“Hello Stop Mo” Podcast Increases Accessibility in Educating Stop Motion Newbies

Alumna and Adjunct Professor, Casey Follen (‘15, Entertainment Arts), co-creates a podcast with art director, designer and illustrator, Alexis Deprey, dedicated to educating listeners on getting started in the Stop Motion industry.

“Hello Stop Mo” is a limited series podcast with 14 episodes that focuses on both traditional and non-traditional education paths to learning stop motion animation, the history of the medium and how that relates to technological advancements, what it’s like to work in a studio, different roles and departments, how to network and build relationships in the animation industry, managing a career in stop motion, and how the future of stop motion is being shaped.

“The Hello Stop Mo podcast is a free, widely available repository of resources to help anyone interested in getting into stop-motion learn how to do so, and it’s a great supplemental resource for existing animation education programs,” Follen says.

The two are also joined by guests Musa Brooker, director, animator, writer, producer, and professor, who discusses educational paths—and Seamus Walsh, a stop motion animator, director, and studio owner, who also lends his expertise in the stop motion history episodes. 

The idea for the podcast came after the two created Animation Wild Card (AWC) with friends from Apartment D Films when the entertainment industry took a pause in March 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. AWC was a way to support the work of those creating independent animation. Contributors from all over the world submitted animated shorts that were then curated into episodes for distribution on Instagram and YouTube. It was the community that was built through AWC that sparked the idea for the “Hello Stop Mo” podcast.