The other day a friend and I were chatting about music and I sent her some names of songs that were cool. It turns out all three of them had music videos that were animated with stop-motion techniques (take a picture, move something, take another picture, and so on). Now I’m sharing them with you.

I love all three songs for different reasons. “Blood” by The Middle East is a bit sad, but I think it builds to an exciting end. I discovered it when it played at the end of Crazy Stupid Love (great movie, BTW).

This second one, “In Your Arms” by Kina Grannis is a fun song, and an absolutely amazing video. They made it using eleventy-kagillion jelly beans! Okay, not THAT many, only 288,000. Watch the video below, then watch the making-of video.

This last one is from an Australian band, Hudson, called “Against the Grain.” I liked the song enough that I bought the CD from the band in Australia. The rest of the album is great as well. They also have a behind-the-scenes video. Oh, the CD is autographed as well! Take THAT, digital download!

I love stop-motion animation because it looks neat, and because it’s extremely time-consuming. Consider this: 1 second of video is 30 frames (or 24 for film). If it takes you 5 minutes to set up a scene, that 1 second of footage takes two and a half hours to shoot. The Kina Grannis video took 1,357 hours, which is over 56 FULL days. That’s insane.