The puppet stands only a few inches tall, but bringing it to life requires patience measured not in minutes but in fractions of an inch.
In Matt Eslinger’s small home studio, he leans over a miniature figure. His camera waits for the next frame. He adjusts a hand slightly and presses a Bluetooth controller.
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He then tilts the head a fraction of a degree.
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Next, Eslinger moves a finger barely enough for the human eye to notice.
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Hours later, those tiny adjustments will become a few seconds of animation. Days later, perhaps an entire scene.
For Eslinger, the painstaking process is the reason he fell in love with stop-motion in the first place. And at a time when artificial intelligence can generate videos in seconds and computer animation dominates Hollywood, he believes audiences are rediscovering something special about work created entirely by human hands.
“The medium is timeless,” he says.
That belief led Eslinger to leave a career in corporate information technology and build Skeleton Key, a Chattanooga stop-motion studio where puppets, miniature sets and handcrafted stories come to life one frame at a time. In the process, he’s found himself part of a broader resurgence of interest in stop-motion, a medium many people assume disappeared decades ago.
In reality, it never left.
Recent years have seen acclaimed stop-motion projects from filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, renewed interest from major studios and enormous anticipation surrounding upcoming productions such as “Wildwood,” which is set for an October release.
Meanwhile, some of the most beloved films and television specials in popular culture continue to rely on the same handcrafted techniques that captivated audiences generations ago.
Eslinger traces stop-motion’s enduring appeal back to legendary animator Ray Harryhausen, whose creatures in films such as “Jason and the Argonauts” (1963) and “Clash of the Titans” (1981) helped define the art form, and forward to classics such as “The Nightmare Before Christmas” (1993) and “Isle of Dogs (2018).
“You could watch ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ with your kids today and it would still be just as good,” Eslinger says, referring to the 1964 TV movie. “Stop-motion animation transcends generations. Early CGI, in movies like ‘The Lawnmower Man,’ looks dated, but ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ will look good 100 years from now.”
A different path
Eslinger never set out to become a full-time animator. A Chattanooga native and graduate of Soddy Daisy High School, he spent roughly 25 years working in information technology after earning a degree in computer networking and programming.
Throughout those years, however, creative pursuits remained a constant presence. Eslinger drew, played music and immersed himself in visual art. During high school, he developed a fascination with the work of Salvador Dalí and René Magritte.
“I went through a deep surrealist phase,” Eslinger says. “Creativity has always been part of who I am. I’ve always felt drawn to making things.”
The path toward animation began unexpectedly.
In 2011, Eslinger composed a piece of chamber music as a gift for a friend’s newborn child. Discussions about pairing animation with the music followed, but the idea remained dormant for years.
Around 2017, he revisited the concept.
What started as a single creative project gradually became a passion. By 2025, after years of balancing animation work alongside his corporate career, Eslinger faced a decision.
“The corporate world was starting to burn me out, and I realized, ‘I have roughly 20 years left in the workforce. If I’m going to do animation, now is the time. I’m going to do what I want to do.’”
Building a workshop
Today, Eslinger’s operation is equal parts studio, workshop and family business.
The process begins with an armature, the metal skeleton hidden inside every puppet. Eslinger assembles many of them himself, building the internal structures that allow characters to move frame by frame.
From there, the project becomes collaborative.
Christopher Nash, a longtime friend and fellow Soddy Daisy High School graduate, handles sculpting and painting many of the heads. Keri Thomas, costume manager at the Chattanooga Theatre Centre and Eslinger’s sister-in-law, creates the wardrobes. Eslinger’s partner, Elizabeth Thomas, contributes to puppet construction. Even his children have provided voice work.
The resulting puppets are remarkable objects in their own right.
One attorney puppet, whom Eslinger has dubbed J.W. Bible, resembles a disheveled late-night cable TV lawyer. Another extraterrestrial character sports detailed weaponry and an expressive face. A hotdog cowboy created for a music video comes with interchangeable mouths designed to form different syllables.
The craftsmanship is meticulous, requiring Nash, Thomas and Eslinger to contribute their specialized skills before a puppet ever appears on camera. As a result, what began as Eslinger’s solo creative pursuit has evolved into a collaborative workshop where each figure reflects the talents of multiple artists.
The value of human hands
As generative AI becomes increasingly capable of creating images, videos and even animation, Eslinger sees stop-motion becoming more relevant rather than less.
His reasoning is simple: People value knowing another person created what they’re seeing.
