The Itching - Claymation

The Itching from Dianne Bellino on Vimeo.

This claymation 'The Itching' is an amazing example of how stop-motion can play with the real and make audience's feel genuinely uncomfortable. As claymation has the ability to morph and be anything, it's a fantastic medium and here it is used to show in my opinion the anxiety and 'itch' that the wolf has when being around the bunnies; until she overcomes this. The way that the clay is stippled in different patterns all over the character's face makes you feel really uneasy and does so as it feel like real skin morphing un-naturally. They use this technique to even quicken the pace of the film as it becomes more wild and fast as the tension rises. This shows how effective stop-motion can be and with her cut/sore it grows and morphs so strangely that it's even hard to watch! The performance in this animation inspires me as there is no dialogue yet you can completely understand every emotion that the characters feel. I would love to experiment more with claymation as it's such a crazy material to use and the limits to it are quite vast. The physicality of this animation is definitely what creates the uneasiness and almost grossness to it as the sore changes colours and becomes gradually worse and worse to watch. Shorts like these really inspire me for next year!