Does 3D printing have stop motion potential? Eastend Western trials the technique across film genres

Usually, stop-motion techniques involve characters that are “built once and can be bent frame by frame”, the director Nicolas Ménard tells us. And so, techniques like claymation – that offer the flexibility for things to be moulded or transformed over time – are clearly the first choice for anything that’s shot at such a pace.

In Nicolas and Jack Cunningham’s latest triptych of shorts Triple Bill, however, everything was shot using a technique called replacement animation which involves the pretty time consuming process of printing, sanding and painting a new figurine for every frame of motion. Made under their shared animation collective Eastend Western, each frame is composed of “dozens of iterations of themselves” meaning each figure is entirely new in every frame – just making a character walk can mean creating up to eight models.

“This technique was popularised in the 1940s by George Pal as a 3D alternative to cel animation. Back then he was using wood but we’re interested in this technique today because it can be done with a lot of precision using 3D printing”, Nicolas says. “The aesthetic of the resulting puppets is closer to sculpture, since the whole body is seamless and joints can retain a beautiful form.”

To really put this stop motion strategy to the test, the directors explored its effects across three entirely different genres. Triple Bill consists of Blue Goose, “a western, poking fun at the enshittification of our online spaces”, Club Row, “a film noir on data privacy” and Mythacrylate – “a modern fantasy for the century of the self, making use of the multiplicity of characters”.

Although simply designed to be demos of the technique, the three shorts all intersect at their criticism of technology, exploring themes such as the decisive nature of our online platforms, our lack of control over our own data and our relationship to ourselves in algorithm-led social networks. To get these messages across with precision, the directing duo had to be clever with their use of movement when telling each story through such a labour intensive process. Things like inventive camera angles, loops, like the spiralling stairs sequence in Club Row and the “multiplying characters in camera”, making use of the many puppets on set.

Triple Bill’s use of lighting, sound design and music are used to convey emotion, Nicolas explains, and each finer detail and facial feature is carefully considered to build enchantingly precise worlds: “We often remark on how great movies often correlate with sweaty actors,” he concludes. “How the glisten on a character’s skin or the smoke in the air contributes to a coherent atmosphere. It adds to the believability of a film captured at 24 frames a second. In animation, the handcrafted touch is what plays that role.”