@zealouscreative

The making of The Maker stop motion animation. @amandalouisespayd #filmmaking #filmcrew #creative #puppet #inspiration #kezelos

♬ original sound – Zealous Creative

We discovered the work of an amazing artist called Amanda Louise Spayd who creates whimsical and enchanting dolls. It was love at first sight and we wanted to bring them to life.

We also have a friend, Paul Halley, who’s a brilliant self-taught classical music composer. He was having trouble reaching an audience online—which was honestly a crime. Did I mention he’s also a dentist? He’s basically a genius.

But we would only move forward with a follow-up animation if we could tell a story within these parameters.

    • The story had to be around 5-minutes long (zero’s runtime was 12 minutes)
    • The story had to have 1 set (Zero had 15 sets)
    • We had to have a maximum of 2 characters (Zero had dozens)
    • And no walking characters – because they’re time-consuming and hard to do

So the film’s director, Christopher Kezelos, along with his other dentist friend, Ziad Jamal (also a genius), nailed the script idea for The Maker over a garlicky lunch while eating at their favourite Portuguese chicken shop.

OK so the people were in place, the story locked in, and parameters met, we were ready to dive back into our next stop motion animation.

Many of the original crew from Zero returned along with some new faces. And like with our Zero film, we took over Christopher’s parent’s house for the production.

After 6 months of work, with a crew of 28, the film was completed. And we managed to make our own little maker as well.

The Maker received 26 international film festival awards, was nominated for an Australian Academy Award, and has been viewed over 14M times online.

Due to the success of the film, we created a follow-up novel called The Magnum Opus that expands upon the world of The Makers.