I'm an animation director and animator based in Calgary, Canada, with 11+ years in the industry. After 4 years as an art director at an advertising agency, I moved into motion design — and eventually found my true focus: stop motion animation. Stop motion is a craft that demands patience, vision, and a human touch — qualities that feel increasingly rare in a world saturated with AI-generated imagery. That's exactly what makes it powerful. When a brand embraces stop motion, it signals something different: craft, character, and a genuine human presence that competitors relying on digital shortcuts simply can't replicate. It's also more versatile than people expect. I've brought stop motion to utility brands, beer companies, marketing conferences, nonprofits, and libraries — the range of applications is genuinely wide. I take every project from concept through to final delivery, giving you a single point of contact and a cleaner, simpler production process.

Michael Kohlweg

I'm an animation director and animator based in Calgary, Canada, with 11+ years in the industry. After 4 years as an art director at an advertising agency, I moved into motion design — and eventually found my true focus: stop motion animation. Stop motion is a craft that demands patience, vision, and a human touch — qualities that feel increasingly rare in a world saturated with AI-generated imagery. That's exactly what makes it powerful. When a brand embraces stop motion, it signals something different: craft, character, and a genuine human presence that competitors relying on digital shortcuts simply can't replicate. It's also more versatile than people expect. I've brought stop motion to utility brands, beer companies, marketing conferences, nonprofits, and libraries — the range of applications is genuinely wide. I take every project from concept through to final delivery, giving you a single point of contact and a cleaner, simpler production process.

Available to hire

I’m an animation director and animator based in Calgary, Canada, with 11+ years in the industry. After 4 years as an art director at an advertising agency, I moved into motion design — and eventually found my true focus: stop motion animation.
Stop motion is a craft that demands patience, vision, and a human touch — qualities that feel increasingly rare in a world saturated with AI-generated imagery. That’s exactly what makes it powerful. When a brand embraces stop motion, it signals something different: craft, character, and a genuine human presence that competitors relying on digital shortcuts simply can’t replicate.
It’s also more versatile than people expect. I’ve brought stop motion to utility brands, beer companies, marketing conferences, nonprofits, and libraries — the range of applications is genuinely wide.
I take every project from concept through to final delivery, giving you a single point of contact and a cleaner, simpler production process.

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Language

English
Fluent

Work Experience

Art Director at AdFarm
July 31, 2013 - October 31, 2016
Motion Designer at Freelance
October 31, 2016 - June 18, 2022
Created and executed long and short form animations for a wide range of clients.
Animation Director at Mountain Fold Studio
June 19, 2022 - Present
I founded my own animation studio where focus shifted to video creation using stop motion animation.

Education

Bachelor of Design at Alberta University of the Arts
September 2, 2010 - June 20, 2013
Majored in Advertising with a minor in graphic design.

Qualifications

Add your qualifications or awards here.

Industry Experience

Agriculture & Mining, Energy & Utilities, Media & Entertainment, Non-Profit Organization, Professional Services
    uniE608 Calgary Public Library: Page
    This short stop motion, animated video will transport you to a magical world. When Calgary Public Library's doors close, Page goes on an epic journey to embrace growth and discovery. When we have access to different books, ideas, and ways of thinking, we have endless opportunities. We used stop motion animation to tell this story. The medium reflects the tactile nature of holding a real book and turning its pages. We spent 5 nights filming in the Calgary's Central Public Library, and what a dream location it was! Everything in this short film was shot in camera on location.
    uniE608 Direct Energy: Demystifying Fees
    Direct Energy approached us to help bring their idea to life using cut paper. We were hooked! What a dream it was to create everything - people, environments, the wee paper cat - from paper. What spoke to us most about this project was how rough the edges and seams could appear. We never wanted to gloss over the fact that we were in a paper world, and we wanted the paper to shine as a material.
    uniE608 Welcome to SocialWest!
    Most SocialNext speakers focused on AI that year, so we intentionally took an opposite approach. Everything was made by hand, with each frame meticulously moved by a human, embodying the human touch that contrasts with the digital topics being discussed.‍ We focused on 4 central themes that stood out to us while attending these conferences: educate, inspire, connect, and engage.
    uniE608 Heartland Polymers: How It's Made
    In this explainer animation we were tasked with taking the very complex process of creating Heartland Polymer pellets and communicating that process in a way that an every day human could understand.
    uniE608 Banded Peak Brewing: Skiing
    We teamed up with Banded Peak Brewing to create these short animations. In Canada sometime we bring a can of beer or two up on the ski hill. What better way to connect with the beer drinker than to personify a can doing just that!
    uniE608 Mountain Fold Studio Holiday Cookies
    Every holiday season, we bake and deliver homemade salted shortbread cookies to our clients. This year, we kicked it up a notch by using the cookies to make an animation. Now our clients can enjoy our handmade frames in a tasty way! We first digitally animated a loop of the snowflakes, exported each frame and cut them out. After baking the cookies, we sprinkled powdered sugar on each stencil to get the effect. Each frame was one cookie, and we used 24 cookies to complete this animation!