About
Hello, I'm Marc. I've been making web sites for stop motion and clay animation since before the year 2000. This site has served the stop motion community for 14 years, helping people with tools, kits and tutorials. The online shop is also one way I fund our tutorial website Animate Clay, maintain our growing Discord community and this very page. It also contributes to my latest film project, /IMAGINE with Jen.
These sites are a direct result of the loyal customers (and friends) I've had since the beginning. I hope the items we offer help you on your stop motion or clay animation journey, like so many others!
Although my first official website was build in the year 2000, I began as a freelance sculptor, fabricator and puppet builder in the mid 1990's. I first worked at John Lemmon Films, creating clay on glass puppets and animation for the Cartoon Network. I also worked on Warner Brothers TV spots with Webster Colcord and others in Portland Oregon. Home of Will Vinton Productions. You can see some of that work in my old reel.
I am the only employee that works on the Stop Motion Store, but I have several long term partners who supply our helpful items. If you see something on our page, it's because it is a high quality and reliable product. I don't sell what I would not use myself on my own stop motion projects. That includes our armature kits as well as hot wire foam tools and more.
If you wonder who creates our affordable Bend-D's armature kits, those were designed and created by myself. I 3D print, trim and then partially assemble them before they get shipped.
Another one of my previous short films, Zombie Pirate Tales
The foundation of this site is now the Shopify platform, which is a major step up from our previous website. I've chosen Shopify since it offers shipping discounts for customers and is a win win for everyone.
When it comes to shipping, we have a really good success rate in packages arriving to their destinations. Maybe one in every 200 orders has a shipping issue. It's a track record I'm pretty proud of!
I also try my best to be environmentally friendly. Around Christmas time, I collect junk mail, wrapping paper and various packing materials from Amazon shipments we get. It is used to pack most orders and is a great way to recycle and save money at the same time.
With our video downloads, our success rate is a little less. Maybe one in every thirty customers run into a problem, usually because of slow internet connections. If you're about to buy a video tutorial keep in mind that the downloads may be large. If you do have a problem just let me know and I can give a few tips.
If you should have any questions or issues about anything, just use the contact form on this site.
I always reply to any business issues before any others, and most likely you'll hear back from me the same or next day.
Finally, if you create something amazing with our products, please send me some photos. I love to see what surprising things my customers come up with!
Happy animating!