A Motionographer® Knighthood for NOMINT

Dear dazzling friends,

We’ve somehow managed to do it again.
Another metamorphosis. Nay, an evolutionary leap!

Last week NOMINT won an honorary Motion Award from Motionographer, specifically the official personal pick of Motionographer Founder Carlos El Asmarm himself (cue bulgy eyes of disbelief 👀). In the great cosmology of animation craft, this is essentially being knighted by someone who's seen literally everything and still intoned, "My friends...you bow to no one." (And we're very grateful hobbitses.)

The winning project?
Our little blue sapphire of a stop-motion film, In Hot Water, created for WWF and launched at COP29.

🎞️ Yeah, the one shot entirely on a thermal camera.
🎞️ Yeah, the one that required controlling heat to within 0.1°C.
🎞️ Yeah, the one where we used ovens, heat guns, and freeze sprays like deranged scientists bent on saving the ocean.

🔗 Watch In Hot Water. (You’ve clicked this before. You loved it. Do it again.)

We made this film about ocean warming - a crisis you can't see - so we shot it on a thermal camera and animated heat (because we have hobbies and none of them are realistic). Everything you see is in-camera. Objects were warmed and chilled to within 0.1°C under the merciless gaze of NOMINT co-founder and animation director Yannis Konstantinidis, who spent months micromanaging heat and objects with the focus of someone defusing a bomb.  

And now it’s earned the highest of nods. A Motion Award bestowed directly by Motionographer’s founder.
A Founder's Pick.

From one of the most respected institutions in the craft universe. (That'll put a little joy in ya.  Speaking from experience.)  

This award now sits beautifully beside our recent Emmy, forming what we assume is the beginning of a shrine, or maybe the early stages of a golden megastructure that seems to be assembling itself (don’t worry, we’ll call someone if it starts picking up extraterrestrial chatter.) I'm afraid the energy around NOMINT may feel a little inflated for a while. That’s just the natural consequence of giving us external validation, which is frankly irresponsible. To anyone at Motionographer reading this: we adore you. You magnificent humans. Thank you.

Here’s to craftsmanship as activism, to collaborators who humor our more questionable ideas, and to stories that ask us to feel something, even when that something is invisible.

With love (and now a Motion Award),

Team NOMINT