Wiredude Willy (2007):

Run length: 18 seconds

Summary: A simple experiment in stopmotion animation with a little CG framing of the main action utilizing POVRay.

Comments: The primary footage was shot one frame at a time with an HP digital camera 315 Photosmart camera. I had initially intended to make this purely a stopmotion animation video, but for some reason the file kept getting stuck in Revver's processing software after I uploaded it (which almost never happens to me). Saving as different file formats with various codecs did not seem to solve the problem (I think the camera-generated jpegs may have contained code which Revver's software didn't like), so I ended up using the individual frames as image maps in POVRay (basically having the effect of projecting a movie onto a virtual screen). From there it was a relatively simple matter to export the frames, combine them with the soundtrack, and upload the resulting video to Revver, where it processed just fine. I had been planning to try the virtual screen thing anyway - This just gave me added incentive to do so.

I got the idea for showing a "video of a video" so to speak after watching it used in this video on YouTube by user YTBasiclife. Upgrading my skill in using image maps in POVRay was already on my "to-do" list, but it got moved up higher in priority when I got a better grasp of what could be done with them. YTBasicLife did not invent the idea of using image maps in this manner but definitely has used it to good effect. My own initial use of this technique is quite limited by comparison, but I definitely hope to do some more advanced things with it in the future.