By Kirsty Topping
A SCOTS student has dropped his university plans after his rugby based animations became a world-wide internet hit.
Graham Love, 18, painstakingly recreated key on-pitch moments using nothing more than Lego and blue tack.
His films have been viewed by thousands on the video sharing website YouTube since being uploaded last month.
The Lego creations have even featured on national television in New Zealand.
But now the Aberdeen teenager has been forced to postpone his plans to study film and photography at Edinburgh Napier University after being commissioned to make more of the movies.
OPPORTUNITY
Both the New Zealand Herald and ITV are keen to snap up his animations.
Graham has been asked by the Antipodean outfit to make an animation of a legendary All Black moment, with Jonah Lomu scoring a try.
Graham said: “On the back of deadlines from ITV and the New Zealand Herald I decided it was going to be far too much to try and finish the videos while embarking on a university degree.
“I thought it was such a good opportunity, I just couldn’t turn it down.
“I spoke to my course leader, told him the situation and he guaranteed a place for me on the course next year.”
Graham spent four days recreating John Kirwan’s famous 80 metre try against Italy at the opening match of the 1987 Rugby World Cup.
A second video contained an apparent prediction for the results of this year’s tournament.
STOP MOTION
The 68 second video opens with a team of All Blacks performing the Haka, before various teams of Lego men battle it out on the pitch to inspirational music.
The films are created using an old film-making technique.
Graham said: “It’s created using a technique called stop motion, so for every second of footage you see that’s made up of 16 to 32 individual photos. So you move a guy, take a frame, and when you stitch them all together and speed them up it appears to have motion.
“I’ve been working from nine at night until four in the morning, bent over my desk, stuffing these guys full of Blu-tack to make their arms go sideways, editing shots and video in Photoshop, but I really think it’s been worth it.”
