Winson Loh Shares His Passion for Stop Motion
Winson Loh, a Green River student and recognized stop motion filmmaker within the Youtube community, has been named winner of the Quarantine Film Festival sponsored by The Current.
For his winning entry, Loh received a $100 gift card.
Loh was born and raised in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, but first discovered his passion and talent for animation when he arrived in the U.S. back in 2015. He learned about stop motion from various YouTube channels, but ultimately discovered filmmaking when he watched the 2007 Micheal Bay film, Transformers.
“It was the first movie I watched in the theater and it turned out to be my favorite movie,” Loh said.
His passion for the Transformers series did not end when he left the theater that fateful day. He now tirelessly animates his own fan-made web series called “Transformers: Desperate Alliance” on his YouTube channel Drift Shotz 22. Each animated episode can take up to several months to complete. And whenever he makes a mistake, he has to reshoot the entire scene.
“It takes a lot of patience,” Loh said, “Sometimes it takes two hours to get two seconds.”
For his award winning film, “Kitchen Chaos: Car Showdown”, he decided to go in a different direction. Instead of animating every drift and spin of the toy cars, he used tools in After Effects and even attached thin strands of his sister’s hair to each car and pulled them along to make it seem as if they moved on their own.
“It was actually my sister’s hair because I thought it was kind of useful and really thin as well. I know that’s kind of odd…” Loh said.
Special thanks to the members of the selection committee who chose Loh’s video: College president Suzanne Johnson, videojournalism instructor Aaron Day, former editor-in-chief Dakota Farnsworth, and former managing editor Taylor Robertson.
Loh advises any new stop motion animators to be patient with their work and to know that the more small movements the characters make, the more smooth the final animation will look.
“It’s kind of amazing to see it move by itself. It’s kind of like the magic unfolding,” Loh said.
Loh currently has over 30,000 subscribers on his Youtube channel and some of his videos have up to one million views. He is currently working on a new animation that should be released within a few months of dedicated work.
We are also planning to host more film festivals by Fall 2020, so be sure to stay tuned for any updates on our website once the quarter begins.
Stay safe, Gators.
