YOUTUBE: The PEN Story

Anyone who goes on to YouTube and searches for "stop motion" with find a plethora of resulting videos. Many are very well done, even by amateur standards. However, the measure of a great stop motion film in this era a technology, in my opinion, is the depth of the viewer's "how'd they do that?!" statement.

The PEN Story is one such video. Using photographs that creep throughout a house with creative styling, the "story" begins with a black and white class photograph and follows one of the pupils through his life until he is an older man who returns for a class reunion where the first picture is re-shot. Using over 10,000 printing photos, the video is impressive not only visually in its layout, but also in the planning and forethought that were essential for such a project. The added touch of authenticity of having the photo quality improve and evolve with the man's life journey is also a stroke of creative genius.

Accompanied by the song "Down Below" by Johannes Stankowski, and directed by Takeuchi Taijin, the video is a over a year old, but has recently found legs again. If you haven't been one of those who has seen it, take a peek and know what everyone is talking about!

Sergio del Limónar

YOUTUBE: T-Shirt War

This video is one of the best stop-action videos I've seen in a long while. The two guys in the short film, T-Shirt War, change t-shirt many times - often with just a slight change in the design of the shirt - to create the desired effect. In my opinion, you can tell the quality of a stop-action film by how awe-inspired the inevitable "that must have taken forever" statement is. And I don't even want to think about it in this case.

Sergio del Limónar