Like Alice in Lewis Carroll's classic tale, the heroine of an animated short titled "Dot" has to fight her way through a small-scale Wonderland. But this Wonderland is no mere literary creation. Rather, it's a stop-action stage that draws upon the latest in technology, including a smart phone, a take-anywhere microscope and a 3-D printer. The Nokia N8 smart phone was equipped with a CellScope diagnostic-quality microscope to make the movie, frame by frame. The 3-D printer created half-inch-tall (9-millimeter-tall) plastic figurines of Dot, a girl who finds her world of coins, pins and pencil shavings collapsing around her.
Dot was created at Aardman Animations (which has produced the "Wallace and Gromit" films and other animated goodies), and she's already won recognition from Guinness World Records as the "smallest stop-motion animation character in a film." Let's see ... if a 9-millimeter-tall character wins an Academy Award, how tiny would the Oscar be?
More wonderlands on the Web:
- Nobel Intent: Photo tour of the Large Hadron Collider
- Alphadesigner: Mapping stereotypes (via GeekPress)
- Nat'l Geographic: Auroral shows | More auroras on SpaceWeather
Tip o' the Log to Discovery News' Tracy Staedter Check out my other postings on Cosmic Log, and connect with me via Twitter (@b0yle) or Facebook.
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