Lee Hardcastle is a British animator who specialises in stop-motion techniques. He is famous for his handmade independent animations. His work includes original remakes of emblematic 1980s action and horror films, as well as parodies of animated series and video clips. His work is known for its violent and gory content.
Biography
Lee Hardcastle was born in Leeds, United Kingdom. His love of cinema began when he was a teenager, and when he was eighteen years old he decided to study cinema in the Northern Film School of Leeds Beckett University. After graduating in 2006, he began his artistic work. At first, he worked with action figures instead of clay. He also combined stop-motion with live-action in the 2014 video Game Boy: The Movie. Usually, he uses clay for his works. Hardcastle founded Missing Head Limited, and on 13 July 2006 started a YouTube channel with the Dead Corps series of videos. His popularity increased in 2011, when T is for Toilet was selected to be in the film The ABCs of Death. He has worked with many companies including Momentum Pictures, 20th Century Fox, and Adult Swim, and has also worked with notable artists such as Sufjan Stevens. In 2014, he published the projectSpook Train in the crowdfunding portal Kickstarter. It was declared "the first claysploitation movie in the world". He did not reach his objective of £40,000 and left the project temporarily, until changing his mind later and coming back to it. The first chapter of the film was released on YouTube in September, 2018. Hardcastle played drums in the hardcore-punk band Shit the Bed, and made music videos for the band.
Influences
Hardcastle enjoys the works of filmmakers Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez and Sam Raimi, and animated series The Simpsons and Family Guy. He affirms that he decided to create animations using clay after he watched Comet Quest, Wallace and Gromit and Celebrity Deathmatch. He has sometimes cited John Carpenter's The Thing as his favourite horror film, and as one of the most important inspirations for his works.
Filmography
Awards and nominations
His short film was chosen as the best short film inside the anthology The ABCs of Death.
