The world's smallest movie, and how it was made

'A Boy and His Atom' is not just a movie short, it's a movie small. The images you see are made up of single atoms, magnified over 100 million times to make them visible.

The project came about after, last year, IBM scientists announced the creation of the world's smallest magnetic memory bit, made of just 12 atoms. That project was more about giving devices extra computing memory than art - but the nanophysicists involved decided to explore the limits of filmmaking at the same time.

To make the animation, the team moved molecules around, one at a time, to make a picture

To make the animation, the team moved molecules around, one at a time, to make a picture

Used their scanning tunneling microscope to move single atoms a frame at a time, they created the cute film, which has now now been verified by Guinness World Records as The World’s Smallest Stop-Motion Film.

Want to know how they did it? Hear from the brains behind it in this 'Making of'...

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Have you seen a short that pushes the boundaries of animation? Let us know in the comments below...

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