We went Western last week for a duel between two talented stop-motion artists.
Since Viners Alicia Herber and Tee Ken Ng were in town, we invited them to stop by Mashable HQ. Little did they know what we had in store for them.
As they walked in, we handed them cowboy hats with no explanation. We led them upstairs to our roof, and briefly explained the concept of our video: a speed Vine duel. Then we filmed their game faces.
Back in our Vine studio, we gave Ng and Herber a handful of random materials — patterned paper, Mashable poker chips, fish bowl gravel, sticky tack and scissors. With 30 minutes on the clock, they began crafting their animations.
Watch the video above to see how the duel went down.
Ng, a graphic designer based in Australia, specializes in “surreal and illusionistic” stop-motion. He’s been on Vine since the app first launched.
“What got me hooked were the limitations Vine imposed on the recording process,” he says. “It all had to be made in-app without uploading from your camera roll, which forced you to think creatively and then it became this epic challenge. The more time I spent with Vine seeing what others were doing with it, I quickly realized that it was developing into its own unique art form.”
Herber’s Vine followers know her as an artist who dabbles in different styles — food art, cats in costumes, hand-drawn animations. “I love unconventional materials and I’ll try to figure out a way to animate with just about anything,” she told Mashable.
Herber was also on Vine in the early days — back when there was no option to save drafts, use the ghost mode or lock the camera’s focus.
“It was a bit trickier and a lot more stressful, but I liked that I couldn’t obsess and finesse things,” she said. “It was almost like a sketchbook back then.”
Two years later, she’s producing shorts for brands. Her profession overlapping with her passion is “like winning the happiness lottery,” Herber says.
Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.
