We produced the pilot film for “HIDARI,” the first feature to be directed by Whatever CCO Masashi Kawamura, who also created the original story and screenplay, together with Dwarf Studios and TECARAT, a top-tier animation team that supports the global stop-motion industry. “HIDARI” is a stop-motion period drama that boldly reimagines the story of the legendary Edo-period sculptor Jingoro Hidari, a figure with many surviving works and anecdotes but whose actual existence remains uncertain, weaving it together with historical facts from the Edo period. It is depicted using puppets carved from wood, just like the works of Jingoro Hidari himself. As with the many legends surrounding Hidari, the film brings “wooden dolls to life” through frame-by-frame animation. Please take a look at this unprecedented visual experience, which daringly blends the dynamic action of Japanimation with the analog world of stop-motion.

業務用刺繍機を使用したモーショングラフィックス。制作プロセスは、モーショングラフィックスを作成→刺繍機用デザインデータとして、コマで出力→刺繍したロゴでのストップモーション撮影→コンポジットの流れで作成。

アーティスト村上隆の「フラワー」のアートワークフィーチャーしたshu uemuraのクリスマス限定コレクションの発売に合わせたスペシャルムービーを企画プロデュース。コンセプトは、Tokyo Wrapping。主人公の女性と、球体のドローンキャラクターが、寝静まった 東京の街を、縦横無尽に飛び回りながら、村上のアートをあしらったリボンをかけて東京にラッピングをしていくというストーリー。村上氏本人もカメオ出演で登場した。カメラのシャッタースピードを遅くした状態で明かりを動かして軌跡を描くライト・ペインティングの手法をもとに、ピクセルスティックという機材を使って制作。スティックを動かすダンサー達のエレガントかつ躍動感溢れる動きによって、東京の街にリボンがかけられる様子を描いた。映像監督は、クリエイティブシーンにおいて最も注目を集めるビジュアリストのひとり、伊東玄己。村上隆のアートからくるインスピレーションをもとに、伊東の美意識と、JKD Collectiveによる化学反応が生んだブランドムービー。

A “place of rest” that exists only in the heart, expressed through stop-motion art. Created for fashion designer ohta’s collection.

Thank you for watching. ◻︎Concept / Overview From an everyday life that feels somehow cramped and hard to breathe, to a daydream world of my own where I can breathe a little easier. I didn’t really find anything I was looking for, and yet my heart felt full, and it seemed like I caught a glimpse of a tiny ray of hope. …This kind of inner landscape is expressed through hand-made stop-motion (pixilation). By spending time filming analog-style in the creator’s hometown, I wanted to capture the atmosphere of the city, the gentle sunlight, and the soft breeze— things that cannot be fully conveyed by AI works generated in an instant— and bring into the film that somewhat nostalgic feeling that exists in everyone’s heart. While calculating changes in the weather and the timing of the sunset, filming frame by frame was challenging, but through dialogue with nature, I was able to rediscover the joy of creating as a human being. This work is an independently produced original short film. Including the preparation period, it took about five months to complete (October 2025 to February 2026). A lyric-driven MV version is also currently in production. I also post short videos on Instagram, so please check them out if you’re interested. Instagram: @New age ESPer Thank you very much!

Description: A bird wanders through the forest, continuing to search for precious memories. Before long, it gets lost in a mysterious world inside a tree hollow. There, it finds a strangely shaped dead tree. On that tree, the bird begins fishing toward the sky, trying to catch a star where memories sleep. Using its own feathers as bait... The finite body, and the world of memories and imagination, invisible to the eye yet holding infinitely expanding possibilities. Which, after all, is more important? The work is expressed through special stop-motion techniques, including puppetry, flat sand art, and casting paint shadows onto washi paper. Production began independently in 2016. After editing, it was completed in 2025.

