Animation Cocktail

A frog projectionist, a drunken hound, and shadow muscle men make up this Animation Cocktail of stop-motion sequences by filmmaker Jon Coley.

Reel One of Jon Coley’s Jonamation Trilogy; “Jonamation” referring to the filmmaker's mix of stop-motion animation and live-action. Coley uses the stop-motion technique to animate characters using a range of materials including clay models, puppets, shadow figures, hand-drawings, even inanimate objects such as cups and lamps spring to life in Coley’s choregraphed sequences. Coley worked on these sequences under the supervision of filmmaker Ray Harryhausen.

The filmmaker’s raw talent for this art form was nurtured from a young age. Coley remembers at aged 3 seeing a clip on TV from the 1953 film “The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms” and becoming fascinated with the work of Ray Harryhausen, which encouraged him to make his own dinosaur models. In later years, Coley got to work with Harryhausen, and some of the sequences on this reel were done under Harryhausen's supervision. The reel was then used to show to film companies, to show the filmmaker's potential and to gain further work.