What is the film about?

The story of a good girl with a bad heart, and the boy whose death will save her life.

A darkly whimsical tale of adventure, romance, and open-heart surgery, ‘I Have Your Heart’ is a short stopmotion animation handcrafted from intricate paper puppets. Crowdfunded through Kickstarter, the film is a collaboration between illustrator Molly Crabapple, musician Kim Boekbinder, and animator Jim Batt.

What influenced it?

The biggest single influence on the project would have to be the beautiful paper puppet animations of Jamie Caliri. His animated title sequence for the Lemony Snicket film was one of my original inspirations, along with Tim Hope’s insanely awesome short film ‘I Am The Wolfman’.

A little background information...

This was a project that stretched from New York City to Melbourne, Australia. With the team split between two hemispheres and numerous continents, the project was born on the internet and made possible through the connective powers of twitter, email, kickstarter, blogs, skype and more. Molly and Kim were already frequent collaborators, combining their art and music to great effect. Jim saw via twitter they were looking for an animator and the three of us joined forces to form the creative powerhouse of Crabapple, Boekbinder, & Batt!

How was the film made?

Making this film was a long and detailed process. The characters and scene elements were hand drawn by Molly Crabapple, then scanned and photoshopped into layouts for moveable puppets, props, and scenery. These were printed on a thick paper stock, cut out by hand, and crafted into freestanding characters and sets. This paper world was then brought to life frame by frame with stopmotion animation by Jim Batt, using a trusty Canon 7D and Dragonframe software. Kim Boekbinder created an extended version of her song ‘The Organ Donor’s March’ to score the finished film.