Brett Long
Animator/Filmmaker

I’m an animator by trade, but operate as a filmmaker obsessed with the language of movement. I’ve had the opportunity to work on projects like Robot Chicken, Shape Island, and Mickey Mouse: Trick or Treats, but I still find my deepest inspiration in the laboratory of my own studio – often just animating on my desk in a corner of my room. For me, stop-motion is a place where I can exert total control—from the tools I use, like home-built lights and DIY setups, to the way I order every single frame to create movement. While most people see this as a tedious job, it has become my meditative state; it’s where I’m able to channel my energy directly into motion. I have a performance-driven soul with a technical, analytical obsession, and I love pushing the boundaries of the medium—whether it was developing a stop-motion 360/VR project or my current experiments getting my multiplane glass dirty. I use those technical tools to build immersive landscapes, with the goal to find the heartbeat of the story.

How did you first become interested in art?
It really started with a video camera being a forbidden object. I was always too young to hold the family camcorder, and for years, no one would let me. That ‘scarcity effect’ only made me more obsessed. I’d always loved to draw as a kid, but cameras were what really bopped that curiosity button. When I finally got my hands on the camcorder in the early 90s, I just wanted to know what every single button did. I’d spend hours zooming in and out or turning the camera upside down to see the world flip, which drove my mother furious but completely twisted my brain in the best way.

Back then, the viewfinders were all black and white. I remember my mom being disappointed that she couldn’t see how colorful her garden was, but I thought it was incredibly cool to see it in a monochromatic world. Eventually, I started faking being sick just so I could stay home and make these early ‘British-trick films’ with my siblings. I realized there was a real connection when I could make an audience laugh or see something differently, and that was the moment I moved on from pencils; I was hooked on what I could capture and manipulate through a lens.

How does art enrich a community?
I like to think of us human beings populating earth just like bacteria. We all have different interests and skillsets, and the way we work with one another builds up into this giant living organism on a rock. Artists are the vibrant heartbeat of the community; the ones who carry color and movement into every dark corner of the city. Art repairs, restores, and revitalizes growth; it is the essential micro-culture that keeps the whole organism healthy. It provides the immune system that allows a community to maintain its identity even as the world around it changes.

That’s why it’s a little concerning to see what happens when the artists are pushed out of cities by the rising costs of living. I lived through this in Toronto, in a massive building that was a thriving hub for artists until it was eventually torn down to make way for condos. When you erase those spaces and lose the artists, you lose the very thing that keeps the community’s ecosystem healthy.

If you could share with our community one thing about art or your creative process, what would it be?
My process is deeply sculptural. I’ve always felt more like a sculptor than any other type of artist because I work in an additive and subtractive way. When I’m animating frame-by-frame, I’m ‘working it out’ in real-time, just like chipping away at clay. Even lighting a set feels like sculpting to me; you are essentially caressing an object into a specific form by adding or subtracting light.

Lately, that ‘sculpting’ has extended to my environment. As the stop-motion industry has faced a slower period, many of us are having to rethink how we move forward with our craft. For me, that meant looking at the hurdle of shrinking physical space and turning it into a playground for innovation. I’ve become obsessed with making stop-motion more accessible and mobile—proving that you don’t need a massive soundstage to create a world.

This shift led to some of my favorite recent discoveries, like ‘The 26 Letters of the Alphabet’ project. Collaborating with so many talented artists in the area was a reminder that even when the industry slows, the pulse of the community doesn’t. Whether I’m reverse-engineering new tech for a 360/VR short or teaching private classes to show others how to animate in their own ‘tight spaces,’ my goal is to show that this medium is as resilient as the people who make it.

To find out more about Brett and his work, follow him on Instagram @alphabrette, watch his demo reel here, or visit his website at vrstopmotion.com