Jan Svankmajer: Artist Inspiration.

Czechchoslovak animator extraordinaire, Jan Svankmajer's bizarre films are something he's been creating since the mid-60's. His style and medium of animation usually consist of stop motion, 3D, live action and puppets, but can also often be an eclectic mixture of them all.
The stories he tell can be seen as creepy, eerie or surreal, but I love how a dark imagination and sense of humor can be shown through this medium; using children's toys, or seemingly innocent figures and objects. His animation are nothing short of twisted, each one of them having a distinct macabre vibe to it and an extremely defined aesthetic.

Below I've embedded two of the videos that I feel best represent the particular sense of humor; childish through visual means, but slightly grotesque, definitely showcasing more adult themes. 

'Alice' Seems to be an interpretation of the famous scene from 'Alice in Wonderland' by Lewis Carroll, where the character of Alice drinks from a bottled labelled 'Drink Me.' Upon doing this, she suddenly shoots up and becomes as large as the room she's standing in. 'Alice in Wonderland' already has quite surreal and potentially more mature themes, that have been previously interpreted to be centered around hallucinogenic drug use. The use of a childs doll and a scale set add to the creepy mood, as well as the use of audio; only sound effects and no music.  


'Flora' is a very short animated piece that experiments with themes of decay. This could be interpreted as to having themes on motifs of life and death, starvation, abandonment.
It's been really interesting to find an animator that experiments with the same humor that I've been looking into, as well as makes such innovative and creative designs in how to use stop motion.

EDIT: Unfortunately, during this project some of the videos were taken off of Youtube!