Superb lego stopmotion: “The Good Samaritan”

Published by in christian, creativity, digitalstorytelling on June 4th, 2006

Dean Shareski has posted an outstanding lego stop-motion movie that a 15 year old teenager he knows (Joel) created, titled “The Good Samaritan.” Superb work! Having created a few stopmotion movies myself with my son that look MUCH more amateurish than this one, I am quite impressed. Smooth animation, great use of sound effects, and good use of appropriate background music. Great job Joel! I can’t wait to share this with my own kids, they are going to be inspired. Who knows, we may see a flurry of lego stopmotion from the Fryer household this summer as a result! I am sure this took MANY, MANY hours to complete. Well done!

I am convinced that the power of digital storytelling should be leveraged in a variety of contexts, and one of these is in our churches. I offered to teach a course on “Christian Digital Storytelling” back in the fall of 2004, but for a variety of reasons (which are just guesses on my part, I am not exactly sure why) it did not “make” for our church’s Wednesday night evening programming that term. I guess that folks were put off by the high-tech sound of this– what we are really talking about here is storytelling, and just using digital tools to capture the stories and communicate them with a broader audience via the web. Maybe sometime down the road I’ll have an opportunity to do this again and find an interested audience.

Kudos to Joel for showing the power of Christian digital storytelling via lego stopmotion! :-)

On this day..

5 Comments »
  • http://ideasandthoughts.org Dean Shareski

    Also check out Joel’s science project on defining stop motion

    I’m not sure about the frames per second but I’ll ask him.

    As far as Christian digital storytelling, I just did a workshop for a church in Toronto and although there were only 7 attendees, it was very well received.
    I’ve been creating a number of my own videos we’ve used in our church including this one which I created last year for Father’s Day.

    I’m not seeing the response to others taking up the mantle as much as I’d like.

  • http://www.wesfryer.com Wesley Fryer

    I love that video on being a dad, Dean! Super cool, thanks for sharing. Thanks also for the link to Joel’s video on stopmotion.

  • http://pursuitofglory.blogspot.com/ Chris Barker

    Wes,

    Thanks for spreading this video. I linked it and your post to my site. I am greatly encouraged by this post. As a Children’s Pastor/Director I use a lot of technology at church, but I have never thought about putting it in the hands of my children for spiritual growth. This post really made me think, why not? It would be great to see a computer in each SS class and projects like Joel’s movie become the modern day SS craft project.

    I am very interested in developing a church curriculum for digital storytelling. If you ever get geared back up on a project like this let me know. You would have an audience of at least one! I am currently gearing up for a Wednesday morning summer program and I think I have figured out the direction I want to go. Thanks as always for sharing.

  • http://www.wesfryer.com Wesley Fryer

    Chris: I think a lot of the digital storytelling resources and curriculum you see out there can be repurposed for a church context. My own workshop on digital storytelling is available online, along with my social bookmarks for digital storytelling. David Jakes also has great resources to check out on digital storytelling! If you didn’t link to Dean’s movie about “Be a Dad” above, be sure to check that out. Our church may use that during our upcoming Father’s Day service, with generous permission from Dean. If I do develop a CDS curriculum in more depth, I’ll definitely blog about it here! :-)

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