A band from Hertfordsire called Moones burst upon us with the amazing video for Better Energy, a combination of stop motion, claymation, pixelation, puppetry and much more – all orchestrated by master animator Peter Sluszka.

It features the band as sailors stranded on an iceberg, trying to make fire, play music, and SOS for help, while a sea monster devours their ship, the captain bursts into flames, and the ship’s cat gets handy with a shotgun.

This was co-written by Peter Sluszka – who’s work includes animation directing Michel Gondry videos like Bjork’s Crystalline – and band founder Ollie Kristian, and the band spent a weekend at the Hornet Inc workshop in New York suffering for their considerable art to create many of the stopframe sequences (and have their fingers getting chopped off, be electrocuted, etc) before returning to London to shoot the rest. Then it took two months at Hornet to complete the animation and compositing.

The head explosion and rebuilding sequence created by Peter Sluszka in particular is a awesome gory masterpiece, but its just packed with all sorts of gorgeous-looking mayhem. Great stuff.

Moones
Better Energy
Director: Peter Sluszka
Prod co: Hornet Inc.
Executive Producer: Michael Feder
Written by: Ollie Kristian & Peter Sluszka
Producer: Joel Kretschman & Cathy Kwan
Editor: Anita Chao
Director of Photography: Ivan Abel
Sound Designer: Simon Capes
1st AC: Marcos Herrera, Nate Spengler
2nd AC: Josh Tyron
Gaffer: Michael Yetter
Best Boy: Jarrod Kloiber
Key Grip: Matt Walker, Jeremy Rodriguez
2nd Grip: Aaron Smith, Alexa Harris
Production Designer: Anthony Henderson
Set Design Exploration: Suzanne Porush
Fabricator(s): Connie Li Chan, Tim McDonald, Ben Kress, Ben Phelan, Pete Erickson, Nathan Asquith, Halsey Rodman
Animator(s): Kevin Coyle, Matt Somma, Chris Gilligan, Ellen Goldstein, Maxwell Sorensen, Matt Christensen, Peter Sluszka
Set Production Assistant(s): Brittany Summitt, Hannah Smith, Kathy Kretschman, Matt Menold
Lead Compositor: Yussef Cole
Compositors: Peter Fink, John Harrison
Colorist: Alan Gordon
2D Animators: Mike Luzzi, Connie Li Chan
Captain 1: George Schramm
Captain 2: Anthony Henderson
Corpse(s): Connie Li Chan, Joel Kretschman
Camera Equipment & Color Correction provided by NYLA HD
Special Thanks to Long Island Scuba