Until today, I didn’t know there was any such thing as a GI Joe Stop-Motion Festival. My life has now been greatly improved. The festival has been around since 2005, thanks to Gio Toninelo who made it “to celebrate the dying art form of stop-motion while paying tribute to America’s favorite movable fighting man: the G.I. Joe Action Figure (or Action Man in UK).”
The result looks like a fun, gory, love letter to anyone who ever enjoyed stop-motion or spent an afternoon playing in the backyard with their action figures.
If you are a master of stop-motion with your very own GI Joe collection, check out what you need to do to enter into the festival yourself:
1- Your film MUST be shot using stop-motion technique. Puppetry, wires and live action could also be used as long as it does not comprise 30% of the entire film.
2- Your main character MUST be an official G.I. Joe action figure, created by Hasbro, Inc. or an Action Man figure, created by Palitoy. Other licensed figures are also accepted, like “Comandos em Acao” and “Falcon” (BRAZIL) or “Commandos Heroicos” (MEXICO). Other action figures, dolls and toys can be used for supporting roles.