Whitby-based animation company wins double at New York Animation Film Awards

Owl House Studio, which creates unique films specialising in stop motion, was a winner in the Best Animation Music Video and Best Animation Short Film for its production of Beautiful Scarecrow, a new track by top prog rock artist, Steven Wilson.

The track is part of his latest album, The Harmony Codex which was also released in 2023.

Founder of the small independent animation company, Jess Cope, who lives in Burniston, said: “It really helps us when we’re winning these awards.

"This has come about at a great time for us to get some recognition.

"The brilliant thing about Beautiful Scarecrow is it’s one of the shortest videos we’ve ever done.

"It ends quite abruptly and a lot of fans want to know the back story.

"Short films are the ones we want to get into.”

She is now entertaining the idea of a feature-length version as “there’s more to tell with this story – that’s the next step.”

The production Beautiful Scarecrow is based around a situation where a highly contagious disfiguring disease has mysteriously appeared in a world dominated by a shady corporation, creating a forced separation between those who are infected and those who are not.

Views follow a great inventor, forced to hide behind a mask to shield his disfigurement from the society above ground.

A victim of the contamination, who has only an old stuffed toy rabbit for company, he is fascinated by the world above and makes scavenging trips to the surface to gather artefacts of a world he cannot ever know, or be part of.

One such trip leads to a fateful encounter with someone from his past and a great personal loss.

The company has also produced music videos for heavy metal legends Metallica, including the 11-minute long song Inamorata, the final track on their album 72 seasons.

And it posed quite a challenge!

Jess explains: “Bass player Rob Trujillo got in touch wanting our help with the longest track they’ve ever done and said ‘we’ve got three weeks to do it, can you do it?'

"My illustrator said ‘come on Jess, we can do it’.

"I don’t know how we did it but we managed it.

"James Hetfield, the lead singer, absolutely loved it.

"We went to Download and spent all the festival hanging with Metallica and going backstage, it was just mad.

"I got to chat properly with James as it’s quite a personal song to him.”

Jess has worked with Tim Burton on such films as Frankenweenie as well as the production of kids’ classic Postman Pat – the more modern version where the character has a helicopter as well as his trusty red van!

"When I lived in South Africa, I loved running downstairs on a morning and watching Postman Pat!” she added.

Jess was previously based in Harrogate but relocated to the Whitby area when her parents moved into a property in Briggswath.