Kickstarter

It's been a while between updates, but that's just because we've been working hard on making amazing things!

Based on extremely helpful advice from Morgan Hay (who worked Coraline), the characters have all been reconstructed and now have much stronger articulation for better posing. We've even devised a clever method for animating faces, so the puppets can better express themselves with frowns, winks, and the fluttering of eyelashes.

Cutting out the innumerable baroque curlicues of Molly's art has been known to drive people to madness, but the results are easily worth a little insanity. When it's all assembled, that fine detail is just amazing. Our initial tests showed how wonderful the paper world looks with more layers, so I've been really enhancing this three-dimensional feel by adding a lot more depth to the sets. As you can see from these pictures, the results speak for themselves.

The animating has begun, and it's a wonderful feeling to see our world come to life. There really is a special magic unique to stopmotion, and as these inanimate objects begin to move on their own it's impossible not too smile. It's so exciting to see it all coming together, our script and storyboards turning into reality.

Up to now I've been the only one in the studio, which has worked fine to get us to this point. But now that shooting has begun we need to pick up the pace, so a team of talented individuals has been assembled to help with the big push toward the finish. There are now around six other people working with me, including a project manager to keep everything on track, another skilled animator to help with especially tricky sequences, and numerous crafty assistants to continue building the next set while I'm shooting.

As we pick up speed moving forward, I promise to do a better job posting regular updates, and be sure to keep an eye on www.ihaveyourheart.com for photos from the studio of works in progress.

Thanks again to everyone involved, this is a huge team effort, and we are extremely grateful to everyone who pitched in and supported the kickstarter, making it possible for us to create this animation. Stopmotion is an art that requires a lot of patience, and we thank you for yours, but things are speeding up now!