Playmobil

As my 5-year-old was playing with his Playmobil toys (remember those?), I happened to casually remark that we should make a short stop-motion movie with them. Foolishly, I thought my suggestion would go unnoticed, but boy was I wrong. The whole movie-making idea really piqued Trevor's interest, probably in part due to the fact that his uncle (AKA my younger bro) is an editor at Pixar and we've been over to their Emeryville campus a few times to absorb all the sheer coolness that permeates the place, as well as watch movie screenings.

So, to get started, we assembled some equipment: a tripod, our old Canon S60 digital camera, my wife's MacBook, a whole mess of Playmobil dudes, and lots and lots of natural light. The toughest part was trying to explain the whole nature of stop-motion animation to my little budding Ray Harryhausen. The primary challenge was, of course, that Kindergarten-age children don't have a lot of patience, which is required in bucketloads for this kind of project. But eventually he got it and did really well.