Fun with stop-motion animation.

First, How to Make a Baby, by PDI/DreamWorks animator Cassidy Curtis and his wife, Raquel Coelho:

Click here if the video file above doesn’t play properly.

Second, A Wolf Loves Pork, by Takeuchi Taijin:

Click here if the video file above doesn’t play properly.

I love the first video partly because the first animated film I ever tried to make, at the tender age of 10 or 12 or thereabouts, also revolved around a human body being inflated like a balloon; but rather than a photographic riff on a woman’s pregnancy, the film I made was a chalkboard illustration of a man blowing a balloon, hiccuping, accidentally inhaling all the air that passed from the balloon back into his body, and then popping.

And I love the second video for all sorts of reasons — the ending, in particular, gave me a “whoa! I’ve got to rewind that and play it back right now” feel — but I am particularly curious to know how off-limits that apartment became during the shoot. Did friends have to stay away, to avoid upsetting all the photos strewn about the place? Did it affect the artist’s social life? If so, I’d say the sacrifice was almost certainly worth it.