South Park - The Boys Attempt Stop Motion Animation

Season 4 Episode 17 - A Very Crappy Christmas

[@jacktorrance6404]

Clearly Matt and Trey were making fun of what they had to go through when they made the pilot episode for the show. That's the only episode in the show that was all done through stop motion, unless you include the original spirit of Christmas.

[@alan0353]

Don’t forget the original version of Cartman gets an probe

[@obbyandAWE]

That’s what they mean by pilot

[@TheCaptainSplatter]

Which they remade.

[@ryandevan2793]

I swear to god thats trippy as hell man!

[@axelpatrickb.pingol3228]

Stop motion is REALLY slow. That is why not a whole lot of studios use that technique in animated films...

[@forgottenartist36]

Stop motion animation / cut off style is really one of the hardest animation process ever

[@TheMaan2008]

Of course

[@TheMaan2008]

Also, claymation!

[@NOCONDIMENTSLEFTINMYFRIDGE]

@@TheMaan2008 isnt that stop motion

[@LegoReader12345hello]

you're tellin me, it isn't easy, and then the editing process is also challenging

[@Joesolo13]

@@NOCONDIMENTSLEFTINMYFRIDGE yep

[@befer]

I can see why Kenny would be their comfort character now

[@glossymistake3114]

Why am I first

[@r3n736]

and the bastards kill him mutiple times.

[@Melonposting]

Their what?

[@Melonposting]

@Phantom Menace The part where they said "comfort character" instead of just "favorite"

[@Itachi17509]

@@Melonposting the character the feel more confortable with, since they dont have to animate his mouth

[@guineapiggirl939]

ATLEST THEY DONT HAVE TO DO ANYTHING TO KENNY. YOU CAN'T SEE HIS MOUTH ANYWAYS.

[@martind5653]

I feel like that's was decision behind his design.

[@linalokir2178]

Yep

[@AshleyAllysia]

imagine this, they still had to do it under Kenny's parka

[@GeekedOutNeckbeard]

In the Spirit of Christmas or whatever the fuck it was called, they had to do it. They didn't have his parka covering his mouth and I believe they called him Cartman at the time. And Cartman was called Kenny and he was the one who was killed lmao.

[@sphereware2115]

@@GeekedOutNeckbeard nah the kenny looking character didnt have a name and the cartman looking character was called kenny. the name cartman probably hadn't been thought of yet but everybody confuses it

[@RG_033]

As a stopmotion animator, I have to say, the part when cartman sneezes and the whole scene flies away, is the most relatable yet traumatic experience an animator will go through. It's just so... sad 🥲

[@carlymara88]

Cartman:😖Aachoo! Stan:😱AUGH!! Kyle:😠Cartman!

[@bottlesalts]

i could only imagine what hell it would be like to try to do stop motion during the hot months. you could not possibly have a fan going or any sort of air circulation

[@RG_033]

@@bottlesalts it's a living hell, i tell ya. I'm in there trying to do my job, and I start sweating like a horse, unable to do anything about it, it's horrible 😂

[@ssocketballlsstopmotion]

Innit the worst thing is that i film it on a table and im sitting on a sofa

[@stopmotionlife7381]

Yes, I can agree 😔

[@emoelf]

0:14 Kyle turned into Butters LMAO

[@byron-mitchell]

u right

[@TheMan05555]

Both are voiced by Matt Stone.

[@herbcruz4697]

But without the slight southern drawl.

[@N_Oscar]

@@TheMan05555 no shit

[@whyme3772]

They have the same voice actor, Matt Stone

[@kitbarrows3874]

I like the fact that in universe they were talented enough to recreate photorealistic stop motion models of themselves.

[@diefordmustangs3]

They used photos of themselves

[@MVangelmx]

Butters did the cutouts for them..

[@Tony_Baloney_69420]

​​​@@diefordmustangs3 That means we could do the same thing lol

[@155chipmunkz]

Kenny saved them some time at least. You can't see his mouth.

