Cleverly carved! Sean Ohlenkamp and Rob Popkin have carved several pumpkins, photographed, carved further, photographed, carved from the back and the side, photographed and so on and so on. After a while and probably even more pumpkin soup, the creative food stop motion was ready - and the effort was worth it!
Dozens upon dozens upon dozens of pumpkins were cut, gutted, rotated, scraped, poked, slapped, and banged to make this stop-motion animation and the music that bring it to life. It took a few years - pumpkins rot, schedules get busy - but we loved discovering the methods that worked and the many that didn't.
Many pumpkins were photographed twice. First as a nicely lit, carving-free plate. Then again after carving our designs and removing the top or back so we could insert a light. The two were then composited together to remove the lighting equipment. We re-used pumpkins where we could (fronts and backs and sometimes sides) but that wasn't always possible.
We often projected images onto the pumpkins to improve consistency between frames, but due to each pumpkin's unique curves, it often took just putting it in front of the camera to check alignment.