monsters to cure her and prevent a war.
Hidden Valley is the name of a place which no one has ever been to, no one has ever come from, and no one can locate. But we know it exists, because Gumby and Pokey are determined to find it!
An ever-witty witch makes Gumby and Pokey her "captive audience" for her one-witch show!
Traces the rise of life on earth from primordial ooze to the present.
A stop motion filmmaker is hunted by one of his creations.
A look inside the Will Vinton Studio, with specializes in stop-motion animations with clay. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2013.
Legacy takes the audience on a rapid-fire journey through the evolution of the world, starting with a cosmic bang, evolving through billions of years of plants, animals and the creation of natural resources, ending with man and his bounty – “sitting on his world contemplating his coconut”.
A story about a time traveler and the search for the first cell of one's existence. 'The Dead', played by Peter Murphy searches for and finds a 'Grid' which enables him to watch the beginning of his life -from the moment of conception.
Estonian/Soviet animation short from 1980
The first animated short film to feature Varga's clumsy claymation character Augusta.
A short educational Claymation film about dinosaurs. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2013.
On Christmas Eve, a lonely young boy, shut out from the shiny world of presents and holiday parties, peers into a candlelit window, where a gray-haired lady sits sadly at a bare table. Taking the last bit of bread and cheese from his pocket and adding wine, they share this meager Christmas dinner together. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2012.
One day at a holiday home for the disabled in Hammerdal, Jämtland, depicted in clay animation and with authentic sound from the home that the film tells about. Various episodes show everyday events and relationships between the old ones who have lent their voices and characters to the movie figures. The film shows how an ordinary day looks like meals, mail delivery, card games and visits to the Salvation Army. In the end, the real people compare and comment on their characters.
The film is based on a poem by James Weldon Johnson depicting the power of the southern black American preacher's telling of the biblical creation story.
Short animation of a Russian folk tale, made in 1981. A parody of the fable by Ivan Krylov "The Crow and the Fox".