[@saintfisuto1072]

I thought they moved his head.

[@walrusArmageddon]

This is why I just don't even with mouths in claymation. Saves me like ten hours

[@friedpan8564]

I did those in high school, at the few last hundred frames, the file got corrupted and I forgot to do separate files for each 1000. My teacher saw me work hard on it so she was nice enough to give me 80%. Still pisses me off to this day.

[@toogudd4dis]

Yea but it would cool tho and a perfect example is called “mystery stranger mark twain”

[@walrusArmageddon]

@@toogudd4dis true. If I ever do end up using mouths, I'll probably just animate them on, keep it cartoony

[@overthemountain90]

the only naturally good effect for claymation is cat hair. the effects are so clean it's crazy. Slides through clay like butter.

[@truffeltroll6668]

The dark souls of stop motion

[@Joshua_Quinzel_Isley]

This clip is almost like they were breaking the 4th wall.

[@-throat-]

They broke many more walls in this one clip

[@cyclops8238]

They broke the fourth wall and essentially turned into God

[@janelantestaverde2018]

They _were_ breaking the 4th wall.

[@flatterswhite]

almost?

[@HogartHughes]

OHHH REARY????

[@crr311sux5]

I do stop motion and this shit is so fucking relatable LLMAO

[@LegoReader12345hello]

It sure is annoying huh?

[@deoxys3869]

This is probably my favorite South Park Christmas episode. Because it not only makes fun of the original spirit of Christmas short, but because the boys are able to experience how painstaking it is to make a stop motion Christmas special

[@MJMDrawings]

What episode is this?

[@iiikaruz]

@@MJMDrawings season 4 episode 17.

[@MJMDrawings]

@@iiikaruz thank you

[@TiroDvD]

Trivia: the song for this episode is from "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" [1974] by Rankin/Bass. While the studio is famous for it's stop motion Xmas specials they also did regular animated ones and even non-Christmas specials.

[@ethanmorris1369]

This is the meta episode. You know that matt and trey just did this to show ppl how hard it is to make an episode of south park

[@sphereware2115]

how hard to make the first episode*

[@SomeUsernameSomeoneElseTookIt]

How hard it was*

[@ethanmorris1369]

@@SomeUsernameSomeoneElseTookIt yeah ur both right bc they dont do it anymore

[@linalokir2178]

@@ethanmorris1369 they still make south park epsiodes

[@ethanmorris1369]

@@linalokir2178 no ik that but they dont make them the old fashioned way is what i meant. They use computer animations now

[@LeaveTheMark_YT]

South Park probably wouldn't have even reached its 200th episode today if it was still animated in stop motion. EDIT: Unless Trey and Matt have more than one team of animators doing the episodes separately from each other, just to ease the workload.

[@aidani4633]

Probably wouldn’t have reached episode 20.

[@byron-mitchell]

Lol, didja see the end of this episode where they got money for do 200 more of them?

[@linalokir2178]

I wish it was

[@yosefdemby8792]

Let's see. It took about 3 or 4 months to do the first episode, so about 3 or 4 episodes a year, about 69-92 episodes.

[@yumibebestgirl9719]

Yeah. I'm pretty sure if they kept on doing stop motion, Trey and Matt's hands are gonna get amputated by the 5th episode.

[@tdflky9944]

This has to be Matt and Trey showing us what they suffered through in the beginning, just so we can laugh at the Comedy Gold that is South Park.

[@elperrodelautumo7511]

The true beginnings of South Park.

[@zakbax7259]

Too bad they didn’t include the scene where one of them sneezes and it blows the entire set away

[@jacobmadrigal8195]

It was cartman who sneezed cause apparently he had a cold

[@OmegaChase1002]

I imagine this is exactly what Matt and Trey went through.