“I think people want to see that handmade factor,” Eslinger says. “Maybe part of it is sentimentality. But in an age of generative AI, there’s value in knowing what you’re watching was made by human hands. It’s like a Rolls-Royce – you’re willing to pay more because you know everything was hand-stitched.”
He points to moments in contemporary stop-motion productions where every tiny detail is animated manually.
In the trailer for “Wildwood,” feathers ripple in the wind as a character flies atop an eagle. Viewers might not consciously recognize the labor involved, but Eslinger does.
“Someone animated every one of those feathers by hand,” Eslinger said. “I think people appreciate knowing that.”
The same philosophy extends to imperfections. Many animators attempt to hide evidence of the human hand, but Eslinger embraces it.
He says he loves the thumbprints animators left on Kong in the 1933 classic “King Kong” and the slight movement of fur in films such as Wes Anderson’s “Isle of Dogs” – subtle imperfections that reveal the human hand at work.
“It’s like seeing a fingerprint,” he says. “It’s a small imperfection, but not a flaw. It’s proof that a person was there.”
Creating worlds in a sunroom
Despite the complexity of the work, Eslinger’s studio remains surprisingly modest. His primary workspace occupies an approximately 11-by-11-foot section of a sunroom at home.
“We’re a DIY shop right now,” Eslinger says. Holding his hand palm down about eight inches above the table, he adds, “My actors are this tall. We don’t need a massive soundstage.”
A puppet only a few inches high can become the star of an entire universe.
Using a Canon DSLR camera connected to industry-standard Dragonframe software, Eslinger photographs one frame at a time. He typically shoots at 12 frames per second, every movement carefully considered.
“The trick to stop-motion is making things look like they have weight,” Eslinger says. “If I have a character tossing and catching a ball, the ball is attached to an armature wire. The challenge is making the catch feel believable.”
The learning process involved years of experimentation. One early lesson came during production of a music video for Chattanooga band The Bohannons.
A scene featuring a wizard floating through clouds appeared promising during production. After spending roughly two and a half hours animating it, Eslinger reviewed the footage and discovered the lighting flickered throughout the shot.
When he showed the footage to his partner, she didn’t sugarcoat her reaction.
“You can do better,” she told him.
Eslinger spent another two and a half hours reworking the sequence, this time keeping the light fixed on the cloud throughout the shot. The difference was obvious. It looked much better. That’s what’s in the video.”
Beyond technical skill
For Eslinger, animation is more about emotion than technique. One of his favorite moments appears in a music video for musician Sean Lucy’s song “Cinnamon Toast Crunch.”
In the scene, a bear wearing overalls looks at a photograph and sighs. The animation lasts only a few frames, yet it remains one of the pieces of work Eslinger is proudest of.
“There’s a sadness to it, maybe even a little melancholy,” he says.
Asked whether he’d rather hear viewers praise the realism of the animation or empathize with the character’s emotions, Eslinger answers without hesitation.
“I’d rather someone see sadness because that means they’re feeling something,” Eslinger says. “I’d rather make someone feel something than impress them technically.”
Growing a Chattanooga animation community
While Eslinger continues producing music videos and commercial projects, education has become an increasingly important part of his mission.
He teaches stop-motion classes through The Chattery and is exploring additional partnerships that could make instruction available to the public at no cost.
The goal is simple: introduce more people to an art form he believes remains as powerful today as it was decades ago.
His commercial work continues to expand as well. Current projects include a series of animated videos for the Chattanooga Public Library’s 50th anniversary. Past clients have included local bands, restaurants and organizations.
One recent milestone arrived with news that a music video for Chattanooga band Red Pawn had been accepted into the 2026 Chattanooga Film Festival’s “CFF Salutes Your Shorts” category.
The recognition reflects years of work that began as a side project in a corporate office. It also reinforces Eslinger’s belief that stop-motion is entering a new chapter.
“We’re in the middle of a stop-motion renaissance,” he says.
As technology becomes increasingly automated, Eslinger believes audiences will continue searching for evidence of the human hand. The appeal is authenticity.
“When viewers watch a marionette performance, they can see the strings,” he says. “When they watch the Muppets, they know the puppeteers are hidden beneath the stage. Yet they willingly suspend disbelief because they connect with the characters.”
Eslinger sees stop-motion the same way. The thumbprints are visible, the imperfections remain and the artist’s hand is impossible to erase.
And that’s exactly why the medium endures.