Hanna-Barbera Productions

Hanna-Barbera was formed in 1957 by animation directors William Hanna and Joseph Barbera who were the creators of Tom and Jerry and live-action director George Sidney. Hanna-Barbera were very sucessful producing many shows, including The Flintstones, Yogi Bear, The Jetsons, Scooby-Doo and The Smurfsas some of there most sucessful. They earned eight Emmys a Golden Globe Award, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

In the mid-80s they produced alot of Saturday morning cartoons. It was then purchased in late 1991 by Turner Broadcasting System, who used much of its material on its new channel, Cartoon Network.

Marina Bychkova - ball jointed dolls

Marina Bychkova creates beautiful ball jointed dolls, along with delicate stunning accessories for them. She is an Russian-Canadian independent figurative artist and founder of Enchanted Doll™. The Enchanted Dolls are elegantly sculpted and articulated works of art. Her dolls are usually nude, engraved or covered in opulent sculptural costumes of precious metals, gemstones, and rare found objects, each doll intricately conveys an aspect of our humanity. Unique and delicate, their forms evoke a strong emotional response, haunting us with their vulnerability. All at once innocent and sexual, Enchanted Dolls depict beautifully stylised images of femininity, while at the same time being very playful.

She creates them first out of Super Sculpey to get the measurements right, then casts them twice to cut down on sanding/cleaning process, which seems like pretty hard work. Then created many, many, many moulds and days of work. The time and patience that goes into each doll is amazing and beautiful and you can really see the love within each one. A few more casts are made before the final firing when they can each be painted and brought to life.

“The reason I love making dolls is because it’s such a multidisciplinary art form. I’m not content working in just one medium such as painting or sculpture, and dolls offer me a very diverse and satisfying tactile experience. To create a doll I get to do it all: sculpture, industrial design, painting, engraving, mold-making, drawing, metalwork, fashion and jewelry design. I want it all, or nothing!” 
- Marina Bychkov

For me these dolls are beautiful and breath taking, it is something i would love to be able to do, the small details within the bodies and there costumes along with the diversity. To learn to make puppets, or at least the costumes like this i could use in stop motion would be beautiful.

Zealous Creative

Zealous Creative is a production company based in Los Angeles, who have been producing ads, corporate videos and short films for just over a decade.
One of my favourite animations by them is The maker, it took 6 months to complete from concept to completion. They had a crew of 30 woking on the film, including 4 animators. The most impressive thing about this short film to me is the character design which was based on the work by the Artist Amanda Louise Spayd. She creates doll like creatures, which Zealous creative liked and decided they wanted to animate her characters, or based on her designs. She came up with a design for them and helped create the puppets which allowed 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHXanDTE9E4&list=TLuXUy5rk76F_Jxd_Mfa3S2ljwca5Gf4jT (would not let me embed)
The director was Christopher Kenz the main guy behind the company, the story collaborator was ziad Jamal, Concept illustrations by Ben Thomas. Almost all the set and props were made using found objects, along with alot of the rigging improvised and designed for the movie to get the right shots in. What i love about Zealous Creative is although they haven't been animating very long, the ones they do have are still to a high standard and they have created videos on how they managed to animate with such a low budget. Showing, and teaching techniques anyone can use which i think is really good when trying to learn animation and tips and tricks in stop motion.