In 2003 a web camera changed my life.

For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated with creating things. Sculpting animals out of Play-Doh, building castles with Lego’s, drawing & painting pictures.  My finished creations often sat on window sills, or my parents’ desks at work.  Some hung on the walls in my room and I’m sure others eventually wound up in the trash.  But in 2003, with the help of a web camera, I was able to bring my creations to life for the first time.

Perhaps it was divine intervention…or maybe just a coincidence that the web camera my parents bought came with video editing software that included a feature called “stop motion animation.” I had no idea what stop motion meant, but I knew exactly what animation meant, Toy Story.  However, it didn’t take me long to figure out that “stop motion” essentially means taking several pictures of an object, slightly moving the object, then taking several more pictures, and repeating this process several times.  When you’re finished,  you take all of these pictures, and combine them so each picture becomes a frame in a movie.  You can think of it as the digital version of those stick figure flip books.

Through stop motion animation, I began to bring to life Lego figures, Batman toys, and even characters I created out of construction paper, which coincidentally is how the original episodes of South Park were created. I have been bringing my artwork to life ever since.