The Great Corelli (2019)

"The Great Corelli is a young and successful magician at the height of his career as an illusionist. However, during the most important performance of his life, he fails a crucial magic trick, disappointing his audience. In the aftermath, he finds himself performing brief and modest magic acts in a rundown old theater." What unfolds from there was far from what I expected — the ending took me by surprise.

TRAILER

 

 The Great Corelli (2019)

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Timelapse

Some special effects, digital erasing rigs, compositing & miniature set extensions

Artist Heather Colbert was the character designer and fabricated the puppets for 'The Great Corelli'. There were a total of two puppets. Only one was a machined stop motion armature from Edu Puertas' → Kinetic Armatures located in Spain ... this armature was for the older/senior magician character. The other armature of the younger version of the magician, which was a precisely hand-made Wire Armature which worked sufficiently well for the animated scenes. Go to Heather's website (link below) for details & many photos.

→ HEATHER COLBERT ←

ABEL CARBAJAL - Director & Animator ....

Originally from Galicia, a region bordering northern Spain, stop-motion director and animator Abel Carbajal graduated from ESCAC (Cinema and Audiovisual School of Catalonia, near Barcelona) in 2018. His final-year short film, The Great Corelli, was created after completing a specialization in 'Visual Effects & Animation'. The project took nearly two years to produce, with filming lasting nine months.

While working on his animated short, Abel sent a sample to Laika Studios in the USA., which garnered their favorable attention. He later traveled to the United States to work in stop-motion animation for Laika, the prestigious studio behind Coraline and other well-known stop-motion features. I am not sure, but I think Abel is perhaps still at LAIKA or might later work for the studio's new stop motion feature → Wildwood 

  

→ Instagram     → Youtube       → Vimeo      → Linkedin

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STUDIO CROMA - Animation

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Matteo Burani and Ariana Gheller jointly operate an independent production house >> Studio Croma Animation, located in Bologna, Italy. Their website offers an immersive and engaging experience, particularly when viewed on larger screens such as laptops or desktop computers. The design of the site feels like a guided tour, inviting visitors into the creative world of Studio Croma. Their animation & special effects work are eclectic, producing advertisement spots, music videos, and animated shorts which use a variety of mixed media animation styles. Matteo and Ariana come across as warm and approachable, encouraging visitors to reach out. 

They currently have a few animated shorts which are available for viewing. You can explore Studio Croma at their >>Youtube or >> Vimeo channels. Their recent work, partially crowd funded, was released in 2024 ... 'Playing God' is a 9 minute animated story that has toured various film festivals.While it may have been available at some point, it seems to not be available for viewing at this time. If you are curious about 'Playing God', you might ask and communicate with them here >> Contact

Playing God’ is an animated short film created using the CLAY stop-motion animation technique. Good to see the Clay medium being used in a more 'pure' form somewhat remininscent of the vintage works of >> Will Vinton Studios with their ClayMation™ brand. The key creators behind 'Playing God' are Director Matteo Burani and Producer Ariana Gheller. Despite their official titles, both Matteo and Ariana are deeply involved in multiple aspects of the production process. They contribute to the design, including stage set construction, puppet fabrication, camera & lighting, and actively participate in the hands-on animation itself.

 
Here is the short Trailer-Teaser!

  Playing God | Backstage Teaser

Playing God | 50 Clay Puppets

  Ariana and Matteo interview

Link >> STUDIO CROMA 

 

UPDATE / BONUS

This is from Studio Croma's other Projects -- Other Animators or studios use Croma's services to produce whatever custom puppets, props, miniature sets, etc.  Take note -these Behind the Scenes have a short story musical style presention!👍😎

 All in a day's work

BLU | Puppet Making Backstage -  Fabrication of Replacement Puppet Faces, NOT using any 3D printing. The connecting magnets are embedded in a keyed polyurethane hard resin neck/skull base ... then each of the custom facial feature expressions are hand sculpted using putty epoxy which hardens & bonds to the resin component (with the embedded magnets). Also, for Croma's client, they produced numerous puppet hands as backups if the wire fingers break during animation. If you do not understand, just study the video using full screen and select slow motion video speed!

MORE >> NO 3D printing handmade replacement  >> Puppet face replacement test

 

Stop Motion Works SEAL — REAL Hand-Made Certified™ ( A.I.)

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Details >> STOP MOTION WORKS & RETRO FX