Quay Brothers

Timothy and Stephen Quay are identical twin brothers known in the stop animation business as 'Brothers Quay' or 'The Quay Brothers'. They are well known English animators and are known for several short films, most of which are made using doll parts, sometimes disassembled, in a 'dark moody atmosphere'. Nearly all of their films have no spoken dialogue at all, as they are highly reliant on their music, usually composed specifically for them.
As the brothers were originally professional illustrators, they already had a lot of artistic talent. I think this shows in their work as they have a very distinct and practiced style that is seen throughout their productions. As well as many animations, they've also created two feature length live action films, and worked on several music videos. In particular they worked along side Nick Park on the 'Peter Gabriel-Sledge Hammer' music video, but they felt their work was too alike to Jan Svankmajer's, a major influence of their.
The sound along side this video is quite old fashioned, as if it would be heard in an old thriller movie soundtrack. I do think it suits this animation as it is quite alarming in the way it is designed and carried out, and I think this is the effect the animators were aiming for. However as the majority of their work follows this pattern I feel as if they need to have a wider range of designs to keep the audience interested and so they don't just keep creating the same sort of animations. On the other hand, this could be their selling point and what makes them so entertaining and popular. I think I will create and practice using several different types of animation such as flash, drawn and photographed to keep the contents original.

The below film is 'The Calligrapher', from 1991. I think their work is relevant to mine as you can tell from the jerky action that they have used the same process as I plan to use, by moving the content of the frame very slightly between each shot. I also like their work as it is very stylized and needs no dialogue to be understood. I do aim for this kind of simplicity, but the content is not similar to how I plan my own work to be. Their plots are quite cryptic and nonsensical with little coherence. This particular work is from being commissioned by BBC 2 in 1991, but the film was rejected. I think this is because they didn't target the right audience as this sort of character and style would scare small children and the majority of adults wouldn't understand it. This encourages me to do research into my target audience and to concentrate on that aspect of my own animation.