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Sean Pecknold is a filmmaker and music video director based in Seattle and New York. He was born in Port Townsend, WA, to two adventurers and has a brother Robin and a sister Aja. His interests include star gazing, listening to records, standing in the forest, talking with animals and house building. He has utilized various techniques on his projects including claymation, glass plane animation, and super 16mm film. His work has screened in numerous film festivals been recognized by Wired, Motionographer, Cartoon Brew, Spin, and Feed. His stop-motion music video for Fleet Foxes’ “White Winter Hymnal” was selected in the Top 5 music videos of 2008 by MTV2 and Paste magazine and as the Best Music Video of 2008 by Ticklebooth.

How did you first become interested in stop motion animation? Was it a particular film that got you into it? What particularly attracted you to it?

I've been interested in the form since I was a kid watching Sesame Street. My dad was an editor on music videos in the 90's, I grew up around film and music. I was always drawn to the animated form. I was a huge fan of Jim Henson and Ray Harryhausen's shorts, The Brothers Quay, Tim Burton's Vincent short film.

How easy was it to become proficient at stop motion? Did you study it at school or did you teach yourself?

I first started playing around with a cheap DV camera and the obvious household objects laying around. Then once I got my first digital SLR it became so much cheaper to experiment with stop motion and achieve some decent looking results. I made a couple stop-motion pixilation shorts with my friend Matt Daniels, and wanted to continue to experiment with small sets and making characters. I made a claymation short called The Color Keeper that was my first attempt at character building and animation. It was very rough, but I learned a lot. I received no formal training from a school, most of my knowledge comes from experimentation. I feel that's the only way to really make something your own, and try things uninhibited. I may go back to school at some point, but it's become so expensive these days. I worked with a great animator named Chris Rodgers on one of my music videos and he taught me a lot about character animation.

Which special qualities do you feel are necessary to be a stop motion animator? Do you have a much higher level of patience than most people?

I think it does take a lot of patience, but it depends of course on the style and type of project your working on. I think the excitement of watching a scene come to life after a couple of days or weeks makes it worthwhile. Not every project involves a full scene with multiple characters and facial lip-syncing, which takes up a great deal of the time on the big budget films. Sometimes simpler is better. It's good to have a background in photography or design. A lot of projects will have minimal budget and crew, and I tend to do a lot of the work myself, which I enjoy, especially lighting and photography. 

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Sean Pecknold is a filmmaker and music video director based in Seattle and New York. He was born in Port Townsend, WA, to two adventurers and has a brother Robin and a sister Aja. His interests include star gazing, listening to records, standing in the forest, talking with animals and house building. He has utilized various techniques on his projects including claymation, glass plane animation, and super 16mm film. His work has screened in numerous film festivals been recognized by Wired, Motionographer, Cartoon Brew, Spin, and Feed. His stop-motion music video for Fleet Foxes’ “White Winter Hymnal” was selected in the Top 5 music videos of 2008 by MTV2 and Paste magazine and as the Best Music Video of 2008 by Ticklebooth.

How did you first become interested in stop motion animation? Was it a particular film that got you into it? What particularly attracted you to it?

I've been interested in the form since I was a kid watching Sesame Street. My dad was an editor on music videos in the 90's, I grew up around film and music. I was always drawn to the animated form. I was a huge fan of Jim Henson and Ray Harryhausen's shorts, The Brothers Quay, Tim Burton's Vincent short film.

How easy was it to become proficient at stop motion? Did you study it at school or did you teach yourself?

I first started playing around with a cheap DV camera and the obvious household objects laying around. Then once I got my first digital SLR it became so much cheaper to experiment with stop motion and achieve some decent looking results. I made a couple stop-motion pixilation shorts with my friend Matt Daniels, and wanted to continue to experiment with small sets and making characters. I made a claymation short called The Color Keeper that was my first attempt at character building and animation. It was very rough, but I learned a lot. I received no formal training from a school, most of my knowledge comes from experimentation. I feel that's the only way to really make something your own, and try things uninhibited. I may go back to school at some point, but it's become so expensive these days. I worked with a great animator named Chris Rodgers on one of my music videos and he taught me a lot about character animation.

Which special qualities do you feel are necessary to be a stop motion animator? Do you have a much higher level of patience than most people?

I think it does take a lot of patience, but it depends of course on the style and type of project your working on. I think the excitement of watching a scene come to life after a couple of days or weeks makes it worthwhile. Not every project involves a full scene with multiple characters and facial lip-syncing, which takes up a great deal of the time on the big budget films. Sometimes simpler is better. It's good to have a background in photography or design. A lot of projects will have minimal budget and crew, and I tend to do a lot of the work myself, which I enjoy, especially lighting and photography. 

How do you conceive ideas for stop motion projects? Do you always first have to consider practical constraints, or do you instead look to overcome potential problems after coming up with a creative concept?

It usually starts with a character for me, then I flesh out a story based on that character. Or I combine a few different ideas I've had for a project. I usually spend a lot of time testing to see what I can accomplish in the amount of time I have. I think about ways to keep it simple, I have had very little budget or no budget on most of my projects so I definitely have to improvise most things. But that's the fun part I think. If I had a lot of money to make an animation I wouldn't really know what to do with it. I think you can make something compelling with the simplest of elements. 

White Winter Hymnal from Grandchildren on Vimeo.

What are the greatest challenges you face as a stop motion animator?

I still think the challenges are the same that face all filmmakers. Having the right kind of story and figuring out the best way to tell that story is still the biggest challenge. The style and animation is just the way to bring that idea to life. Technically there are a lot of challenges but, that's also what makes it fun. The digital SLR stop motion approach has evolved rather quickly. This last project I've finally been able to use live feed which allows you to reference the image directly from your camera as you animate. It makes a big difference. The program I use is called Dragon, I highly recommend it.    

Which stop motion animators do you in particular admire?

Yuri Norstein, Lotte Reiniger, Susie Templeton and Jan Svankmajer.

What are you currently working on? And what is your dream project?

Just finished a short stop motion with my friend Matt Smithson for a collaborative animated film project called PSST! Pass It On. It's an exquisite corpse style project that builds on a theme or story that someone starts and other teams complete. It's a great example of the collaborative climate that exists now with short filmmaking.

And I'm currently finishing up a second stop motion animation for my brother's band Fleet Foxes. My dream project would be to make a really weird animation that would be projected onto a small planet in outer space and somehow last long enough for future civilizations to see.