We distinctly remember our first foray into claymation, the painstaking, arduous, and frustrating art of moving clay frame-by-frame through animation. We also remember our first project looking nothing like Alexander Unger’s. His latest project, Distortion, is made up of intricate movements and more than 2500 frames, and explores shapes, toothy faces, and springy gravity, all with delightful quirkiness throughout.
Utilizing beautifully smooth transitions and clever sound effects to match, Unger proves his worth as an animator, and storyteller, even if Distortion is more of a surreal abstraction than a narrative story.
2500 still pictures played at 24 frames per second. Shot with a Canon EOS 600D and animated in Dragonframe. The clay I used is called PLASTILINA. Everything edited in Photoshop CC and Sony Vegas Pro. Sound effects recorded with a Blue Yeti and also taken from freesound.org.
If you think creating something like this is simple, we suggest you make a sample video. It’s staggering how time consuming and difficult it is to do well.
Unger’s movements and physics are impressively smooth and mesmerizing.
Clever use of sound design help tie the short film together.