Awesome Stop Motion

Jonathan Hodgson traces the patterns and stories woven into a rug – and perhaps the energy of a playful pet chasing something on the living room floor – with this simple but fun video, backed by the rhythms of musicians Randy Nimri and Fares Abbasi.

(PG-13: Language) The creators of Robot Chicken teamed up with Brian Cranston for this Crackle original. Cranston plays Titanium Rex, an aging superhero leading the apathetic and dense members of The League of Freedom. The first three episodes are already online.

PermaGrin Films’ tribute to childhood is one of the most complex stop-motion/time-lapse videos ever. It was filmed over the course of one-and-a-half years and in various locations. We’re not fans of the Pure Imagination remix they used, but we can’t argue with the result.

James Stewart and Nev Bezaire’s wonderfully creepy and well executed stop-motion short follows a young girl who finds herself trapped inside the walls of her home, after being kidnapped by a group of evil foxes. Want more? It’s being made into a feature film.

Passover may be long since gone, but this stitched, stop-motion animation of Passover folk song Chad Gadya by Nina Paley and Theodore Gray was just too impressive to pass over. Buy the matzoh cover animation cells here.

(PG-13) This comedy from the animators behind Robot Chicken is what South Park might be like if it were made from clay instead of paper. Voiced by Nick Swardon, T.J. Miller, Rob Riggle, Mila Kunis, Bob Odenkirk, Danny McBride, and more.

Pete “Petey Boy” Simon created this whimsical stop-motion animation, in which his friend Tom Offer-Westort’s facial hair grows longer and longer as he makes his way through a magical book. Support Pete’s videos on Patreon.

Swimming Design promoted Terada Mokei’s 1:100 architectural figures by using the paper models to recreate the world famous Shibuya Crossing, i.e. the jam-packed intersection news channels often show when talking about Tokyo.

(PG-13 language) Mascha Halberstad’s stop-motion animated short pokes fun at the overdone style of big budget Hollywood trailers, though in this case, there’s a slight mismatch between the hyperbole and the hero of the film.

Stop-motion master PES grills some mussels that he picked up from Muscle Beach. They’re really meaty, but we’re not sure if we’d want to eat them. A funny commercial for Lipton iced tea. What was the tea made of?!

Video artists Dropbear created the stop-motion animation for Opiuo’s electro-funk track Quack Fat using 240 audio cassettes, 5,600 feet of video tape, 108 floppy discs and an old Sony Walkman. The tapes and discs make good pixels.

A boy narrates what happens when a peaceful city is attacked by the dreaded Gray. Rogier Wieland’s awesome stop-motion short film for LEGO China keeps things fresh by constantly switching scales and perspectives.

The amazing music video for the lead single from Son Lux’s upcoming album Bones. The Made Shop’s Nathan Johnson and Katie Chastain used foam boards, pins and rubberized thread to mimic primitive polygonal graphics.

Bored at your desk? Got a hole punch, a notepad, and plenty of patience? Like artist Scott Blake, you too could create your own flipbook animation using these common office supplies. Too lazy for that? Just buy one that’s already made up.

Harris Loureiro spent six months making this stop-motion Transformers fan film, using nothing more than mech toys, cardboard, campy rock music and cartoon voice acting. Michael Bay could learn a thing or two from Harris.

Woodworker Frank Howarth shot nearly 6,000 stills, then assembled this stop-motion animation to create the illusion that his table saw and its accessories have lives of their own, and require no human intervention to operate.

Digital Wizards Studios used over $100,000 worth of LEGO to recreate some of the most memorable scenes from Jurassic Park. Though in the spirit of LEGO films and games they added humourous twists here and there as well.

A spot-on recreation of the classic clock tower sequence from Back to the Future, painstakingly animated using stop motion by Macro LEGO Universe. It’s so well done that we want to see the entire movie trilogy in LEGO.

Domino master FlippyCat uses his dominoes in a different way than normal, instead of just knocking them over, he uses stop-motion animation to make a gigantic working Etch-a-Sketch. Then he knocks them over.

The music video for Let Go, a single from Afro-pop band The Very Best. Pixel artist Johan Karlgren of Päppas Parlor used Perler beads to create the 8-bit style stop motion animation.

Filmmaker Wilkie Branson created this beautiful and heartfelt animated short by hand-cutting more than 4,000 individual printouts of dance movements from his other film, then compositing them into larger than life backdrops.

“Take a trip to the Photon Zoo” with Darren Pearson’s impressive collection of light paintings. Lightspeed is the sequel to Darren’s 2014 video Light Goes On. The song is Clouds by Dead Horse Beats.

Despite its deceptively simple visual style, Director Péter Vácz award-winning short film is a masterpiece of storytelling that will quickly draw you in to its world, as it brilliantly explores the tenuous nature of interpersonal relationships.