Nokia N8 makes the world’s smallest stop motion animation – Dot

GLOBAL – The Nokia N8 is a rather wonderful thing, specially its imaging prowess. But I don’t think anyone would have expected it to be involved in the making of the world’s smallest stop motion character animation. Certified by the Book of Guinness World Records, the animation was created by the folks behind Wallace and Gromit, Aardman Animation. In an ambitious project, they combined the might of the Nokia N8′s image capture ability with the concept behind Professor Fletcher’s invention of the CellScope. Read on after the jump to see how it was done and watch the movie.

Shooting only four seconds of footage per day, the team worked painstakingly to produce the movie. Rather than create a model for the lead character which could be manipulated (a la Wallace and Gromit), the team instead created 50 versions of her. Each Dot model started life as a sketch on paper which was then turned into a 3D render before being printed on a 3D printer. The models were then attached to a metal rod before being painted – the artist involved in painting basically couldn’t speak or breath as he applied his brushstrokes to the 9mm high models of Dot.

Professor Fletcher’s invention of the Cellscope enables doctors in remote places to take pictures of blood samples with a mobile phone camera before sending them off for analysis. It is currently being tested in Uganda and has proven successful at helping to detect Malaria. Whilst the concept worked for Aardman, they had to come up with their own variant in order to get the required depth of field for the images. With a few thousand frames shot on the N8′s 12-megapixel camera, these were then stitched together to create the finished movie.

If you haven’t seen it already, check out Dot below. Further down you’ll find the making of video, which is well worth a watch too. Suggest any more potential entries for Nokia devices in the Book of Guiness World Records in the comments below.

Dot

The making of Dot