Embroidermation - Nina Paley and Theodore Gray

Y'know, just when you think you've seen it all, someone comes up with another brilliant merger of a traditional medium and digital tools--in this case, using vector files as a template to create embroidered animation "cels".

Image from Nina Paley's Blog post: Embroidermation: Tree of Life

Seen below, Nina Paley and Theodore Gray used this technique to assemble a test animation based off of a shot that Nina animated for her "Tree of Life" sequence in the film Kahlil Gibran's 'The Prophet'.


Embroidermation: Tree of Life from Nina Paley on Vimeo.

Then, they went on to create another, complete, animated short using this technique and based on a children's song from the Jewish passover. You can view this animation below and learn more about the technique on Theodore's blog: "Theodore Gray".


And if you read all the way to the end of his blog post, Nina and Theodore have released the embroidery files that they used to create the animation frames.