The Guys Who Animate 'Robot Chicken' Want to Teach You Stop Motion

The people behind Robot Chicken, the aggressively silly stop motion animation TV show on Adult Swim, want to teach you how to animate properly.
Stoopid Buddy Stoodios, the Burbank, California-based production company, is partnering with Vimeo to launch Stoopid Buddy Film School, they announced at New York Comic Con on Thursday.

Before you say, "thanks but no thanks," the team is serious about teaching young filmmakers about the nuts and bolts of animation. It's not easy stuff; fluid stop motion requires minute, hand-manipulated, frame-by-frame changes. To be fair, each Robot Chicken episode, which focuses heavily on nerd and pop culture, is not the smoothest stop motion you'll see.
The classes will consist of two hours of online primers, designed both as a standalone course and to augment Stoopid Buddy Stoodio's eight-week beginner and intermediate courses held inside their studios. Greg Clayman, Vimeo's general manager of audience networks, and the Robot Chicken team, including Seth Green, will discuss the series and the new animation course at the New York Comic Con panel on Thursday.
The Robot Chicken team told us a little bit about their process and background.
It takes 14 months to do 20 episodes (and a special) of Robot Chicken. "We do them all concurrently. If you use our 22-minute DC [Comics] Special as an example, it’s about 14 to 16 weeks to do just that one."
Animators have received all sorts of training. "...Whether it is just learning from home, working as interns on our production, or going to a school like CalArts. Many stop motion animators are self-taught, and there are only a handful of schools that teach stop-motion animation — even fewer that teach stop-motion character animation. The training our animation class provides will give aspiring animation professionals the tools to get animation jobs or improve their own personal films."
About 10-15 animators work on each episode.
The videos will be available later this year on demand at Vimeo.com. "Pricing for the videos will be $99.99 for a digital download or $79.99 for streaming, 30-day rental."
If you're not familiar with Stoopid Buddy Studio's handiwork, we've included a typically inappropriate clip below.