When avid skier Philipp Klein Herrero had to cancel a ski trip in the mountains, he decided to set up his GoPro and bring the mountains to him. The result: Freeride Skiing at Home. Filmed from above, this stop-motion short is a delightful escape from being stuck inside. He explains:
Just before the current health situation locked us in, I was about to go Freeriding with my family. It was supposed to be the big adventure of the year, the one I had been eagerly awaiting for a year. Therefore, the lockdown had me thinking about skiing the whole time, so I started to think how I could ski without leaving my living room…
I made this video to cheer up a little and spread positivity during these times.
Statues and buildings float, Slinkys connect articulated buses, and carnival rides get supersized in Vienna, Austria with help from Argentine director Fernando Livschitz of Black Sheep Films. Animation and live-action blend fantastical sights with reality in Vienna is like…
Watch the Upper Belvedere levitate in layers, dancers magically don colorful dance clothes mid-jump at the Wiener Staatsoper (Vienna State Opera), St. Stephen’s Cathedral becomes a swing carousel, and more. Livschitz specializes in transposing “fantasy elements into meticulously captured contemporary backdrops.”
In the 13th century, Genghis Khan embarked on a mission to take over Eurasia, swiftly conquering countries and drawing them into his empire. But, legend has it that there was one obstacle that even he couldn’t overcome: a towering wall of ice, grown by locals across a mountain pass.
Learn more about how ancient cultures created glaciers high above their villages, sources for reliable water to nuture their crops. Watch How to Grow a Glacier, a TED-Ed by M Jackson, with animation by Artrake Studio.
The [artificial ice] stupas are created in winter, using runoff or spring water that’s been piped underground and downslope. The water is released at night, when temperatures can drop below zero degrees Fahrenheit. It shoots through a sprinkler into the air and freezes. In the course of the season, elaborate conical structures take shape, with the contours of the drip castles that kids make on the beach.
Ice stupas can reach the height of a ten-story building. They start to melt in March, and at higher elevations—some villages in Ladakh sit more than fifteen thousand feet above sea level—the process can last through July. The meltwater helps farmers get through the crucial spring planting season, when they sow vegetables, barley, and potatoes. (Rainfall in the region averages only around four inches a year.)
See how Wangchuk’s plans for a desert oasis with help from the conceptual animations inthis Mashable video:
Clangers is a BAFTA-winning British stop-motion children’s series about “small creatures living in peace and harmony on – and inside – a small, hollow planet, far, far away.” It first-aired in 1969 and returned to television in 2015. In this 50th anniversary celebration episode, which aired in 2019, renowned space scientist Dr. Maggie Aderin-Pocock plays an astronaut that visits the Clangers. Note: The clip, narrated by Sir Michael Palin, seems to include a few more ads than are usually found in a ten-minute clip for kids, but it’s still a sweet celebration of the series. Follow it with this Clangers clip of Aderin-Pocock talking about the astronaut puppet created in her likeness.
And for those not yet familiar, an introduction to the Clangers from the video description:
The Clangers are an inquisitive family of creatures who live on a Little Blue Planet in outer space. The pink, space mouse-like creatures, who communicate with high-pitched whistles, are supportive of one another as they embark on surreal adventures, meet peculiar new friends, and explore curiosities they experience in the world. The stop-motion animated series aims to teach kids such qualities as inventiveness and kindness.
What is symmetry in math? And how do you test for degrees of symmetry? Learn about “the mathematical ordering of form and the symmetrical properties of objects” with Symmetry by Charles and Ray Eames. Animation by Glen Fleck, with music composed and performed by Elmer Bernstein.
Symmetry was one of five shorts featured in a 1961 collection of educational films created for an interactive exhibition called Mathematica: A World of Numbers… and Beyond at Los Angeles’ California Museum of Science and Industry, now called the California Science Center.
