Animating With Candles
Posted by Rebekah Cook on
Popular Youtuber Brusspup specializes in science-inspired optical illusions. Here he fires up his stop motion engine for a simple choreography pixelated by 320 tealight candles. The results are mesmerizing.
Amazing Fire Animation - Brusspup
You've likely seen this sort of pixelated effect before with Lego or other unit-based objects (possibly even tried it yourself!). In fact, Brusspup isn't the first to use the idea of animating candlelight, either. There are several candle animations out there, but most of them turned off the room lights and shut out daylight to increase the contrast of fire to the darkness.
While it does look neat to have the bold glow in contrast to deep darkness, something about the glitter of the fire captured here imparts a magical, sequined vibrance to every frame. The aluminum walls of the tealights come into play here. Some candles remain lit for longer throughout the animation process...and might even need replacing. With less wax in the casing, the more reflection is seen of the flame bouncing from side to side.
What else can you do with candles? Here's another wax-inspired short by animator Julia Holmes, that has a lot more movement, a lot less fire, and an unexpected ending.