I love this little (literally) stop-motion animation. Not only did “Dot” break the Guinness World Record for Smallest stop-motion animation character in a film, it was shot using life-saving technology.
First about the film, which you can watch below. It features Dot, a girl who just 9 millimeters tall. She wakes up in a world that seems to be unraveling. Fleeing an encroaching wave of loose threads, Dot runs across coins, pins, nuts and bolts and jumps on a bumblebee to fly away. Finally she saves herself by knitting the threads into a sleeping bag.
Now about the life-saving technology. The animation was filed using a Nokia N8 smart phone equipped with a CellScope, a diagnostic-quality microscope that was invented by Daniel Fletcher at the University of California, Berkeley. The CellScope allows a doctor working anywhere there is a phone service to capture and transmit images of blood samples anywhere in the world. The technology could help diagnose disease in developing countries where medical doctors and labs are few and far between.
Another bit of technology was used that, although not life-saving, is an interesting application. It’s 3-D printing. It was used to create various molds of Dot posed in different positions. Normally such an animation would rely on clay manipulated manually to adjust the character’s body positions. But Dot was too small for this and so her body positions were adjusted using molds of her in various positions.
