Wednesday 30 December 2015

Manipulating The Atom (A Short Animation)

Atomic animation is just the start...


Manipulating The Atom.
Copyright: University of West Humbershire.
(Used with kind permission.)
This week at Tomorrow's Technology Today we take a look at rather an unusual topic as we feature a short animation featuring stick figures.  It's a stop-motion animation created by the Department of Atomic Physics at the University of West Humbershire, but what makes the video ground-breaking is that the animated images were created by manipulating individual atoms to create very basic stick figure sketches.

As you can see when you watch the video below, it's not going to win any awards for amimation*, but the project was more about demonstrating what can be done at a sub-molecular level, rather than producing a piece of entertainment.

* Ironically, since this article was written the video has actually won an award in the 'Groundbreaking Animation Techniques' category at the annual Xenial Animation Awards.  The category recognises creative animation techniques, however, rather than the quality of the animation itself, and the point our staff writer was trying to make is that the video is obviously intended more as a scientific demonstration, rather than as a piece of entertainment.

The video is entitled 'Manipulating The Atom (A Short Animation)' and it features a character named Adam trying to impress the ladies on the dance floor with his dance moves...