HAIRY HILL is a short film that explores a rural family's relationship with nature and, ultimately, acceptance, told through an artful blend of CG, traditional 2D, paper puppetry, and performance driven animation. Currently in production at Montreal based studio E*D Films, Art + Tech Director Daniel Gies' underlying goal is to give the film a fable-like quality.

Like many animators, Daniel is drawn to stop motion because of its undeniably eerie magic that can make inanimate objects feel like they have been inhabited by a spirit and brought to life. Capturing stop motion animation's feeling of tactility and timelessness with the characters, animations and environments has been a driving force of the production. This is why all of the background assets and puppets were hand drawn and painted before being scanned into the computer. The final paper puppets have been designed and modeled in 3D, but based closely on everything that was learned from building real paper proto-types so that they could move in a life-like, hand-touched way. Using a blend of custom tools (motion captured VR puppeteering) with procedural and keyframe animation, the characters convey all the life and charm of a stop motion puppet with the added depth and robustness of a digital character. Join Daniel while he shares more about his creation processes and the discoveries he has made along the way.