“Ready, Able” with Clay

Yowsers. One of my favorite songs of the year is now adorned with one of the coolest videos I’ve seen since Michel Gondry’s “Fell in Love with a Girl.” It makes me wonder what possesses people to undertake the painfully tedious tasks of stop-motion videography. Yet seeing the magnificence of the final product, I do believe that the ends justify the means. More about the video’s creator here.

The Golden Snail

Hedgehog in the Fog (1975) is the tale of a curious little hedgehog, who, after following a white horse into a fog, encounters various dangerous circumstances which only seem in turn to make him more curious than before.

It’s directed and animated by the little-known Russian animator Yuriy Norshteyn (born Sept. 15, 1941, also of The Heron and the Crane and Overcoat (still in production). Norshteyn is highly regarded as a master of his craft for creating all his works by hand and without the aid of a computer. Some of his short films it has been said, have taken him almost 15 years to make–Overcoat, which is still not done he has been working on since 1985–hence the nickname The Golden Snail. His work is so stunning and time consuming due to the technique he uses that involves many layers of plated glass, giving a three-dimensional realism to his work, and making that fog look as if you can touch it.

This film is a beautiful masterpiece that overcomes the current slick CG style so popular today. This beautiful piece of artwork, along with a poignant score captures your emotion like nothing else. Unfortunately, the Youtube version isn’t exactly high quality, so I apologize for the horrible example linked below.