Guitarist/filmmaker/Phish fan Nick Setteducato has spent the last few years putting together a short music video/stop-motion video based on the Phish universe dubbed 2016: A Space Oddity. This must-see video features a Phish-y soundtrack and plenty of references (oh, about 500 or so) not only to the beloved foursome from Vermont but also David Bowie, Star Wars and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Carve out five minutes to get your Monday off to a fun start with 2016: A Space Oddity:

Setteducato is a New Jersey native who moved to New Zealand eight years ago to work with filmmaker Peter Jackson. Nick is not only an extremely talented filmmaker, but he tore it up on guitar with northeast jam acts Scarecrow Collection and Give Us The Money Lebowski before heading to the Land Of The Long White Cloud. Nick has started the Lucy’s Place Productions page on Facebook to share updates on his video/art production projects. If you like his creations as much as we do, it’s a must like page and he has encouraged those who are picking up what he’s laying down to donate to the Mockingbird Foundation.

2016: A Space Oddity is the follow-up to a similar short from 2014 titled Flight Of The Mockingbird:

We spoke to Nick about how he came up with the idea behind the video. “The video I made back in 2014, Flight of the Mockingbird, was just a fun way for me to learn the process of making a short stop-motion video, and to combine that with my unhealthy Phish obsession. This new video is really just an extension of that. I was very encouraged by the positive response to that first video, so I thought I’d try something a little more ambitious for the next one. I settled on this idea of an absurd, surreal, space adventure inspired by episodes of the great ’60s British TV series Thunderbirds, and set to a short, upbeat instrumental track. The ideas just flowed from there. Maybe another Phish song? Maybe a killer asteroid or a wormhole, and a “Big Black Furry Creature From Mars”? Maybe Fishman is the pilot, and maybe he ends up in a giant bowl of cereal? You know, the usual stuff…Also, my dog Otis Redding makes a cameo as the alien.”

Exactly how long did this clip take to make and what was that process like? “I started story-boarding ideas for this video about a week after posting Flight of the Mockingbird online. That was in 2014. So, it has taken nearly two and a half years from concept to completion. In reality though, most of last year I was so busy working on projects for my boss, Peter Jackson, that I was just too exhausted to work on 2016: A Space Oddity in my precious spare time. But I have found that working for Peter is also very inspiring, and I decided to adopt and apply some of his work ethic to my own projects. That meant lots of evenings and weekends building cardboard sets, making puppets, learning software, and of course the slow process of animating frame-by-frame. I’m no Ray Harryhausen, but I look at this project as just another learning experience that will help encourage and motivate me to make the next one,” Setteducato told us.

Phish begins Summer Tour on June 22 in St. Paul, Minnesota.