ANIMATION

Pumpkin Carving | Halloween Claymation Special

In October 2025, I wanted to create something special for this halloween and after completing my professional course with Aardman Academy, there was one skill I wanted to improve on. That was modelling and animating with clay/plasticine.

This was such a perfect opportunity to make an animation! Therefore, I had just under 3 weeks to put the concept and production together, before the day of halloween. Using the modelling from ‘Hue-Animation’, I started forming my pumpkin models, using a bit of tin-foil as it’s inner-skeleton and applying the clay, the character took shape very quickly. Alongside adding some replacement pumpkin shapes, to show the exaggerated movements.

Additionally, I made a clay knife for the carving sequences. To really sell the metallic look to the blade. I consistently used baby wipes to clean and a shine to the plasticine.

Finally, after some new techniques I learnt in character animation, from Aardman Academy, presenting more exaggerated/cartoonish movements. I am extremely happy with the animation’s final look. All finished on time for a ‘Spooky Halloween!’

REHEARSAL

ANIMATION

Aardman Academy | In-Studio Professional Course

In September - October 2025, I was accepted into Aardman Academy’s In-Studio Stop-Motion Professional course. This is where I learnt from the professional in the industry character animation for 5 weeks.

In that time, I was tested to my professional ability to animated a character in a variety of scenarios, including; Walking up ramps, picking up heavy objects, comedy, lip-syncing audio and finally animating a dance sequence. All of these, were essential to understanding body language and the industry standard to making a character feel alive!

I worked with bunch of amazing people to polishing my skills as an animator and from my showreel, I achieved that and has been one of the best experience I have ever gotten to do in my career so far!

Thomas West, posing next to Will Becher and Amy Upchurch for Thomas's Graduation day from Aardman Academy's Professional Course.
A running animated character with a stylized human appearance, wearing a gray sweatshirt, navy blue track pants with white stripes, and white sneakers with red accents, on a plain light-colored background.
A stylized animated character with dark hair, glasses, and a gray sweatshirt holding a large parcel.
Computer screen displaying a 3D animated character with spiky black hair, holding papers, dressed in a white shirt, dark pants with white stripes, and white sneakers with red stripes.
A puppet with brown hair and big eyes, standing amidst green bushes with a blue sky background, with the text "Coming Soon to YouTube" at the bottom.

FETCH!

Just a beautiful day, where one man is playing fetch with his not so ordinary pet [______]…

(COMPLETE SHORT FILM WILL BE RELEASED IN 2026)

A Short Story Created During Aardman Academy - Stop-Motion 2 Course (2025)

Animated & Directed by Thomas West

Thomas West working on creating the puppet's head from 'Fetch!' (Second View)
A puppet character with brown yarn hair, a beige face, and expressive eyes. Wearing a black turtleneck sweater, blue jeans, and orange shoes, standing on a grassy surface with a backdrop of a blue sky with clouds and green hills.
A handmade fabric and wood doll with a large head, dressed in blue jeans and beige shoes, standing on a table surrounded by art supplies and sketches.
Miniature scene with a puppet figure waving, set on a platform covered with artificial grass, with a background mural of clouds and hills, and small trees made of foam or similar materials.

Aardman Academy |
Stop-Motion 2 Course

In February - April 2025, I was accepted into Aardman Academy’s ‘Online’ Stop-motion 2 course. This is where I re-learnt the complex fundamentals to character animation techniques and insightful knowledge from the professionals for 12 weeks. The course consisted of weekly tasks, special online lectures, 1-1 meetings and feedback sessions. I used those weeks, to showcase my current skill-set and Aardman Academy helped be improved them.

In the final 2 weeks, I was tasked to either create a final animation showing off all the skills that I’ve learnt or compile a show-reel for everything we learnt in the past 12 weeks. I want to take that a step further and completely create a short animation film, not only using all the skills in animating a character, but also hand-crafting my own fully-posable puppet. As well as a hand-made set and story.

In just under 2 weeks, I was able to make a 1 minute short film, titled: Fetch!

You can see more details about this animation above. ⬆️

Puppet | A Stop-Motion Short Film

Date created:
29/05/2021

Animated By:
Thomas West

A stop-motion animated film about a hand-crafted armature puppet miraculously brought to life by his animator using a bottle of magic glue!

The puppet discovers a passion to play a guitar that is displayed across the room, but with only a short amount of time, he must undertake a journey to achieve his dream.

A wooden mannequin doll sitting on a black case, holding a miniature guitar. The scene is set on a textured surface with various small objects around, including a miniature music stand on the right.
Artistic setup on a wooden table including a camera on a tripod, a wooden articulated artist mannequin, various art and craft supplies, and a small doll with a round head and black hair in the background.

Production History:
Puppet was a small passion project idea, that was original in the back-burner due to my time at University. However, in my final year, we were tasked to make a final project using any media type and I jumped straight-in to bring this animation to life.

With only a month to create the full production pipeline for this project, I organised multiple story outline that would show the beauty of the puppet’s unique character and the world he was brought into. Each week leading up to the final submission, I executed the story-outline, concept-art, storyboards, blocking, animating, re-shoots and editing.

The biggest challenge was only having under 2 weeks to animate the full short, yet it came out beautifully. Getting to incorporate complex emotions with minimal facial expressions, improvising a green-screen by using just a green folding-mat, I managed to finished it on time and it even got me to complete university with BA honours diploma.

Sketch of a robot character in various poses and angles, with labels such as 'Camera Lens', 'Lens POV', 'Sling', and 'thinking'. The sketch includes detailed drawings of the robot's head, body, and limbs, along with a camera illustration and handwritten notes.
Inside a small room, a camera setup with lighting equipment pointing at a green screen backdrop. There is a desk with craft supplies and a small doll mannequin in a running pose on a green platform, as part of a setup for video or photo recording.

After University:
With some extra time after university, I gave the short film a little more polishing with adding more foley-sounds, and better music, and some credits at the end to give thanks to everyone that supported my work.

I was then eager to get more eyes on this animation, therefore, I reached out to various film festivals and lucky the film got to be featured in at least 4 festivals, which only grew the films popularity. Most notably featured at ‘APEX Film Awards and Film-Bath Festival’.

After some time, I was then able to publish ‘Puppet’ onto my YouTube channel. Even after over 1 year being on my channel, it is still attracting new viewers with currently over 6,100 views!