“Of Cat & Creature” is a 2015 sci-fi and horror award-winning stop-motion animated short film that I created in February. The film tells the story of an inventor, who happens to be a cat with a mustache, who is having difficulty keeping a wild beast locked up in his lab, until one night, when the monster breaks out and goes on a rampage throughout the house.

I created the character of Cat with a ‘Stache (the inventor in the film) one night when playing around with some clay. Shortly after, I began to write a film idea I could use him in, about a scientist who has to try and stop a monster he created. I took out some elements of the idea here and there, such as a part where he builds a laser and chases the monster around the house and a part where the monster would go and attack a small town, for several reasons, usually because of the story and the time I had to work on the project.

The film uses clay animation, a form of stop motion animation, where I built clay puppets with a wire armature (a sort of stop motion puppet skeleton) inside and animated them frame by frame to give the illusion of movement. The process is quite time-consuming, as I could only get a few seconds worth of footage a day, but after about three weeks of filming and editing, the final product was complete.

I found that the film was quite popular among those I showed it too, undeniably my best film yet. I eventually would enter it into two teen film festivals, in which both had my film screened in front of an entire audience. The first was The Lovett High School Film Fest in May where it was nominated for Best U.S. Animation and was one of 18 films chosen to be screened out of 200 submitted worldwide. The second was the Smells Like Teen Film Fest at the Woodruff Arts Center in June where it was one of 10 films chosen out of around 30 submitted worldwide and won an Official Selection award. I am more than proud of the film’s positive reaction and have plans to make at least 6 more stop-motion films before I graduate high school including two sequels to “Of Cat & Creature.” I hope you enjoy my film and keep a look out for more of my projects coming soon!