I started making stop-motion just over 2 months ago.

I've always been fascinated by stop-motion and puppets. I found myself as an unemployed illustration graduate recovering from a long illness, and realised for the first time in my life I had time to do whatever I wanted to do, so I started teaching myself stop-motion animation. I already had all the craft skills required, so it was really easy to start making animations.

No no, that's about when I found out. Although when I tell people of all ages that I'm into stop motion, they're like "What's that?" and then I tell them how it works, and they still don't know what I'm talking about. So I just say "The Nightmare Before Christmas." And they go "DANG that's how they made that movie?!" It's just not a widely-known medium is all.

I got into it because of Hayao Miyazaki's films, and the videogame "Chrono Trigger". I wanted to create the beauty that I saw in those two things, and that yearning was fulfilled by trying to make an anime film for Chrono Trigger. Well that was a stupid idea at age 14, so I dropped it eventually. I only animated a couple of things, but I really wanted to do more.

I watched "James and the Giant Peach" again after a while of not seeing it and thought I'd make my own stop motion. So I did these two horrendus little animations of Mario (you can see them on my profile). After that I started to work on various projects but have been too busy to see them through. I have one in the development stages but it probably won't go anywhere for a while.

I started 1 year ago... I was bored and I was wasting my time with moving stuffs in house and making animation of pictures... Then I realized I made my own movie. So i decided to buy clay and make clay animation ...

i started animation when i did these cartoon strips in school with numerous characters, but two characters called haggis and neep stood out from the rest and i decided to bring them to life by animating in ms paint, it was a mess, thjen i found out how a certain man and his dog was created with, hence today, i animate stopmotion short films

I started almost one year exactly. I thought about making a live action film and then realized you had to deal with real people and knew that wouldn't ever work out so I researched stopmotion. I found stopmotionanimation.com,joined up, read everything two or three times and started building my puppet. My first puppet actually had a ball and socket armature, I thought I would just jump in both feet right away. It was called "orc in limbo" and it is posted on this site now. As soon as the first film was complete I started on the next one and have done the same thing for the next 10 films or so. The very next day usually after uploading a finished film I tear down the set, and begin work on the next one. I have no real professional ambitions and animate solely to entertain you guys.

For me stopmotion means no live people, I build and control the entire puppet world, and I can turn off the light and go to bed and pick it up right where I left off the next day.

(^ heh. tricky question.

(^ when did Istart.. what aspect of what function?

(^ I started scribbling before I can remember.

(^ I started really working with clay because it was the 70s,

(^ and it was a fun way to test my ceramics teacher.

(^ I started  still photography  in college to document my sculptures

(^ then took pantomime classes in order to be a better life modle.

(^ jewelry making lasses ( hence armature making abilities) because my girlfriend at the time  wanted company in the studio corse,

then I branched off into lost wax meathod  class

mold making.  interesting.

(^ this goes on and on. can you tell?

(^ I guess  i started LOSING MY MIND at age 6 or 7 : and turned inward to create my own universe  in order to avoid  bullies out on the playground  after coming back to america from the congo.

(^ everything evolved from that point.

I guess you could say I started in 1980 or so but didn't get very far. I was winging it, playing around with clay and "hard" puppets and filming on super eight. I experimented with this for a year or so, then realized that I couldn't really do anything with it as one would need to mortgage their home to afford sound or any other professional level of production.

So, since kids were coming along, I put it all away and concentrated on graphic arts, eventually owning my own T-shirt company. About 4 years ago, I sold the T-shirt shack and got out of printing all together. My wife worked as a CPA at a local art school, and they started offering a couple classes on stop motion. Since I can take a class for free each quarter because she works there, I enrolled and took 2 stop motion classes, a couple of story developement classes, and a 2D class.

During this time I became aware that everything I needed and wanted to do in 1980, but couldn't afford, can be done with very satisfying results on a desktop computer now. This gave me the confidence to realize I can actually do this now.

My first official film, though a student film, has done fairly well. It's gotten into many festivals which surprised me. I had no intention of putting it in festivals originally and am always pleased when it gets accepted. It's even won 1st place in one festival and Director's choice in another. It's even listed on IMDB, lol. It's called Snapshots and I posted it here.

I've done a paying gig as lead animator on a spot made for Farmer's Almanac TV, which airs on local PBS. I'm currently developing my next project and trying to find more professional projects to work on. 

I started like 5 years ago, I was so inspired by the Wallce and Gromit 'The Curse of the Were Rabbit!

When I got home after seeing 'W and G COTWR' I  animated a piece of blue tack and have been animating ever since making lots of progress.

Chec out my videos at, http://www.stopmotionmagic.com/Lvincent