One of my early animation influences was Alice by Jan Svankmajer. I first saw Alice when I was an impressionable 19 year old art student. It contained so many of the things that I loved and introduced me to so much more. The combination of deteriorating taxidermy, strange sock caterpillars in an old pealing house, mysterious substances in jars and so much more with the story of Alice in Wonderland set me on the path I am still traveling. That film is what opened my eyes to the magic of stop motion animation and inspired me to take an animation class and make my first short animated film, Blood and Sunflowers.
Here is a clip of Alice that I found on YouTube that has been set to the music of Múm (not original to the movie):
To learn more about Jan Svankmajer go to his website here:
http://www.jansvankmajer.com/index.html
Blood and Sunflowers on YouTube:
Christiane Cegavske 