A stage actress’s love. Stop-motion animation

In this work, built around a new song by Phantom Siita, I sought to foreground the group’s aesthetic beauty and darkness while using Le Fanu’s vampire tale Carmilla as a motif, creating a world that unfolds like a Gothic short film. I had long thought that I wanted to make a vampire film at least once in my lifetime, and when I saw “Carmilla” written in a note from producer Ado, I was extremely excited. Among films based on Carmilla, Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr is one of my all-time favorites, and throughout this production I also kept thinking about the ashen, anemic pallor of Isabelle Adjani and Klaus Kinski in Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu, another vampire film. The setting is an old mansion that appears on a night of the full moon. Through the process of the girl Heine wandering into the mansion and getting swept up in the Phantom Siita’s—vampires’—festival, the film hints at an unnameable emotional wavering that cannot be clearly defined as romance, dependence, or illness. Visually, while drawing on European Gothic sensibilities and the decadent atmosphere of filmmakers such as Daniel Schmid, I aimed for a textured expression that combines live action and analog collage to depict “illness ≠ love.” That emotion is strictly not equal; here, I do not present it in an easy-to-understand way as “love is an illness.” By portraying, on the same plane, emotions that cannot be labeled—“I love you, I’m drawn to you, I want to hold on to you but I don’t want to, I want to run away, I want to live, I want to die, and I don’t want to die either”—alongside a body that grows weaker and more exhausted, I tried to express that this ungraspable feeling is real. As for the collage, rather than shooting against a green screen, we filmed in a studio filled with vintage props and similar items. Because the relationship between space and the people within it was necessary, and because collage needed to draw out that magnetic field in order to create a distortion of reality, I have lately tried to avoid using green screen as much as possible. By dismantling those elements, I wanted to portray a blurred consciousness and memory shaped by the dislocation of time and space. As for the collage method itself, we would print out live-action frames that had been shot and create animation while rearranging them, and even before shooting there were times when fragments of blurred consciousness, the mansion, or parts of scenes were assembled into analog collages.

Direction, cinematography, editing, art production, and more are all included. He is skilled at creating a fantastical, aesthetic world.

This is a promotional video for “Jam de Night,” an event where creators from different fields come together and mingle. Using stop-motion with items such as novelty jam jars, it builds a handcrafted visual world. It depicts, in a pop and humorous way, the delight of different colors and shapes overlapping and blending together. The video directly captures the event’s jam-like, free-flowing atmosphere.

At eight years old, Yong lives with anxiety and questions about parting with her pet cat Kiku, as well as about keeping Kiku confined in a narrow human home. Yong’s mother takes her to a house in the woods to view a new home… A reflection on childhood memories of growing up with cats, and on the lives of creatures that continue to seek a comfortable place to live.

A music video focusing on “Soap,” one of the original characters from Yokomizo Yuri’s “Nandemo Ikimono” series. Filmed in a real public bath, it combines stop-motion and animation. Centered on the feeling that “bathing is fun!”, the video creates a playful space surrounded by steam and the sound of water. By giving each soap slightly different movements, it produces the charm and rhythm unique to a large crowd, while also weaving in the fragility of how soap gets smaller with use and eventually disappears, resulting in a video that leaves a gentle afterglow.

We produced this clay animation PV for Locipo, the catch-up streaming service for a commercial TV program in the Tokai region.

A stop-motion piece created as the music video for Shijin × DJ DOLBEE’s “Now Here.” Using a variety of motifs and techniques such as clay, dolls, cut paper, and shadow puppetry, it expresses the ever-changing present.

A social media ad video for “NIVEA Cream Care Body Wash W Rich Moisture.” Miniatures of autumn-related items are playfully and slightly surrealistically arranged to spark interest in the product.

Graduation work, 2020, Division of Animation, Graduate School of Film and New Media, Tokyo University of the Arts Three motifs, each in its own way. They are so different from one another that they even give rise to self-doubt. But once the melody begins, the musical motif can’t hold itself back and starts to dance, and the other motifs follow suit... Could it be that “I” am also a motif?

Description: In the previous work, “ONE another,” while Optimus Prime and Megatron were battling inside a robotic vacuum cleaner, at the very same time, the room itself was also thrown into chaos by the runaway vacuum cleanerーーー. A crisis looms over all the Studio Series figures lined up on the shelf! Released in 2025, this film came out in the memorable year marking the 40th anniversary of Transformers’ arrival in Japan. It is an original story that incorporates many elements from 40 years of Transformers history and a wide range of previous visual works. All Studio Series Transformers are lined up on a shelf based on blue, the brand color of Studio Series. It became a rare opportunity for characters from across the history of Transformers movies and animation to gather in one place. We also paid film-level attention to every detail of the music and sound effects. Please take a look at their 40-year history that goes beyond what meets the eye. For the first part, “ONE another,” a story that unfolds on the same timeline as “WE ARE NOT ALONE,” please see here 🔻 https://eizo100.jp/video/90484