PENDINE BEACH, Wales – You may recall the film Dot from last year – the world’s smallest stop-frame animation, shot using a Nokia N8 with a macro lens? When it came to out-doing that achievement, the only way was up. Gulp, the successor to Dot, created by the same team from Aardman animation and Wieden + Kennedy, attached N8s to a crane suspended over a beach and used sand sculptures to tell the tale of a fisherman on his daily catch.

Breaking the Guinness world record, the largest scene in the film stretches over 11,000 square feet – that’s nearly as big as two tennis courts joined together. The picture below will give you a better idea of the dimensions.

So how did the project turn out? See for yourselves.

Another idea about the scale: the fisherman is actually played by a real person, not a model, on a full-sized boat. As you might already have guessed, the project involved some incredibly hard work.

Co-director Will Studd said:

The film was a huge test of planning and coordination with Mother Nature, we were incredibly lucky with conditions and tide times, sometimes we got our final frame for the day just as the waves crashed in around our set! Obviously the turn-around had to be so quick with such a short window, but working with the W + K team was fantastic as usual and we got everything we set out to achieve. The Nokia N8 stood up to the challenge and produced some outstanding images.

Also worth watching is this ‘Making Of…’ video.

The Nseries blog has a whole series of posts on the making of the film if you want to know more.

What do you think?