[@HogartHughes]

This is exactly what Trey and Matt went through

[@LLNTV11]

0:34 "We wish you a... merry"

[@CharcoalRabbit]

South Park pilot in a nutshell

[@ajtv8050]

South Park didn’t break the fourth wall, they shattered it!

[@4644Pops]

Turn the voice pitch back to normal and it's just basically Trey and Matt's daily routine Someone fucking make it happen

[@katemiller4955]

Love how Kyle and Stan were the ones that did all the work cuz Stan represents Trey and Kyle represents Matt while creating the pilot ep 😂

[@lieberhers]

and eric stough as butters! for the pilot he helped with the cut outs :P

[@patrickdolan6784]

If they were all Kenny's they would do that in 2 minutes

[@byron-mitchell]

Lol, would be hilarious if they just mumbled.

[@carloso5910official]

Kenny Park

[@tetrofita1787]

Fun fact:You replayed this more than once

[@naomiwillowsyayme7151]

No but yes

[@aseemedris]

If I was a South Park animator I should be struggling to find the months

[@user-li5xo1kx9y]

Actually they do everything digitally now

[@TheKnewGreg]

It took me until now to realize they got Butters to make the cutouts because he’s based on Eric Stough, the actual animation director for the show

[@enunezfilms]

As a Stop Motion animator and South Park fan myself, I love this, so relatable

[@aidanwarren4980]

Why did they manually swap the mouths for each shot when they could’ve made one frame per syllable and swapped them out between shots?

[@Illyytumbreonslushi]

I'm going down South Park I'm going to have myself a Time friendly faces everywhere humble folks

[@guineapiggirl939]

without temptation

[@pheniellanz5271]

@@guineapiggirl939 goin’ down South Park, gonna leave my woes behind

[@calebkuti7897]

@@pheniellanz5271 Ample parking day and night

[@pastel-children5551]

@@calebkuti7897 headin' on up to south park gonna see if i can't unwind

[@materiagrezza9331]

@@pastel-children5551 mmph mmph mmph mmph mmph mmph mmph mmph mmph mmph mmph

[@typho6279]

All I can say is: God bless 3D animation software.

[@22Tesla]

As a stop motion animator, I totally get how hard this can be. Took me 7 hours of working on a project of mine, copying the frames from a 3 second live action video clip into still frames and animating something on top of it frame by frame, then exporting it as single pictures only to put it back together took forever! And that was using a Photoshop-like program to move details like the eyes around for that scene.

[@jekblom123]

Well it would be faster if they kept all the different mouths in different places. They just gotta optimize a little.

[@arcticridge]

looks like they're making a.. *Holiday Special*

[@lauravturner]

Shame you skipped the part where Butters makes the models, then the boys criticise him for the lack of details. That part sticks with me often.

[@joyfulvision]

Not gonna lie: the walking animation on this show must save them millions. The way they don’t animate legs moving just sort of shaking as they move. I’ve always thought it was really cool and unique the way it’s always been like that.

[@yesilovenachos]

"STAAAAAAAAAND IN THE PLACE WHERE YOU L-"

[@LITTLE1994]

Yeah, stopmotion animation, though looks simple, is WAY harder than it looks. Makes the pilot episode and the 1992 and '95 original shorts before it worthwhile.

[@realprime2927]

This is why south park is animated with computers now.

[@JoshuaCJ50]

Fun fact: Before tablet animating came around, South Park was stop motion and this episode is just explaining Trey and Matt’s job

[@sethvaldez4029]

Their tech got better over time now they ain't gotta waste so much time saying a single word

[@oliveatoons]

THE WAY IT CUTS OFF AT THE END WHEN KYLE SAYS "JESUS CHRIST" IS SO FUNNY TO ME

[@newyorkrat2546]

So relatable. I wanna make a paper stop motion cartoon, and I’m like “how hard can it be?” And this happens. 😂 And every time, it looks like it’s haunted because I have trouble making it stay still. 😂

[@tradeofalljacks4358]

Thank god Adobe Animate exists lmao

[@carloso5910official]

As well as Maya

[@thatguyrock5416]

He sounds like butters 0:14

[@christiangottsacker6932]

This show taught me to animate in middle school. Blessing

[@StarbitzTheSpookyClown]

I think most stop motion creators can relate to this.

