This animation within an animation is breaking people's minds

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Handmade stopmotion or 3D in Blender?

We've seen lots of interesting animation projects made in Blender recently. The free 3D modelling software is increasingly being used as an animation tool since Flow won Best Animated Feature Oscar last year – the surreal Il Baracchino on Amazon Prime is the latest example.

We recently saw a project that uses Blender to recreate the look of retro 2D animation. Now a 3D artist has surprised people by recreating the look of stop-motion animation in 3D for a video that breaks the fourth wall (and many people's minds in the process).

My dinosaur animation of a sinosauropteryx prima from r/blender

3D artist Craggolly, AKA Golly it's Crag, has created an animation of a dinosaur that initially appears to be a mixed-media stop-motion piece. Layers fall away, and the camera pulls back to reveal a studio setup in which an animator is seen posing what appears to be a felt model of a sinosauropteryx prima.

But there's another twist. Moments later, the studio setup is itself revealed to be a 3D animation created in Blender.

It's a surprising reveal that's leaving viewers delighted and confused in equal measure. Some feel that animating the process of a stopmotion is so meta that more layers could be coming. “OP animated me watching this on my phone and typing this comment,” one person jokes in the comments on Reddit.

In a video on TikTok, the artist has revealed how they created the video over a period of a month. To make the 3D animation look like stopmotion, Craggolly eschewed the usual process of interpolation (making key poses and letting the computer caculate the tweens). Instead, they posed the character frame by frame without editing previous frames, just like in tradition physical stopmotion.

The artist behind the video has been experimenting with his dinosaur character for some time. Several TikTok videos took off with animations that invite user interaction.

Inspired? See our guides to the best animation software and the best laptops for animation.

Joe Foley
Joe Foley
Freelance journalist and editor

Joe is a regular freelance journalist and editor at Creative Bloq. He writes news, features and buying guides and keeps track of the best equipment and software for creatives, from video editing programs to monitors and accessories. A veteran news writer and photographer, he now works as a project manager at the London and Buenos Aires-based design, production and branding agency Hermana Creatives. There he manages a team of designers, photographers and video editors who specialise in producing visual content and design assets for the hospitality sector. He also dances Argentine tango.

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