Stop-motion and 8-bit videos are fun, and YouTube is full of them. We’ve picked some of the best.
YouTube is a haven for anyone with a camera and an idea. Sure you have to wade through a lot of stuff that’s not so good, but the gems you find more than make up for it. Stop-motion videos abound on the site, and so do 8-bit videos. A few clever people have also made comic book art videos.
8-bit trip
This cool music video by Rymdreglage features stop-motion LEGO recreations of classic 8-bit video games. It includes references from everything to Super Mario Bros., to Pac-Man, to Tetris.
Terminator 2 Tribute
Another cool video by Rymdreglage pays tribute to the 20th anniversary of the release of “Terminator 2” in stop motion animated form. Even though special effects may have improved over the years, T2 still holds up as having some of the best geeky moments on the silver screen.
Paper Stop Motion Mario
Everyone’s favorite plumber collects coins and stomps Goombahs along the walls of a school in another video that combines both stop motion and 8-bit video games.
Stop Motion Super Mario Kart
As long as college students will be studying film, they’ll be making stop motion videos. And since they seem to have a lot of time to spend playing video games, it seems like a natural subject for those stop motion films. This hilarious video, titled “Super Manrio Kart” (not a typo) features three roommates racing around campus in the style of the classic game “Super Mario Kart”
Deadline
This film by Bang-Yao Liu hits pretty close to home for a lot of people. It’s the story of one man’s struggle to get his work done against the temptation of napping and playing games, done in Post-It notes animated on the wall.
Stop Motion Rubik’s Cube
This pop-cultural relic from the 1980s is seen here solving itself via stop motion, while The Postal Service song “Such Great Heights” plays.
Game Over
Recreating classic video games seems to be a popular pastime on YouTube. But “Game Over’ is one of the best stop-motion videos, showing gameplay from “Centipede,” “Frogger,” “Asteroids,” and “Pac-Man” in common household objects and food.
Don’t Answer Me
Although this video is a throwback to the days of MTV, it’s been a long time since that channel’s actually shown a music video. But before they started showing orange people from New Jersey, it was a place to see really innovative music videos in its heyday. The 1984 video for “Don’t Answer Me,” a hit by the progressive rock band The Alan Parsons Project, was groundbreaking for its stop motion video using comic book art inspired by the golden age of detective comics in the ’30s and ‘4os.
Drawing Batman
YouTube user Apuliansoul takes us through the stages of drawing Batman, from the very first pencil sketches all the way through inking and coloring the caped crusader, all in about seven minutes.
Any list we can make here at Walyou will only scratch the surface. Searching for videos on the site is like drinking from the proverbial fire hose. So what do you think? Are there any videos we might have missed? Tell us about it in the comments.
