Suzie Templeton's "Peter and the Wolf"

The video embedded above is a brief excerpt from Suzie Templeton's Peter and the Wolf, which won the Academy Award for Best (animated) Short Film in 2008.

The puppets are made with traditional ball and socket and wire armatures in foam latex bodies. The animal fur is ordinary fake fur expertly laid in small pieces onto the bodies. The human hair is various types of animal hair such as llama wool. The human skin is made of silicone. The clothes are made of real cloth.

The eyes are very important to me to convey emotion. The eyes in both Dog and Peter and the Wolf are ordinary painted plastic beads. I use glycerine to make the eye surface wet and sometimes animate the glycerine itself. But mainly the illusion of life is achieved by subtle movements and acting

This is a lighthearted treatment of a familiar subject. For a darker view of the world, see the Dog video below.

Found at Neatorama's Upcoming Queue.

Addendum: I originally posted the above in March, and now after several months I finally managed to view the film itself. It is as excellent and as entrancing as the YouTube excerpt would suggest. I probably should modify my original comment (based on viewing the video) that this is a "lighthearted" treatment of the subject; it is a bit dark, but not depressingly so. The setting for Peter's encounter with the wolf has been moved from imperial Russia to modern Russia, which makes an interesting contrast to traditional presentations. The end of the story differs from that typically presented at children's Saturday concerts or the Disney film versions. Most impressive is the fact that this film was created almost entirely with stop-action animation of puppets; CG was used for a few tricky situations, but overall this was a painstaking and lengthy process requiring I think about 5 years of production time for a 30-minute video. Because it is so short, I think it's easy enough, and worthwhile, to also view the version on the DVD with the director's comments, and the segment on the making of the film.