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A Town Called Panic: Puppetoon Animation
OK, you’ve heard of stop motion animation before, right (if not, then think ‘claymation’)? You pose a clay character, snap a frame, move the pose a bit, snap another frame and repeat a hundred thousand times.
What you may not have heard is “puppetoon.”
Pioneered by a guy named George Pal, a Hungarian-born American animator and film producer, puppetoons were a bit different: instead of characters with poseable bits and limbs, you had a character carved into dozens (or hundreds) of fixed poses which were simply swapped out as needed.
This is probably a great time saver (while you’re under hot studio lamps) but maybe not so much when prepping all your puppetoon characters. Still, it makes for a visually unique experience and A Town Called Panic is great example.
Produced in Belgium by Vincent Patar and Stéphane Aubier for La Parti & Pic Pic André (and distribute by Aardman), it follows the everyday events of Cowboy, Indian and Horse in a small rural town as they go about their lives.
Watch!
Sadly, video embeddding is unable, but you can jump into the Aardman Youtube area and enjoy all the zany goodness here!
Episodes are roughly 5 minutes long and the entire first season is available at iTunes for $6.99 USD (at the time of this writing) — a great addition to any animation-lovers library.
