10066413Dynamic BackgroundsClosedCollaborative R&DInnovate UKMackinnon & Saunders Ltd is a Manchester based company specialising in stop motion animation. The company is most widely known for creating ground-breaking puppets for such films as Tim Burton's 'Corpse Bride', Wes Anderson's 'Fantastic Mr Fox' and Guillermo del Toro's recent, critically acclaimed, 'Pinocchio'. The company is also involved in filming stop motion projects, a painstaking process that requires specially articulated puppets to be moved frame by frame on miniature sets. Demand for the company's studio services has grown exponentially over the past year giving an opportunity for high growth and substantially increased employment in the North West region. In trying to keep apace with demand for its studio services, the company has been looking to maximise the efficiency of the technical systems it uses in the filming process. Taking a lead from a recent technology developed for live action filming, the company is hoping to introduce a small scale version of the same system made suitable for stop motion by way of a bespoke modular approach. There are various technical issues to overcome but if successful the new system could radically affect the way much of stop motion is filmed in the future.