Josie Corben

Josie studied fine art BA at Bristol in the 1980s, and later a postgrad in fine art at Ecole des beaux arts Marseille. Being in the same city as the growing Aardman animation studio is how the seeds of her interest in stop-motion were sown with Sledgehammer and Grand Day Out being firm favourites.

She worked across various TV, short films and advertising campaign including Crapston Villas, Titch, PB Bear, Wombles, YoHo, Fireman Sam, to name a few, and eventually a short stint at Aardman.

Her first stop motion animation feature film was Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr Fox where she worked in the puppet maintenance team, looking after the Mackinnon & Saunders puppets and making duplicates, setting ups shots and doing on set repairs. She has since worked as lead armature maker on Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie, Wes Anderson’s Isle Of Dogs and most recently Claude Barras’ Sauvages.

She continues to work as a self-employed model maker, keeping as much as possible in the world of stop motion animation, but also making theatre puppets and animatronic creatures for film and TV.

Josie also shares her experience with students, delivering talks and tutorials at colleges in London, as well as being a regular visiting lecturer at NFTS on the model making for animation course for the last 6 years.