Symmetry (from Greek συμμετρία symmetria “agreement in dimensions, due proportion, arrangement”) in everyday language refers to a sense of harmonious and beautiful proportion and balance. In mathematics, “symmetry” has a more precise definition, and is usually used to refer to an object that is invariant under some transformations; including translation, reflection, rotation or scaling. Although these two meanings of “symmetry” can sometimes be told apart, they are intricately related…
This favorite is an old tale set in a palace in India. What happens when you double the grains of wheat on each square of a chessboard? Watch 2ⁿ – “a story about the exponential growth of numbers raised to powers.”
Follow the main character as he struggles to understand the periodic table, the elements, and chemistry for the first time. After a rough start, he listens to the teacher and, with some contemplation, begins to understand how everything is made from atoms and their different combinations.
In this case, he considers the water molecule, “composed of two hydrogen atoms, each linked by a single chemical bond to an oxygen atom.” This leads to how he thinks about elephants, plants, and everything around him.
The animation comes with Spanish and Catalan labels, too.
Cairo-based tinkerer and stop-motion filmmaker dina A. Amin created this short animation featuring four gadgets that she took apart piece by piece: A walkman, a phone, a hairdryer, and a camera. See them up close before they scatter into neatly arranged parts. It’s an extension of her Tinker Friday stop-motion animations.
Tiny screws, wires, gears, levers, springs, circuit boards, buttons and bits. What parts do you see and how many of them are there?
I’ve been enjoying Amin’s sponsored series of guessing game videos on Instagram. Click the ‘play’ icons in the IGTV videos below to watch and guess for each object:
A shepherd lives alone in a secluded valley, accompanied only by his flock of sheep and his loyal dog. The shepherd has a remarkable ability: he shears the sheep and creates clouds with the wool, which rain upon the valley, keeping it verdant and fruitful with plants and nature.
But when the shepherd passes away, the valley begins to become barren, and the sheep are in desperate need of shearing. The dog must find a way to continue the shepherd’s work — or risk the decimation of his home.
Created by students from the French animation school MoPA — Valerian Desterne, Juan Olarte Zuniga, Carlos Osmar Salazar Tornero, Lucile Palomino, Juan Pablo de la Rosa Zalamea, Celine Collin and Rebecca Black — this wise, gentle animated short uses its serene, whimsical visuals, storytelling clarity and an impeccable score to weave a beautiful parable about nature, balance, loyalty and legacy.
It charms the eyes and ears with its soft, rounded shapes and beautifully clear colors, rendering both characters and settings with sensitivity, grace and keen attention to detail and gesture to communicate emotion.
Whether it’s in how the shepherd pets the dog or how the canine wags its tails, the love between the pair is well-worn and palpable, as is the dog’s grief and bewilderment when the shepherd passes on. Yet there’s also soft, good-spirited humor to be found, as when the sheep puff up with their exuberantly overgrown wool.
And like the best of animation, which uses its ability to imagine anything to create magic beyond realism, there’s also a lovely sense of surprise and delight in its flights of fancy, as when viewers watch wool become life-giving clouds, with a whimsical lightness and buoyancy.
But it also doesn’t shy away from the problems and dilemmas found even in this little corner of paradise, and when it becomes clear that the dog must find a way to continue his master’s work.
“After the Rain” really excels with its storytelling, and though its running time is less than nine minutes, it possesses the profundity, wit and wisdom of much larger narratives. Like many great stories of children’s literature, it taps into the archetypal and symbolic, using universal emotions and dilemmas in service of moral and emotional clarity.
Using charm, humor and a sense of pastoral innocence, “After the Rain” gently teaches a lesson about the interconnection of nature, as well as the way we honor a loved one’s legacy and meaningful commitments. It places living beings with agency and the ability to act as a crucial part of the larger ecosystem, and in a way, implies that we are all shepherds looking after nature, picking up and continuing the work and responsibilities of the good spirits before us.
Geographer turned Software Engineer, looking to shape the invisible systems that guide our world. Professionally interested in mapping, data visualization, values-based programming, and STEAM evangelism. Personally interested in crochet, knitting, textiles, and archery.
