Shell Life

Twenty animators from the U.S., Switzerland, Poland and China express their friendship with and love of animation in a series of animated variations on the standard countdown.

Beginning with his work for a certain public television show that featured a big yellow bird, Al Jarnow captured life's scientific minutia and boiled it down for easy consumption between cookie eating monsters and counting vampires. Coupling time-lapse, stop motion, and cell animation with simple objects found in every day life, Jarnow deconstructed the world for an entire generation.

The letter X in various typefaces.

The letter Z in various typefaces.

An educational animated cartoon produced by the American Lung Association, set to music, about a mythical land which is invaded by an eight-armed, fast-talking pitch man, whose attempt to induce the citizens into smoking cigarettes is foiled by a group of children.

Things you can do with a single sheet of paper.

A method by which drawings can be enlarged on a grid.

For a year, Jarnow photographed and recorded the sounds of his newborn child.

Words that end in -ake and start with ch-. A typographic animation.

After a day of gathering hundreds of seashells and rocks from the beach, Jarnow uses the found objects to construct a stop motion commentary on how we look at nature through various cinematic techniques.

A stop motion opus made up of hundreds of hand-painted wooden blocks that takes the viewer through a brief history of architecture. Primitive structures evolve into larger buildings...

Kids recycle household objects to make a miniature city.

A rock performs an acrobatic feat for the assembled crowd.

A rap teaching kids how to use a waste basket.