Bringing the Bittersweet Stop-Motion to Life in Adam Elliot’s Memoir of a Snail

 

**Behind the Scenes of *Memoir of a Snail*: Adam Elliot’s Stop-Motion Journey**

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Australian filmmaker **Adam Elliot** took advantage of the unexpected downtime to meticulously plan his second stop-motion animated feature, *Memoir of a Snail*. Over this period, he created **1,600 storyboard panels, designed 200 characters and sets, and conceptualized between 5,000 to 7,000 props**—a massive undertaking that paid off when the film went on to earn an **Oscar nomination, two Annie Award nominations, and the prestigious Annecy Cristal**.

At its heart, *Memoir of a Snail* tells the emotional story of twins **Grace and Gilbert**, who are inseparable until tragedy strikes—their father dies, and child services separates them into different foster homes. As they grow, they develop unique coping mechanisms: Grace becomes a **hoarder of snail memorabilia**, while Gilbert develops an **obsession with fire**.

Like Elliot’s previous works, including the 2009 feature *Mary and Max* and his **Oscar-winning short *Harvie Krumpet*** (2004), the film employs **voiceover narration** as a key storytelling tool. “My whole 28-year career in stop-motion has relied on voiceovers because my budgets are low,” Elliot explains. “It’s far more economical to use a narrator to drive the story, but I also follow the rule of ‘show it, don’t say it.’ We constantly pare back dialogue to keep the film as visual as possible.”

### **A Frame-by-Frame Process**

Every **storyboard panel** was turned into an animated shot, making the editing process particularly tight. Editor **Bill Murphy** had to carefully trim eight minutes from the film while ensuring that every shot counted. “There was a scene where Grace joins a **Canberra Cheese Fan Society**—about 20 seconds long—but it got cut,” Elliot recalls. “Everything else we shot made it into the final film.”

One of the film’s most striking sequences is its **opening title shot**, where **thousands of props** are displayed. The only animated element? A **falling toilet seat**. “It was all thanks to our cinematographer **Gerald Thompson** and a repurposed **industrial robot arm** from a car factory,” Elliot reveals. “He reengineered it to move frame by frame, then attached a snorkel lens to capture the shot in a single continuous move. It took **two weeks of planning and two more weeks to execute**. It was my *Goodfellas* **Martin Scorsese moment!**”

### **Technical Challenges: Fire, Action, and Painted Costumes**

Creating the **burning church scene** was another major challenge. “John Lewis [animation supervisor] had to figure out how to animate flames, which are **asymmetrical, erratic, and flare unpredictably**,” Elliot explains. “Initially, we wanted to animate **yellow cellophane flames directly on the model**, but that proved too difficult. Instead, we shot the fire **against a greenscreen** and composited it in post.”

Another standout moment involved Gilbert **running into a busy street to save a snail**. “This was one of our most complex sequences,” Elliot says. “The **cinematographer, animation supervisor, animators, and editor** had to collaborate closely to make the scene feel **fast-paced and dangerous**. Bill [Murphy] even adjusted the original storyboards to enhance the tension—some shots were too slow, and Gilbert didn’t look as stressed as he should have. The **cars were all shot separately and composited in post**.”

Due to budget constraints, the production also made a bold decision: **costumes were painted onto the puppets instead of being made from fabric**. “It was tough to abandon fabric, but it saved time and forced our sculptors to be more inventive,” Elliot explains. “They added texture directly to the clay and painted on fabric details. It turned out well, and surprisingly, no one ever noticed the difference. Even props like curtains and couches were created using **paint and paper**, with a special technique that mimicked fabric texture.”

### **Pushing Stop-Motion Boundaries**

For Elliot, *Memoir of a Snail* was one of the most technically ambitious films of his career. “I’ve never done **action sequences** like the **church fire** or **street rescue** before,” he admits. “Every step—from the **robotic opening shot** to the **complex fire effects**—pushed our team to **new creative heights**.”

Despite the challenges, the film stands as a testament to Elliot’s **innovative storytelling and mastery of stop-motion animation**. As he continues to refine his craft, *Memoir of a Snail* serves as yet another milestone in his **award-winning career**—a heartfelt, visually stunning story brought to life through dedication, creativity, and the magic of stop-motion.

The character that went through the most iterations was Pinky, Grace’s elderly mentor. According to Elliot, “She’s a dynamic puppet, and her hair was a challenge, her glasses, and her mouth. Pinky had the most mouth shapes, and Alexander Esenarro Santafe, our sculptor, did half a dozen head iterations. Also, she ages, so that was tricky. Grace had a lot of iterations as well, but her design was a lot more simplistic.”

One well-known Oscar-winning film had a tremendous impact on the color palette, with red used as a narrative highlight. “I stole that off of Steven Spielberg from Schindler’s List,” chuckles Elliot. “I love using spot color as a way of heightening and emphasizing certain important objects. On Mary and Max, I did the same thing. This film is a lot warmer. It’s more saturated. Mary and Max was much more desaturated, and part of the film was black and white. This film has a lot of browns, but the 1970s were brown in Australia. A lot of people painted their houses brown. It also matched the psychological states of Grace and Gilbert. Melbourne is much more blacky brown, Canberra is a beige vanilla brown, and Perth is a horrific brown. They each have their own distinct palette, but we were restrictive on how many colors were used in the film. Blue and green were banned. There is a little bit of pink, not much. But lots of red and orange.”

