mesmerizing stop motion western is made from over 600 light paintings

fiat lux by DARIUSTWIN

a skeleton in a cowboy hat travels around california at night through magical portals, collecting precious gemstones under a starlit sky. this is the story of ‘fiat lux’, a light painting stop motion created by DARIUSTWIN, a company founded by artist darren pearson that specializes in light painting media and products. 

the stop motion animation is composed of 11 scenes and it took a total of 686 light painting photographs to make. each long exposure photo is taken straight from the camera and arranged side by side to create motion. the hypnotic short film is also an NFT collection, with each of the 11 scenes available as a 1 of 1 on opensea here.

scene 5: ‘ripple’

images and main video courtesy of DARIUSTWIN

the result is mesmerizing, but the process to capture each short scene is painstaking. pearson talks about the challenges he faced shooting scene 10 in particular, ‘this scene was less than 1% away from not happening. normally I take 2 batteries out when I capture something as involved as this with multiple angles over 4 hours of long exposure capturing, but I left one at home charging and only found out when the temperature dropped to freezing. the camera had ~5% battery left after 3 + hours and still over 30 long exposure images left to capture. somehow, some way, the battery was able to capture the entire sequence at less than 1% battery 🔋 this was a fiat lux mini miracle 💫!!! very nerve-racking to say the least’.

pearson used two self-designed tools called a night-writer and night-writer pro to create the light paintings, which are sold on his company’s website here. stay tuned as DARIUSTWIN drops an alien-inspired light painting stop motion NFT collection called ‘midnight martian’.

the 55 light painting photos that make up ‘ripple’

scene 6: ‘emerald earth’, which was filmed during a lunar eclipse

the 63 light painting photos that make up ‘emerald earth’

scene 9: ‘tight squeeze’

project info:

name: fiat lux

artist: DARIUSTWIN

sound by: scott doherty