[@historyarmyproductions]

Oh you have no idea-

[@historyarmyproductions]

Its basically this, every time, without fail. Its just kinda the nature of the hobby.

[@superfelipestudios8104]

My favorite episode is it a documentary about 1995 the spirit of Christmas Just kidding I already watched this episode I know it's not a documentary 😉

[@byron-mitchell]

Well it kind of is lol

[@superfelipestudios8104]

@@byron-mitchell it's been years since I made that comment

[@dylannicholson3112]

“People who do this for a living deserve more credit and respect !” - Lord Hater

[@complex2live]

This is so freaking accurate, doing stop motion myself this is so true

[@codenamexelda]

The pain of making Southpark

[@jj1529]

They actually aren’t using stop motion in South Park, at least for the newer episodes. They’re now animating everything on the computer.

[@rickmartinez3268]

My favorite paper cutouts

[@TheGalaxyDew]

*Looks like they made a short film a revival!!!!!*

[@VincentTrojovsky]

The original pilot episode of Southpark took 3 months to make because it was made of paper cutout animation.

[@yoda2824]

I’d be fun watching you guys watch the South Park origins and them making fun of themselves Jesus vs Frosty - KZbin The Spirit of Christmas - KZbin Pilot - 1x1 A Crappy Christmas - 4x17 Canceled - 7x3

[@hadiidnabemadaharsa6184]

0:00 Harrymation's first episode of RALR 0:38 Harrymations creating ECAL

[@spinnydrawz]

I got a KZbin Kids ad before watching this

[@anothergg2692]

Kenny is more easy. Is always the same

[@magikaros]

Goddamn, 3 hours just for "we wish you a merry-".

[@toxictoxicities]

I'm about to start a stop motion project myself- hoo boy-

[@magmos6346]

So how many seconds are you up to now?

[@toxictoxicities]

@@magmos6346 not yet tbh- I've only just started to plan and set up a test stage for my first animation ^^ , this year though im planning to create armatures ++

[@ZeeTheNerdyVampire]

I used to try my hand at stop motion. Great end results but the process is long, tedious, and a bit irritating.

[@Satoshi9801]

When I did that type of animation for a school project, I had only one mouth for every type of expression, so my characters were more like puppets. I also reused frames for every syllable when the characters were standing still and in the same mood, so I only had to shoot an open mouth and closed mouth once for those instances.

[@robertsmall5168]

This is literally a real life conversation of them used for the show

[@buttersstotch601]

If you’re gonna do stop motion you gotta have multiple people shooting multiple scenes at once otherwise it’s just painful and not worth it. It’s even worse with construction paper cause one Gus of air or one accidentally hand movement screws everything up. Do yourself a favor and use a computer

[@tumedasco7010]

How come people don’t really agree with your comment? I’m sorry!!!!!!

[@nathanthompson7549]

Wow stop motion characters making stop motion that's really meta

[@VGAfanatic]

Animation ain't easy, and lip syncing's the most tedious part.

[@haingis]

this is why every student stop motion/puppet film is about a depressed character drinking coffee while contemplating their mundane lives in different depressing settings.

[@absucc]

South Park making South Park

[@Pandacalifornia]

Why are they doing the “woo” mouth again if they’re at the word “merry”?

[@Bus_Driver117]

The Japanese got it right when they did anime.

[@Pattmore]

As someone who makes animations I feel their pain.

[@naomiwillowsyayme7151]

I remember that the making of The nightmare before christmas took 4 years to finish. Those are the hard times

[@sonicthehedgehogfanchannel9496]

0:01 this song is cool

[@animationreview5696]

credit to the animators who have to animate an episode of south park in about 2 days, sometimes even less than that

[@4stringz.]

