Here's something you don't expect to show up every day – new stop-motion work from Phil Tippett, who has made a career of such animation (and much more besides), with VFX credits on films including the original Star Wars trilogy, RoboCop and Jurassic Park. Check out the first look at Mad God.
We say "new", but this is something that Tippett started noodling with back in 1990 after a lull in his schedule following work on RoboCop 2. A certain dinosaur movie caused him to hit pause on the idea and the puppets and sets for Mad God went into storage. But, encouraged by team members at his studio, he dug them all out again 20 years later and, thanks to some Kickstarter cash, he's been able to finish the 12-minute movie.
The plot follows a character called "The Assassin" through a forbidding world of tortured souls, decrepit bunkers, and wretched monstrosities forged from the most primordial horrors of the subconscious mind. And, according to Tippett himself, "the final form of Mad God isn't the film itself, but the memory after you watch it. It's bringing you to that moment just after waking up from a dream, frozen, exploring fragments of your feral mind before they fade back into the shadows. That's the moment. Mad God is just a way to get you there."
Mad God is scheduled to premiere at the Locarno Film Festival next month, and plans a swathe of festival dates to follow.