Streamschool (Patakiskola) - Peter Vacz

Streamschool (Patakiskola) by Péter Vácz: Inspired by a Hungarian poem, this beautifully-textured stop motion piece about growing up tells the story of a little girl who travels with a river to the sea. The version above is in Hungarian with English subtitles, but it’s also available in French: L’école des ruisseaux.

Plus! Notes on how it was made. 

Ryan (Short) - Chris Landreth

Winner of the 2005 Oscar® for Best Short Animation This Oscar®-winning animated short from Chris Landreth is based on the life of Ryan Larkin, a Canadian animator who produced some of the most influential animated films of his time. Ryan is living every artist's worst nightmare - succumbing to addiction, panhandling on the streets to make ends meet. Through computer-generated characters, Landreth interviews his friend to shed light on his downward spiral. Some strong language. Viewer discretion is advised. Directed by Chris Landreth - 2004

The Silence Beneath the Bark (Short) - Joanna Lurie

A tender fairy tale about discovery and growing up, this is The Silence Beneath the Bark, Le silence sous l’écorce (2010), by Joanna Lurie. Read more about the film here. 

Make Puppets with Jim Henson (1969)

This video is 15 full minutes of amazing. And the best part of watching is that these puppet activities will no doubt inspire kids of all ages to create their own muppet-like characters. Watch Jim Henson and muppet designer and builder Don Sahlin demonstrate how to make puppets from socks, tennis balls, cloth, wooden spoons, potatoes, and other things you can find around the house.

This pre-Sesame Street video aired on Public Television on Iowa Public Television’s Volume See kids’ show in 1969.

More about Sahlin’s work on Muppet Fandom:

He is “the inventor” of the Muppet look, from a design point of view. As discussed in the book Jim Henson’s Designs and Doodles, many of the Muppets began as Henson’s rough sketches, which Sahlin then built and modified as needed… Sahlin was known to refer to himself as the “guardian of the essence” of the Muppets.

Beyond building specific characters, Sahlin contributed two significant concepts to the Muppet aesthetic, “the Magic Triangle” and “the Henson stitch.” The former was a simple but effective approach to positioning eyes, creating a triangle in relation to the nose and mouth. Jim Henson explained the importance of eye placement: “It would be the last thing [Sahlin] would do, and he always wanted me there, to make sure it was right for both of us — making sure the eyes had a point of focus, because without that you had no character.”

The stitch is a specific method of sewing cloth as tightly as possible so the seams would be “nearly invisible,” thus aiding the illusion of stylized “reality” when characters were filmed in close-up. This technique, dubbed the “Henson stitch” by Sahlin, does not in fact create a truly invisible seam, but worked sufficiently for television purposes (hiding, for example, the seam down the middle of Kermit the Frog’s snout).

The Meaning of Zero: A Love Poem - Amy Uyematsu

The Meaning of Zero: A Love Poem
by Amy Uyematsu

--Is where space ends called death or infinity?
Pablo Neruda, The Book of Questions

A mere eyelid's distance between you and me.

It took us a long time to discover the number zero.

John's brother is afraid to go outside.
He claims he knows
the meaning of zero.

I want to kiss you.

A mathematician once told me you can add infinity
to infinity.

There is a zero vector, which starts and ends
at the same place, its force
and movement impossible
to record with
rays or maps or words.
It intersects yet runs parallel
with all others.

A young man I know
wants me to prove
the zero vector exists.
I tell him I can't,
but nothing in my world
makes sense without it.

Cookpad, the Largest Recipe Site in Japan, Launches New Site in English

Cookpad bills itself as having the "Best Japanese recipes from the largest cooking community in Japan." And that's not just your usual web site hyperbole. Established back in 1997, Cookpad houses 1.5 million recipes created by a base of 20 million users. And it's now a publicly-traded company on the Tokyo stock exchange. This week, Cookpad did everyone in the Anglophone world a favor by releasing an English-language version of its site. Right now, you can navigate your way through 1,500 recipes and find dishes like Udon with Thick Egg Soup, Very Delicious Stir-fried Tofu with Shimeji Mushrooms, and Pan-Fried Autumn Salmon with Ginger Sauce. And if you're patient, you'll soon find another 30,000 recipes added to the site. It's worth noting that all recipes are translated by humans, not computers, and the translators are apparently compensated for their efforts.

via The Next Web

Sorry I'm Late Stop Motion Animation - Keith Henniff

Sorry I'm Late from Keith Kenniff | Helios, Goldmund on Vimeo.

Shooting stop-motion straight down on the ground is such a great way to animate. In Sorry I’m Late (2009), written and directed by Tomas Mankovsky, a man tries to reach his destination by bus, bicycle, horse, hot air balloon, shark, and car.

The life-sized stop-motion is all filmed from above in an auditorium in London, with props arranged on the floors and sometimes held directly in front of the camera.

The endeavor required lots of tests, and trial and error. See how they put it all together here: sorry-im-late.com.

Lord Howe Island Stick Insects

"In a world first, zookeeper Rohan Cleave captured the amazing hatching process of a critically endangered Lord Howe Island Stick Insect at Melbourne Zoo. The eggs incubate for over 6 months and until now the hatching process has never been witnessed. If you didn’t see it you wouldn’t believe it could fit in that egg!"

Krulwich Wonders has a great post with excellent photos of this six-legged black giant and the incredible story of how, with just 24 of them living under one bush on a remote island cliff in 2001, scientists spent two years determining if they could move a few, finally breeding two at the Melbourne Zoo in Australia. This passage gives some detail on the conservation group’s success:

"When Jane Goodall visited in 2008, Patrick [Honan, of the zoo’s invertebrate conservation breeding group,] showed her rows and rows of incubating eggs: 11,376 at that time, with about 700 adults in the captive population. Lord Howe Island walking sticks seem to pair off — an unusual insect behavior — and Goodall says Patrick “showed me photos of how they sleep at night, in pairs, the male with three of his legs protectively over the female beside him.”