One of the film’s funniest moments involves Grace and Gilbert’s facial expressions as they witness two snails copulating inside a glass bottle. “Poor Nelson Dean, our animator, he struggled and had a couple of goes at the snail mating,” recalls Elliot. “We didn’t know what we wanted. We Googled snails mating, and oh, my god, it’s horrific! We did two versions. There were snails with lots of juice coming out, and that’s the one we went with. But there was a cleaner version too. They were gentler on each other. But we wanted Gilbert and Grace to be as shocked as the audience about what they were seeing. We had a lot of fun with those sorts of scenes. The orgy. Pinky tap dancing. Then, of course, there are sequences that are more alarming and horrifying, like Gilbert’s gay conversion therapy. It was a real mixed bag of challenging sequences. We’re not only challenging the audience, but it was challenging for us to actually animate.”

Built into the design of the puppets are Grace and Gilbert’s character arcs. “There are multiple versions of the puppets that change throughout the film, so the sculpt and the puppet itself are already addressing a lot of that storytelling,” observes John Lewis, animation supervisor. “Then we also have Sarah Snook’s voice, which acts as a guide [for Grace]. We largely improvise the performance based on what we’re hearing frame by frame. We don’t sit down and plan out every little nuanced movement because when you’re animating the voice, the puppet wants to do things. You know you’ve got it right when it feels like the voice is coming from the puppet. Lip sync, tiny gestures, and even character blinks, it can all be cued by the actor’s vocal performance.”

Three puppets were made for each of the main characters so they could be shot on multiple sets simultaneously. “Because of the lack of fabric and silicone in the bodies, the puppets couldn’t sit down,” remarks Lewis. “We had to have another version of the character if we wanted it to sit down. And the characters also age throughout the script; we have child, teenage, and adult versions. Grace’s weight changes. There are lots of different versions of the same character to get around those restrictions as well as to serve the story. Many of those characters are simple. They’re background characters, almost like statues that blink. We restricted their complexity. We had seven stages shooting at any one time out of nine available.”

Lewis also animated on Mary and Max. “In many ways, there’s not much difference because we used Stop Motion Pro on Mary and Max, and now we’re using Dragonframe,” he describes. “We did need a certain amount of compositing. The big difference between the two films is there’s a smaller budget on Memoir of a Snail, and Adam has matured as a filmmaker and knows what he wants. We were able to push it much more towards the personal style that he prefers, rather than someone else’s style like Aardman. The smaller budget resulted in different solutions. The puppets were less complicated but, in many ways, more interesting. We avoided newer technologies like 3D printing. We didn’t use any 3D printing for the puppets because that’s not the kind of film Adam wants to make. We wanted a handmade film. All the effects were done in-camera. Adam has a list of rules that he wanted to follow, and we followed them.”

Vehicles were animated as well. “They were beautifully built, though for many, we only built half a vehicle,” reveals Lewis. “The vehicles were made out of wood with sculpting over the top to increase their weight. But they all worked, and we pushed them around quite a bit. If we needed a character to sit in one, they were specifically designed to handle that. The roofs would come off. The other non-character animation we did was the effects work. Fire used cellophane, and smoke used cotton wool. Everything was animated on the under-camera rig [which allowed the camera to swing down onto a glass tabletop]. There were a lot of effects. Anytime an animator had some downtime, they were on the visual effects stage picking up some of those shots.”

Other key scenes range from the naturalism of Grace sitting on a bench to a surrealistic representation of her in the womb with Gilbert. “Both take different styles of animation and are enjoyable to do in their own way,” Lewis shares. “Different animators lend themselves to different styles. One does more naturalistic acting where you imagine a character is a real person, while one pushes things much further for a comedic slapstick scene. Even though sitting on a bench doesn’t seem exciting, it’s satisfying as an animator to get the puppet to emote realistically.”

When about animating an already slow-moving snail, such as Sylvia, climbing up a post, Lewis says, “It is a hard slog! We show a couple of different size scales. Sometimes we used a tiny blob of plasticine that you can barely tell has moved. When Sylvia heads up the post, we used a rig to help support and move her up nicely and slowly. But the animator must employ a lot of patience to get move the snails slowly enough.”

Despite his film’s dark undertone, Elliot is no nihilist. “They’re bittersweet to make and look at. I always say that if you’re not an emotional wreck by the end of one of my films, then I’ve failed as a writer. You have to be exhausted by one of my films. I want to push every emotional button. Isn’t there a saying that goes, ‘I’ve suffered for my art. Now it’s your turn.’ But at the same time, I don’t want the audience to be depressed. I want them to leave the cinema feeling uplifted and with a little bit of hope. It’s tricky to get that balance right.”