Fantastic Mr. Fox is a stop-motion animated film based on the Roald Dahl book of the same name. It was directed by Wes Anderson, best known as the live-action director of films such as Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums and The Darjeeling Limited, and written by Anderson and Noah Baumbach.

The story revolves around a clever Fox (voiced by George Clooney) and his elaborate plan to steal from the farms of three wealthy, cruel landowners - Boggis, Bunce and Bean. Several other actors who had previously worked with director Anderson - including Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, Willem Dafoe and Owen Wilson - also provided voices for the film. Though this is the first entirely-animated film Anderson has made, he did include a few sequences containing stop-motion animation in his 2004 movie The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.

Traditional stop-motion animation involves shooting a doll or puppet, then moving it slightly and shooting it again, creating the illusion of movement when all the images are put together. The same technique has been used since the birth of film-making, including the 1993 classic King Kong, and was repopularized in America in the 1990s by the runaway success of The Nightmare Before Christmas. (Hungarian-born filmmaker George Pal is typically credited with inventing the process while working in Holland on advertising projects).http://www.pri.org/arts-entertainment/movies/fantastic-mr-fox-stop-motion-animation1743.html

In Fantastic Mr. Fox, small dolls were used for most of the characters, and they were placed in model homes which served as sets. When possible, actual objects - like sand or small plants - were used to give the animation a more lifelike quality.http://kottke.org/09/10/the-making-of-fantastic-mr-fox