Game Boy Music and Stop Motion Magic
Mon May 18, 2026
This issue was written and edited by Ben Gillbanks. Ben is a Web Developer with over 27 years experience of creating things online.
It’s been a busy week in the best possible way. I’ve been juggling lots of different projects recently and feeling more productive than I have in quite a while.
The biggest launch this week was a brand new Brush Ninja app: the Stop Motion Animator!
It’s been on my wish list for ages. I assumed it would be as complex as the main Brush Ninja animation maker, so I kept putting it off, but it turned out to be surprisingly straightforward. I was able to reuse a lot of work from the Pixel Camera app, along with ideas and interface elements from the Animated GIF maker, which sped things up massively.
The result is a simple version 1 that’s already a lot of fun to use. As always, it’s completely free, and I’d love to know what you think. I’ve already started work on updates and improvements.
I’ve also been expanding the Pixel Camera App. The next update adds support for recording short pixelated animated GIF videos, which has been surprisingly entertaining to experiment with.
Finally, I’ve started planning another related tool called Timelapse Animator. It shares a lot of the same foundations as the Stop Motion Animator, but focuses on capturing photos over time and turning them into timelapse animated GIFs. It’s still a few weeks away, but I’m very excited about the creative things people could make with it.
GB Studio Music
I’ve mentioned GB Studio before. It’s a fantastic free, open source game engine that lets you make games for the Game Boy. It’s a really fun, simple way to build games with a minimal interface, and it’s a great entry point into game development.
Recently, the main developer has been creating a new browser-based tool for making music for GB Studio games, which I find fascinating. It doesn’t really have a proper name yet, but I’ll call it Gameboy Studio Music for now.
I find it interesting for two reasons. First, it’s a genuinely nice music tool. Second, it runs entirely in the browser and is eventually going to be integrated into the main app. That suggests the rest of GB Studio could potentially run in a web browser too. As someone who makes web apps, I really want to see that happen.
If you want to try it out, I recommend opening the example songs and experimenting with them. The interface is fairly simple, but if you’ve never used tracker-style music software before, it can feel a little overwhelming at first.
I’ve played with tools like this before, but I don’t have a musical bone in my body, so creating a song from scratch feels almost impossible. Tweaking the example songs to see how they work, though, has been really fun.
I’d actually love to make something similar, albeit much simpler, for BeepMini, my web-based game-making app. This has definitely inspired me to stop procrastinating and finally get on with it. Especially since the current “music editor” is basically just a textarea you edit manually, which may be the least user-friendly thing I’ve ever made 😬.
Anyway, check it out. If you’ve ever fancied trying game development, you could do a lot worse than giving GB Studio a go whilst you’re there.
Wildwood Teaser Trailer
Laika have released a teaser trailer for their new film Wildwood. Their films are always a treat, and this one looks like they’ve really gone all out. Alongside Aardman, Laika are one of the few studios still regularly making stop motion films. Every Laika film feels like a small miracle given how much work goes into every shot.
As much as I love 3D animation, there’s something uniquely special about stop motion. Wildwood is based on a 2011 book of the same name, which I haven’t read, but the trailer makes it look like a dark, strange fantasy adventure that I immediately want to see more of.
You can feel the craftsmanship in every frame. The handmade sets, physical lighting, and tiny imperfections give stop motion a warmth and personality that’s difficult to replicate digitally.
If you like the look of it, the Laika channel also has a bunch of behind-the-scenes videos showing how these films are made. I’ve included a couple below, but there are loads more in the playlist.
Watch the Wildwood teaser trailer 🍿
Sparked Discoveries
Here’s a handful of links I found intriguing recently:
Budapest Courtyards (2014-2016)
This is a beautiful collection of photographs of courtyards in Budapest. The photographer, Marchand Meffre, has a distinctive style that captures the symmetry and atmosphere of these spaces brilliantly. I realise this won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but I find the architecture and patterns strangely mesmerising.
Constellation Draw
I know I talk about everything Neal makes, but his projects are always fun and unusual. This is a little interactive toy that I somehow completely missed when it launched. You can draw your own constellation and then see how it would appear in the night sky. Classic Neal. Simple, playful, and very easy to lose half an hour to.
100 Greatest Novels
The Guardian recently published a list of the “100 Greatest Novels of All Time”, which is obviously incredibly subjective, but still interesting to browse through. Apparently the rankings were decided using votes from authors, critics, and academics around the world.
I read a lot of novels, but I tend to avoid classics and more “high-brow” literary fiction, so I was curious to see what made the list. Out of the 100 books, I’ve only read one: George Orwell’s 1984. I’ve heard of plenty of the others, but most of them don’t really tempt me. Let me know if you think I’m missing out though!
Currently…
We’re thinking about visiting Liverpool for a short break later this year, so we’ve been listening to a lot of Beatles songs recently. They were obviously massive in the 60s, but a surprising amount of their music still feels fresh today. It’s also been fun introducing it to our 10-year-old.
It was also amusing to see Paul McCartney performing on Saturday Night Live in the US this weekend and still absolutely going for it in his 80s. I still don’t really understand why Saturday Night Live is so popular. I don’t think the humour translates especially well to the UK. Still, we happened to switch over just as McCartney’s set started. It was also fun spotting Chad Smith from the Red Hot Chili Peppers drumming for him.