I love when Cartman sneezes 🤣

[@walkingcorpse1224]

Fuck that shit, I'd rather make a comic book and do slight animation with that. It's alot faster for one thing, the only benefit I can see with stop photo animation is that you can do more, where as art animation, ur limited to what art you've already made.

[@enderjab]

This is why you use multiple of the same frames to save time on taking the same syllable

[@saharfrr]

i like how kyle says jesus christ hes so done with this lmfao

[@zcstopmotions2878]

I’ve always wanted to try stop motion but I have no clue how to do it

[@byron-mitchell]

Try using stikbot studio on the app store. It's free (if you have a phone of some sort)

[@zcstopmotions2878]

@@byron-mitchell Oh ok thanks

[@FreeAimDog]

in my opinion i prefer the old cheap designs with half assed physics it gave the show charm, nowadays i barely recognize south park, the characters personalities changed, the plots changed, the vibe changed, half the good characters killed off or not shown as much anymore or is kicked out of south park.

[@cklounge2096]

Before computer animation this must have been hell. Now all you have to do it just duplicate and mess around with the layer the mouths are on.

[@the_fetus_run8992]

well kenny saves the day in the mouth thingy

[@imtootiredforthis7694]

These elementary school students with limited resources have a lot of nerve not doing 120fps.

[@killertrip10]

One of my favorite clips big dog! Big thanks for uploading!

[@RidleyKraid187]

God imagine if they did all that animation and then it doesn’t sync up with the audio properly.

[@claratarte1875]

They are remaking the spirt of Christmas short in the episode a very crappy Christmas like Matt and Trey did at the university of Colorado 0:00

[@claratarte1875]

In 1995 0:02

[@orangeandbluebook]

How many mouth stickers are there in the show? What if they run out?

[@KirbyLinkACW]

So it's obvious this is what the creators did before going digital, but at what point did they start making full episodes in under a week? Because if it's before they went digital, then that's impressive!

[@abdilee4108]

Am I watching a stop motion animated people do stop motion? This feels like a dream within a dream

[@voixmin]

Stop motion animators are masochists

[@DaniellianGaming]

When I did stuff like this as a hobby (it was horrible), I remember thinking only spending an hour at a time filming each scene, but in reality, I spent at least four hours.

[@noraemin326]

South park ception

[@RedRagz31]

"KICK ASS!" -Stan

[@lmdc222]

Life of an animator.

[@TrayDyer38]

I’ve made stop motion animation cartoons over the last 5 years as a hobby. I taught myself how to do it, which is not a great endeavor, it’s not rocket science, but it is TIME consuming! Most people do the audio first and then draw and place the pieces. I write it out first, then draw it, place it, shoot it, and then go in and lay the audio down and match the voice with the mouths. I’m probably creating more work for myself by doing it that way. But It takes Hours and hours of careful placing of the pieces to just to produce 60 seconds of animation. I could totally relate to this clip, Trey and Matt gave their viewers a comedy spoof on just how frick’n tedious it actually is.

[@roferexco]

You know you can repeat frames right? That... will make if faster for you

[@byron-mitchell]

Well you cant do that in stop motion unless you have the right frames to repeat AND you actually have a digital editor, they were just using a special film camera

[@roferexco]

@@byron-mitchell yeah, but the scene was just of them standing there changing the mouths, so they could repeat the frames for that scene in particular

[@byron-mitchell]

I think they were moving the heads as they were singing in the actual short

[@patmat.]

😂🤣 yep, they deserved their success

[@stanstickman3000]

this is like making a stop motion for the first time and getting bored

[@cameo-taku4965]

Animation is tedious no matter what format

[@GameMan]

and people were saying flash was bad?

[@idkwhattoputasmyusername9701]

People who do animation and stop motion can relate to this 😂 (I do animation btw)