Europe, since the days when the visionary Ladislaw Starewicz was cranking out positively amazing work, before World War I, first in Russia, then later in France, has remained a veritable creamy center of stop-motion animation goodness. One of the art's very finest practitioners was Czechoslovakian puppet animation innovator Jiří Trnka. Here's his WW2 classic, Springman Vs. The S.S.
Another stop-motion master from Czechoslovakia was the great Karel Zeman.
There's nothing like some gorgeous stop-motion wizardry to that pesky post-holiday letdown to a screeching halt! Zeman's classic feature, The Fabulous World Of Jules Verne exemplifies the 1950's stop-motion boom that also included Joop Geesink's Dollywood animation, the wondrous fantasy films (and Dynamation) of Ray Harryhausen and George Pal's science fiction features.
