New Stop Motion Book by Barry Purves

Highly regarded stop motion animator Barry Purves has wrapped up a new book called Stop Motion: Passion, Process and Performance which is due in December. The book will be available for pre-order in a few weeks on Amazon and the publisher’s site FocalPress.com.

Here is Purves’s description of the book:

Above all, this book is about the very personal experience, not just mine but others, of being an animator, working laboriously with puppets, and why so many of us still get so much from, as the late Paul Berry described it, ‘dolly waggling’. Just what is satisfying about bringing puppets to life that, for all the hard work, the tedium, and the back aches, keeps us doing it and keeps so many people watching it? It’s not the most prolific of jobs. Other directors make many hours of film in the time it takes us to do a short film. Actors perform the same role several hundred times in the months it takes us to perform our role just once, but even so, there is something deeply satisfying about bringing a lump of latex, metal and cloth to life. At every level, it is a performance, and for those who have never delicately held a puppet, squeezing it gently and sensually into life, that can be a strange concept.

The fully illustrated book also offers advice and insights from various stop motion animators including Tom Brierton, Adam Elliot, Mark Hall, Peter Lord, Ken Priebe and David Sproxton, among others.