Emilie Hahn’s claymations are a fly on the wall to funny situations – like the Zumba class at your local gym

When we think of claymation, we often think about fantasy and escape. Miniature sets and handmade characters can take us to other worlds entirely, but what’s so refreshing about LA-based artist and stop motion animator Emilie Hahn’s work is that it holds up a mirror to well… reality. “I like focusing on parts of life that we often try to block out – the uncomfortable or dreary bits. Maybe the bits that we feel a bit of shame over, or that are not very glamorous. That’s the good stuff,” the animator tells us.

The artist loves to make handcrafted films that explore “the little dramas” that make up our everyday lives, “with a touch of magical realism”. The DIY movie sets she makes are inspired by ideas that occur to the artist when she’s doing quite inconsequential things, like waiting in a traffic jam or running on a treadmill at her local gym. A lot of the animators’ projects are like different pages of a moving sketchbook – keepsakes from a time or place that she wants to remember or a way to find comedic relief in the everyday.

Most of Emilie’s animations are simply a product of people watching: “I love imagining people’s stories,” she says. “The Zumba class at my local gym, or the older men who ride recumbent bikes together in matching outfits. There is so much humanity all around us!” To bring these characters to life, the animator builds puppets from wire, foam and clay and sews tiny fabric clothes to fit their form. She then builds her sets with simple, everyday craft and household materials like wood, cardboard and paint, shooting each frame one by one in her studio until she takes the final thing into After Effects, Photoshop or Premiere to polish everything off (and add a great soundtrack on top). This detailed, laborious production process is Emilie’s way of looking at the world under a magnifying glass: “To me, making art is a form of paying attention. It requires looking closely in a true, unflinching way, to what we are actually doing, not who we pretend to be.”