Did you know that the Tin Woodman was once made out of meat?

The Tin Woods is a stop motion short film produced by Nick Boxwell and Mattzilla Duron in Portland, OR. Drawing inspiration from the classic books of L. Frank Baum, it explores the origins of how Nick Chopper came to be the Tin Woodman of Oz. 

Mattzilla is a sculptor and creature designer who has worked in the puppet fabrication department of stop motion studios such as Laika and ShadowMachine for over 16 years. Nick has been a multimedia designer for 20 years and worked in a variety of industries.  Nick wrote the screenplay for The Tin Woods 10 years ago after seeing an amazing Tin Man sculpture that Mattzilla had created, and knew immediately what part of the Tin Woodman's story he wanted to tell. 

Nick Says of the Film: “Most people don’t realize that the original author wrote many more stories set in the land of Oz, and some of his ideas were way ahead of their time. I really want to share one of these stories and perhaps draw attention back to those original books. As someone who recently lost a body part, I think the Tin Woodman’s story is a reminder that when we put ourselves back together after trauma, we might be a different person, but that doesn’t mean we are no longer ourselves.”

Mattzilla and Nick have developed the story and puppets on their own time as a passion project. Mattzilla has all of the tools and materials needed to finish the puppets and Nick has all of the equipment and skill to shoot and edit this film. But in order to fully make their vision come to life they needed some extra funding in order to build the large sets and score the music for the final film. They chose to get production off the ground by crowdfunding through Kickstarter which successfully funded on Oct 3rd 2018. Besides the ability to stream the final film backers were able to receive rewards such as artwork, props and puppets form the production.