In the mid-1970s the influential stop-motion animators Stephan and Timothy Quay (born 1947) embarked on a series of dark graphite drawings, conceived as imaginary film posters. They kept their first autonomous art project hidden for decades, allowing only a few glimpses to transpire in some of their animation classics such as 'Nuctura Artificialia, Street of Crocodiles' and their live-project 'Witlold Lutoslawski--Paraphrase on: The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other'. In hindsight, the 'Black Drawings' can be considered as a blueprint for their future work. This book offers a first in-depth exploration of this important graphic series that reveals many of the themes and techniques that would come to life in their celebrated animation films.