Top 9 Stop-Motion Directors at A+C Studios

The nine stop-motion directors below are the directors signed to A+C Studios, the stop-motion animation studio in Margate, with an office in London. Between them they cover claymation, puppet animation, papercraft, toymation and mixed media, with credits that run from Wes Anderson and Guillermo del Toro features and BAFTA-winning shorts to Bluey, Nike, Canva and Wimbledon.

Who this is for: Brand marketers, agency producers, creative directors and commissioners looking for the right stop-motion director for a commercial, a series or a short.

What you’ll learn: Who each director is, what they’re known for, the kind of brief they suit best, and where to watch their work.

On this page

1. Dan Richards
2. Kim Keukeleire
3. Effie Pappa
4. Ida Melum
5. Jess Deacon
6. Antonin Niclass
7. Mai Vu
8. Threadwood
9. Lee Hardcastle

Plus: how to choose a stop-motion director, and frequently asked questions.

Why the director matters more than the technique

Two films can both be “claymation” and feel nothing alike. What separates them is the director: how they think about character, timing, comedy, texture and the small imperfections that make handmade animation feel alive. When you commission stop-motion, you’re really choosing a point of view.

That’s why we’ve built a roster of directors with very different sensibilities, from feature-film animation directors to festival favourites and internet cult heroes. Every one of them works with our in-house team at Postgate Stage, our purpose-built stop-motion studio in Margate, so concept, model-making, shoot and post all happen under one roof. 

The numbers aren’t a ranking from best to worst. These are the nine directors on our roster, and in our opinion they’re nine of the best working in stop-motion today. 

1. Dan Richards: character-led stop-motion for brands and big IP

Dan Richards is the founder and director of A+C Studios. Dan made his first stop-motion film at the age of 12, trained at the Bristol School of Animation and went on to Aardman Animations, where he worked on Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. He founded A+C Studios and still leads the work from first idea to final cut, with a reputation for detail and for trying new techniques rather than repeating old ones.

His recent work leans heavily into entertainment and family brands: Bluey Tunes and Bluey x The Simpsons for BBC Studios, two chapters of Canva’s Wild Design with Dude, and a run of Peperami spots with Fearless Union. He is also directing Muffin Mumma, A+C’s original series in development.

Best for: Toymation, entertainment and family IP, and brand campaigns that need to move quickly without losing craft.

Watch: Dan Richards’ showreel · Bluey Tunes · Canva ‘Wild Design’ · Peperami: Quit Cardboard Chicken

2. Kim Keukeleire: feature-film animation direction

Kim Keukeleire is a stop-motion animation director at A+C Studios. Few stop-motion CVs read like Kim’s. After a Masters in Animation Cinematography at La Cambre in Brussels, she animated on Chicken Run, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Frankenweenie, Alain Ughetto’s Forbidden to Dogs and Italians and Claude Barras’ Sauvages. She was lead animator on Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs, a senior animator on Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, and animated the alien sequence in Anderson’s live-action Asteroid City.

As animation director she led My Life as a Zucchini and, more recently, The Inventor. She has sat on juries at international festivals and teaches masterclasses and workshops around the world.

Best for: Projects where character performance has to be feature-quality, and productions that need a senior animation director’s eye across a team.

Watch: Kim Keukeleire’s showreel

3. Effie Pappa: allegory, absurdism and humour

Effie Pappa is a stop-motion animation director at A+C Studios. She is an award-winning director of animation and live action, based between Athens and London. Her films use allegory, absurdity and comedy to get at very human worries, and they travel: My Stuffed Granny won twenty best short film awards, including at Edinburgh Film Festival, Palm Springs, the Hamptons and the Tokyo Anime Awards, and was an official selection at Annecy. Her short In Between followed in 2022.

On the commercial side, she directed season two of Mailchimp’s All in a Day’s Work, a six-episode stop-motion series, as well as The Perfect Match for The Laughing Cow and Bring the Nature Inside for V4 Wood Flooring.

Best for: Branded series, character comedy, and briefs that want wit and emotional depth in the same film.

Watch: Effie Pappa’s showreel · The Laughing Cow: The Perfect Match · My Stuffed Granny

4. Ida Melum: BAFTA-nominated character comedy

Ida Melum is a stop-motion animation director at A+C Studios. Ida is a BAFTA- and BIFA-nominated, Annie and RTS award-winning animation director based in Sweden. She trained as an actor in Norway before taking a BA in Animation at Middlesex University, then animated on the BAFTA-winning Poles Apart and on Facing It before completing a Masters in Directing Animation at the National Film and Television School (NFTS).

Her NFTS films include Shopped, Ovary-Acting and her graduation film Night of the Living Dread, which was nominated for the 2022 BAFTA for British Short Animation, which fellow A+C Studios director Antonin Niclass won that year. Since then she has worked on Attenborough’s Wonder of Song for the BBC and made the 2022 festival trailer for Fredrikstad Animation Festival. That acting background shows in her characters, who think and react on screen in a way audiences recognise instantly.

