Good old stop-motion :>)
I'm sure the two of you had a fun time with that ( focus or not ).
Not sure why I never tried my hands on that, being into film making for almost two decades and having had plenty of LEGO around. Now I think of it, I definitely considered doing this, with LEGO, might even have gave it half a try but I was probably too impatient.
I love the work of Ray Harryhausen as well as the films by Czech stop-motion master Jan Svankmajer. You migh wanna check out his take on Alice in Wonderland ( Alice, 1990 ) if you haven't heard of him.
P.S. All my game making posts can be found on my blog page. I only got into this a month ago though, after having dabbled with it a decade or two ago ( Fun fact: my younger brother is a successful game maker. I was an ( unsuccessful ) filmmaker who turned blogger / crypto investor and now game maker - among other things )
See you around!
I've never heard of those film makers before, but I'll spend some time soon to look them up.
I have a few games in various stages of progression right now, two mobile and one old-style analogue table-top. I haven't posted much of them because... well... because... but I'll get that corrected soon!