Stop-motion animations are undeniably cool. A string of strategic still photographs shown as a progression can be used as a type of special effect, allowing its subjects to bend the laws of reality. Often, this is used for funny videos, like this one:
Tony vs. Paul
The flying and moving-through-fences effects are so friggin’ cool, and the fact that you know exactly how they were achieved makes it perhaps more so.
Stop-motion is often used to show the construction of a project or artwork from beginning to end, which can appear as a growth effect, especially if the artist himself doesn’t appear in the images. The graffiti artist Blu has mastered the medium, though, by turning the process he captures into the artwork itself rather than only achieving completion at the end of the video. Blu works on public walls, and videos like this beg the question of how much time, energy, and paint he expends over the course of a single project. This probably would have gotten a lot of strange looks from passersby:
MUTO by Blu
Here, Blu collaborated with painter David Ellis in an old courtyard:
COMBO by Blu and David Ellis
It turns out that Ellis, too, is a a prolific stop-motion artist. Never has watching paint dry been so fascinating:
Daily by David Ellis
Truck by David Ellis