Best for: Character-driven comedy, performance-led spots and short-form films with a lot of personality.

Watch: Ida Melum’s showreel · Night of the Living Dread · Ovary-Acting

5. Jess Deacon: papercraft and paper engineering

Jess Deacon is a stop-motion animation director at A+C Studios. Jess is a director, paper engineer and stop-motion animator, which makes her a rare thing: someone who designs the mechanism as well as the movement. Her short film Revolution, which she made with Chris Turner and Helen Friel, won the PDN Photo Annual Award for Animation and was selected for festivals including the London International Animation Festival, Fantoche, Melbourne International Animation Festival, New Zealand International Film Festival and the Washington DC Environmental Film Festival.

Most recently she directed the Wimbledon 2025 opening title for BBC Sport. Her short Nearly Animals is also well worth a watch.

Best for: Papercraft animation, pop-up and paper-engineered worlds, title sequences and graphic, design-led brand films.

Watch: Jess Deacon’s showreel · Revolution · Nearly Animals

6. Antonin Niclass: tender, wordless storytelling

Antonin Niclass is a stop-motion animation director at A+C Studios. Antonin is a Swiss-French director and animator who graduated from the NFTS with Do Not Feed The Pigeons, a film that won awards internationally, including the BAFTA for British Short Animation in 2022. His work is tactile and handmade, with a deliberately rough-edged charm and a gentle sense of humour.

He is drawn to the small moments of everyday life and to human connection, and he often tells his stories without a single word of dialogue. For brands working across several markets, that’s worth noting: a film that doesn’t rely on language travels well. His commercial work includes a film for Théâtre du Passage.

Best for: Emotional storytelling, observational humour and dialogue-free films for international campaigns.

Watch: Antonin Niclass’ showreel · Do Not Feed The Pigeons · Théâtre du Passage

7. Mai Vu: series, commercials and a Cannes selection

Mai Vu is a stop-motion animation director at A+C Studios. Mai grew up in Saigon, Vietnam, and has been making stop-motion films since 2010. She went on to write, animate and direct the stop-motion series Say Hi To Pencil, which ran from 2012 to 2019, and since 2016 has made commercials for clients including Vietnam Airlines, Perfetti Van Melle, Clé de Peau, Pepsi and Forbes.

She then took a Masters in Directing Animation at the NFTS, and her film Spring Roll Dream was selected for La Cinef at the Cannes Film Festival in 2022.

Best for: Episodic and social-first series, playful object and character animation, and brands working across Asian and European markets.

Watch: Mai Vu’s showreel · Spring Roll Dream trailer · Exam

8. Threadwood: Emmy-winning clay and stop-motion from New York

Threadwood is a boutique animation studio in upstate New York, led by Alexis Deprey and Scott DaRos, who both worked on Emmy-winning seasons of Robot Chicken . They work across clay, stop-motion and 2D, bringing a handcrafted design sensibility to both client work and their own original content.

Their clients include Nickelodeon, BUCK, Jonas & Co. and SyFy, and their original shorts, from Flumpy and Magical Cat to Spider vs The Living Dead, show off a lovely, slightly odd sense of humour.

Best for: Claymation characters, kids and family content, mixed clay-and-2D projects, and US-facing campaigns.

Watch: Threadwood’s showreel · Flumpy · Peace, Love, and Yoga

9. Lee Hardcastle: bold, subversive and instantly recognisable

Lee has built a cult following online with stop-motion films that mix humour, horror and heart in roughly equal measure. His style is bold, inventive and often subversive, it’s recognisable within a frame or two, and it has racked up millions of views and collaborations with major brands, platforms and entertainment studios.

He has directed Scary Good, a handcrafted stop-motion spot for Nike Football starring Erling Haaland, alongside work for Adult Swim.

Best for: Irreverent, attention-grabbing campaigns for sport, gaming, entertainment and youth audiences, especially social-first work.

Watch: Lee Hardcastle’s showreel · Nike Football: Scary Good · Adult Swim ident

How to choose a stop-motion director

Start with the feeling you want the audience to leave with, not the technique. Then look for a director whose own films already create that feeling. A quick guide to our roster:

A few other things worth asking any director, ours included: have they made something at your length and on your kind of schedule, how do they like to work with your agency or in-house team, and what does their pre-production process look like? Our guide to what claymation is and how it’s made is a useful primer if you’re new to commissioning handmade animation.

Working with A+C’s directors

Every director on our roster is backed by the same in-house production team at Postgate Stage in Margate, around 90 minutes from London, with a London office. Model-making, set build, shoot and post all happen in one building, which keeps schedules tight and gives each director a crew who know the craft inside out. You can explore the full roster on our directors page, or read more about our stop-motion animation studio.

→ Talk to us about your project