Stars of Stone!

STARS OF STONE 2022 - In this stop-motion short, Rook finds a mysterious fossil that leads them on a deep dive to discover more about the strange animals that it came from. The film was screened at the SCINEMA international film festival and Science film festival in 2022 and in 2023 was a semi-finalist in the AniMate - Australia Animation Film Festival. The film is Dr. Ash Latimer's first, introducing you to the weird and wonderful creatures called crinoids and their cultural importance, history, and bizarre lives.

This project was mostly shot on a Canon T3i rebel camera with pretty much no budget beyond a Dragonframe license, secondhand tools, and craft supplies. All aspects of the film were done by one person including scratch-building the sets and puppets, animation, editing, sound, music composition, and yes, voice over. It took two years to produce and every step was a learning process. The set creatures are modeled after real animals, and a sense of scale is given away by a few coffee beans with googly eyes.