Candle Stop Motion: How’s It Done?

[Ollie] tipped us off about a stop motion video that uses a grid of tea candles to animate some classically pixellated game graphics. The image above is obviously a game of pong in progress. It’s interesting to watch but for us the fun is trying to decide how it’s done. Click through the break to see the video and discuss the methodology.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EG127HdhWZQ]

Perhaps the most obvious method used here is plain old stop motion animation. You light the candles, take a picture, snuff the ones you don’t need and light new ones, and repeat. There’s also the thought that the creator let the video roll, walked through his planned frames, then edited out the filler video after the fact.

To us, one thing is missing. Whenever we put out a tea candle that’s been burning for some time it tends to let off a rather vigorous column of smoke. We don’t see that in the video. Our thought is that you take a picture of all the candles before they’re lit. You then take several shots of all the candles lit. The multiple shots are so that the video shows flickering flames. From there an image processing program can be used along with a layer mask to digitally stuff the candles that you don’t need for each frame. Below is our attempt at this using The Gimp. But we want to know how you would have done it so leave us a comment.

[via College Humor]

55 thoughts on “Candle Stop Motion: How’s It Done?

  1. @Ozyg u see a cool pixel

    looks like he could just light them and blow them out depending on weather frame needed new pixels added or old ones removed… seams easy but time consuming

  2. i think it must have been done gigitally. there is a line of four candles on the right hand side that never seem to burn lower, despite being “lit” a few times. this suggests to me that it wasn’t done by lighting each candle for each frame it’s needed and snuffed when it’s not.

  3. i noticed the wicks and wax never seem to change, nor does he ever nudge a candle or the camera between frames

    i think it’s a loop of only so many frames that are masked

  4. By the time the second image is taken, smoke from extinguished candles would have dissipated. With stop motion, each frame would be a separate photograph – very time consuming. Nice result though.

    It’s possible it could be ‘hacked’ in photo editing software, but that might actually end up being more work!

  5. he records all candles burning for say 5 secs, then all off. all you have to do after that is quadrant the individual candles into pixels, choose the on/off state needed, then stitch it back together and render it.

    i dont know of a utility that could be scripted to do that off hand, but im sure one exists.

  6. Film each candle individually, then make each clip a pixel. As long as the camera doesn’t move, just pick the pixels (candles) you want and overlay the video clips on top of each other.

  7. He probably took 2*(20*16)+1 picture.
    2 per lit candle with every other unlit.
    1 with all candles unlit

    2 per candle alloy (in pixel) candle motion

    Stack alternatively the right frames, say with matlab…. voila!

  8. The individual flames loop quite fast, so it doesn’t look very real.

    But if you filmed each individual candle for a minute, and composed the individual flames using a maximum brightness operation, it would look better.

  9. Who cares if it’s “shopped”, it is clever, entertaining and original. Seems like a far more efficient use of time than lighting or extinguishing each candle for every frame.

  10. I would take a picture of all candles dim, another picture of all candles lit, code a program that generates the proper combined images from the appropriately sized low resolution monochrome “pixels” input and the 2 pictures mentioned, and finally make a video out of it all.

    And thats probably what they did here. Note that the light from one candle “pixel” is supposed to “leak” a bit to the adjutant ones, illuminating them to some extent. Yet, in this video, it doesn’t seems to happen. Kinda hints the images are programatically generated.

  11. It’s still garden-variety stop-motion.

    He just took multiple shots of each setting state, (a “state” being a certain X candles lit and the other 256-X candles not lit.) Try it youself: Take 12 shots of the same state and loop ’em over and over. Looks like real candle flicker.

  12. Not only is there no smoke, and not only do the candles manage to burn at a constant and identical level every time they’re lit, but the ambient light in the room is coming from a window across the room. This stop motion animation would have taken HOURS to produce, and there is no way the light in the room would have stayed absolutely even the whole time. And there would have been some kind of change in the area around the candles. It looks like there’s a little wax on the floor to the right, but that wax never changes.

    Nope, I’m going with your theory faked stop motion animation.

    Even so, it’s a clever solution. You end up programming virtual pixels in the form of a large number of images. This same principle could be used with anything. Pretty cool!

  13. I’m kinda surprised that nobody’s written a Python script to use this as a custom display yet. Seems like creating a set of masks and using Python’s image manipulation capabilities would make for an easy animated GIF script.

    What, do you folks have a life or something? Get coding!

  14. You guys are over thinking this. Its a basic video composite done in something like after effects. And sorry but no coding was needed at all.

    I did the very same thing on this video except with a 30 story building.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyaE2Mw6YuU
    (excuse the opening part, check at 1:12 for the goods)

    It goes like this.

    Make your animation as white on black.
    Make (or shoot) a plate with all the “pixels” on and one with them all off.
    (in this case its a a second or so of video of candles all lit and all unlit)
    corner pin the animation to line up with the pixels and use it as an alpha matte to turn them on and off when needed.
    profit.

  15. I would take two sets of photos one set of 4-5 with all the candles lit and one photo with them all blown out. Then it’s just a simple mater of writing a program to divide the bit maps up into squares and re asemble them useing a low res black and White bit map image of the finished graphic as a template. Save all the photos then call the gif construction program or simalar to stich them all together (:
    much more time afective and editable
    posibly aplyable to other things hmm cars in a car park maybe hmm
    better crack out the asembler when I get a few hours free (:

  16. I agree with davo1111, You can tell this since there are no ambient effects from having a set of tea lights on or off, or in this case burning or out.

    could this actually be automated with sparkplugs somehow?

    I like the flamethrower idea, you could also just use an xy table with a candle lighter/damper. However it would have to move pretty quickly since these kinds of displays have issues with burned out pixels

  17. the trick if you are gonna fake it is to introduce errors so it doesnt look perfect.

    what would have been better for this one with the candles is if for his 10 or so stills he shifted the candles slightly. This would give them that “stop motion” jitter that would really sell this one.

  18. Or he could’we drawn the animations on the computer, then calculated the optimal sequence in which he should shoot the frames. That way he would only have to change the “status” of a minimal amount of candles in order to take the next shot.

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