Remember 2020, when everybody was trying out new hobbies for the first time just to find something to occupy the endless hours stuck at home? Some people just played video games, others picked up potentially lucrative side hustles, and others, like Aleia Murawski and Sam Copeland, created one of the most unique and cinematic TikTok accounts on the entire platform.


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Slimetown USA is home to incredibly elaborate and beautifully shot short videos featuring snails inhabiting miniature worlds. The production value is incredibly impressive, and the snails have been filmed eating at diners, riding the subway, participating in their own version of The Great British Bake Off and sailing on the Titanic. 



Murawski and Copeland explain that the project has been “slowly evolving over time,” adding, “Making these little spaces that the snails inhabit is our way of processing the world, and ‘Slimetown’ gives us a framework to fill in: Who lives here? What is lurking in the shadows? Where do the snails go to unwind? What are the strange and small moments that make this place feel like home or make this place come alive?”



Many of their earlier videos are recreations of scenes from iconic horror movies — Scream, The Exorcist — so it makes sense that 1980s and 1990s horror and sci-fi movies are a big source of inspiration for the pair. “We are continually turning to and studying 1980s and 1990s horror and sci-fi movies that utilize practical effects and miniatures. As we work to develop this story of Slimetown that is tonally sweet and tender, but also haunting and unsettling, we draw so much inspiration from studios like Industrial Light and Magic that created the most suspenseful and captivating effects in miniature,” Murawski and Copeland tell me.




Having grown their following to more than 600,000 followers since posting their first TikTok in September 2020, the creative duo says they just feel “so lucky when anyone connects to this work,” with Murawski adding, “And when I try to explain what we make to a stranger in real life, I am immediately reminded of how absurd this is and how lucky we are to be able to do it.”


The account hasn’t devolved into a gallery of brand deals and collaborations, but the duo have partnered with one brand, creating a video of a snail riding the subway for Burberry — naturally, the snail has its own miniature Burberry handbag beside it throughout the clip. Burberry has also partnered with other unique TikTok accounts like Sylvaniandrama, an account dedicated to telling stories using Sylvanian Family figurines.



The cast consists of eight adult snails who each play a variety of characters, and each video takes around a month to make, of which the pair says, “It’s a slow process but feels very fitting considering our talent!”


Murawski and Copeland started collaborating in 2015, and examples of art featuring our shelled friends can be found on Murawski’s Instagram from the latter half of that year, with the content becoming more and more snail-centric over the years, culminating in the release of Snail World, a book featuring snapshots from an “alternate universe where snails drink bubble tea at the mall, hit tiny bongs and get beamed up into flying saucers.”



The pair’s skills complement each other nicely — Copeland’s ability to create intricate sets and props is astonishing, and Murawski’s imagination and skill in set design come together to create an eerie, yet engrossing, alternate reality in Slimetown USA. Or as they put it, “Through the process of remaking a world in miniature, illuminated by artificial light, they highlight the drama, surreality and joy that is found in the everyday.”


With, of course, a fair amount of slime mixed in for good measure.