Claymation was once a staple of kid’s programming, and shows like Gumby were all the rage. Now, we seem to have the claymation films from Aardman Studios, and not much else. But the art of claymation is not dead yet. Via Laughing Squid, we’ve discovered the work of Trent Shy, a stop-motion animator who’s helping to keep this art form alive. His latest videos are tributes to famous green and blue characters from all across the pop culture landscape.
In his first short, verdant characters from cartoons, to Muppets, to some very familiar looking giant kaiju pop up. Among the characters in the green tribute are Pickle Rick from Rick and Morty, the aliens from The Simpsons, Kermit the Frog, Slimer from Ghostbusters, Master Yoda himself, and of course, Gumby. There’s also a giant green hand. We’re not entirely sure who this hand belongs to, so we’re just going to pretend it’s the Hulk’s. And there are several more, so be sure to watch it all the way through a few times.
The Blue Claymation is a tribute to characters of an azure hue. Shy references several iconic Disney animation characters, and a cookie loving resident from Sesame Street. Not to mention, a pair of superpowered characters from both Marvel and DC. Shockingly, there are no Smurfs at all in this video. Papa Smurf, we think you need a better agent.
Trent Shy
There are 14 characters total, but you’ll just have to watch it a few times to spot them all. The video took one whole month to create. Sculpting the characters is what ate up most of the time. The animation process took 55 hours, and it was shot on a Canon Mark IV 5D, using Dragonframe stop motion software. Shy’s YouTube channel has a metric ton of cool claymation videos, so be sure to head on over there and check them all out.