Quay Brothers

The final stop motion animators I am going to mention are the Quay Brothers. Although perhaps their work is not as well-known as the likes of Tim Burton and Wallace and Gromit, they played an important role in stop motion animation’s evolution, because they were an influence to others. Tim Burton was inspired by them for one. Their style of animation is the idea of creating nightmarish fairy tales, which they describe as “midway between sleep and wakefulness”. You can see their style in some of Burton’s stop motion films, like Nightmare Before Christmas, which takes the idea of Christmas and mixes it with a dark atmosphere, although the stuff that the Quay Brothers create is much darker.

Their most famous animation is “Street of Crocodiles”, which has been labelled as one of the 10 greatest animations of all time by the film maker Terry Gilliam, showing its impact. It is undoubtedly their most recognised film. Street of Crocodiles is a highly metaphorical film, not featuring any dialogue and instead relying on music and atmosphere to set the mood.