A big animation and puppet-hand applause to James Kwan, a student at Pratt Institute, who created this fetching little film. It is a great example of the power of beautiful lighting and refined simplicity. It has nice flavorings of the work of Sean Pecknold and Mikey Please while playfully following its own spirit. Read on to hear from the director.


James Kwan:

I used Dragonframe extensively for the film. I feel a bit spoiled with all of its features (especially when my stop motion teacher talks about the days of shooting stop motion on film). It all makes stop motion a bit less daunting.

It took about 7 months to produce. For the most part I made the film myself, but I could not have done it without help from Bryce Barsten (on sound design), and the Caleb Reske (the best little voice actor). The fuzzy characters were felted out of wool, and the asteroids were hand-sewn. Everything was shot over a green screen (or a black backdrop) in Dragonframe and composited in AfterEffects.
 
When I started the film, I was interested in the idea that the Universe would end in a Big Crunch, where everything would collapse into a final black hole. Instead of looking at it as a cold heartless ending, I chose to see it as a sweet still moment where everything was finally squished-all-up together…
 
That was the initial spark for MOOON. The film that grew out of that was a little bit sillier, a bit stranger.

 
And maybe a bit stronger. Thank you, James. We’ll keep our eye out for any new lights in the sky. -Dragonframe

See what James is working on next here.

Blog written by Vera Long