When you think of gothic, quirky films or animations, one would most probably think of Tim Burton's films. However, there were other filmmakers who made animations in a dark, gothic style before him. Steven and Timothy Quay, are American identical twin brothers, best known as The Brothers Quay. They moved to England in 1969 to study at the Royal College of Art, and are now known as some of the most influential stop-motion animators.
They have a dark, fairy tale-like quality to their work, and are also influenced by European animators, writers and composers such as Walerian Borowczyk, Franz Kafka, Wladyslaw Starewicz, and later Jan Svankmajer. Their films are almost exclusively without dialogue and they almost always make their films to fit a pre-existing score rather than vice versa. This has led to them, more recently, making music videos for artists whose work they like.
The Quays' work is very complex, not just because of its multi-layered, esoterical nature, but also because of its technical intricacy, which often requires them to use tweezers to infinitesimally adjust the tiny objects they are animating.Their most famous works include The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes, their only feature so far, and the short Street of Crocodiles, which was considered by Terry Gilliam to be one of the ten best films ever made.
Some other studios that make dark stop motion videos: Bolex Brothers
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