One of my personality traits is I like seeing how things 'work' - or how they were made - which means that stop motion films are perfect for me. I like to imagine being with the film maker as they line up every shot, adjusting every tiny detail. Obsess much?

Here's some of my favourite YouTube animation vids.

An amateur stop-motion video about a man in a wolf outfit chasing a paper mache pig (yeah, I know). This went on to inspire a major advertising campaign for Olympus, "PEN Story":

This proves to be so successful, they follow it up with another ad ("PEN Giant") one year later. I love the interaction with the different characters in the billboards.

Here's two more of my favourites - again with similar styles:

Watch to the end - there's a mini "making of" section which just makes you realise how much work went into it. (If you're into that, there's a whole mini-site about how it was made)

Here's a similarly-styled video, using a smaller canvas - a bed:

And now for something completely different, "8-bit Trip", which apparently took 1500 hours (and a whole lot of Lego) to make.

Funny how stop motion is one of the earliest animation techniques, but still continues to inspire and be full of creative ideas today.