Brett Malden aka "bmw"

Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now

Stop motion animation has a long history in film. It was often used to show objects moving as if by magic. The first instance of the stop motion technique can be credited to Albert E. Smith and J. Stuart Blackton for The Humpty Dumpty Circus (1897), in which a toy circus of acrobats and animals comes to life.

Amazingly creative and entertaining, check out the following two extreme examples of this tedious hands-on media art form. Proof-positive of just how valid and relevant a 100+ year old film technique is in today’s Digital Era. From the world’s smallest stop-motion animation entitled ‘Dot’ using cellscope technology,

to ‘Gulp’, the world’s largest. Even more crazy is the fact that every frame of both animated productions was created by the same dynamic duo of Sumo Science and Aardman and were shot with a Nokia N8 phone with its 12 megapixel camera and Carl Zeiss optics. And like I have always said, mobile devices will not only ‘Rule the Air’ as Verizon claims in their current ad campaign but soon ‘Rule the World’.

‘Gulp’ is a short film depicting a fisherman going about his daily catch and in the process gets swallowed by a big fish (sound familiar-like Jonah and the Whale familar?). Shot on location using three of the Finnish company’s Nokia N8 handsets suspended on a crane in an 11,000-square-foot area at Pendine Beach in South Wales. The film has broken a world record for the ‘largest stop-motion animation set’. Take a look at some of the behind the scenes photos and videos to see how much hard work actually went into this project.

The animated short is part of Nokia’s campaign to highlight the photo and video capabilities of its handsets. Earlier this summer, the company announced the winner of its Nokia Shorts 2011 contest, which was a video entitled “Splitscreen: A Love Story.” The grand prize was $10,000 and a premiere at the Edinburgh Film Festival for all finalists.

CREDITS:
The Animation and Director Team: Sumo Science
The Production Company: Aardman
The Sand Artists: Sandinyoureye
The Phone: Nokia N8

This entry was posted on Friday, August 5th, 2011 at 11:23 pm. It is filed under Thoughts and tagged with Aardman, Alb, Albert E. Smith, Carl Zeiss, cellscope, DOT, Gulp, Humpty Dumpty Circus, J. Stuart Blackton, Nokia, Nokia N8, Pendine Beach, Sandinyoureye, sandsculptureice, South Wales, stop action, stop motion, stop motion animation, sumoScience. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.