stop motion

Is there anything cooler than combining art forms? No, there’s not.

If you don’t believe me than take a look at this stop-motion animation by BLUBLU.org. Layering together the digital world of video with the physical world of street art, this animation is an artist’s dream. Along with the visual components, the sound-scaping of this video is just as engaging, and while the end might be a little cryptic, that’s not likely going to stop you from sharing this video with everyone you know.

I don’t even want to think about how many hours this video took to make, or how many bottles of paint…. all I know is that it was well worth it.

Ever been told you have a child-like voice? An innocent voice? An annoying voice? Unfortunately for most women, our high-pitched voices are considered inferior in the eyes of society. This animation, created for a NPR report, interviews several women who talk about their experiences with how they’re treated because of their voice. Using poll numbers and research articles to prove its point, the video explains how society’s preference for deeper voices have led to unfortunate side effects for women–like vocal fry, another vocal tick women have that’s considered “annoying.”

The video is made by Kellie Anderson, who specializes in making cool animations out of paper. If you’re curious about her production process, here’s a blog post that explains how the video was made.

An innocuous Friday afternoon on the bus goes awry in this autobiographical animation uploaded by Vimeo user duplo. Using nothing but a dry erase board and her father’s tripod camera, she animated a particularly intense story that involves car crashes, helicopters, and a panicky bus driver. And in case the story sounds too outlandish to believe, she even includes real photos at the end. Although the video is pretty old (uploaded eight years ago), it’s a clever look at creative storytelling–and what a story it is, too!

Nintendo’s 1989 Power Glove, a game controller that let you control games via a nifty glove, was a commercial failure. Most people don’t even remember the Power Glove or that it even existed–except for Robot Chicken animator Dillon Markey. Markey has admired the Power Glove since he was a child, and when he realized he could modify his most precious childhood heirloom into something he could use today, he jumped on the chance. With the help of an engineer and a few friends, he modified the original Power Glove into a tool used for stop motion animation. “People have all but forgotten about [the Power Glove].” he says. “Half the time people see me wearing it and they’re like, ‘What is that?’ It’s just one of those things that’s completely in the ether. It barely exists anymore.”

The works of stop motion animation I’ve been most familiar with typically use the medium as a way to give a particular visual aesthetic to storytelling, particularly lighthearted ones. But until I saw the work of Raphael Linden, I hadn’t seen much use of the medium for more open-ended abstraction than straightforward narration (disclosure and all that: I’m acquainted with the artist). “Homunculus with Milk” sets a range of stop-motion object studies to the similarly playful music of Brainfeeder music don Flying Lotus for an enjoyable collage of self-reconstructing food, magic bowls and bottles, and the director himself sporting no small degree of mad genius swag. If this was up your alley, give its forerunner “Threshold Dances” a look, too.