A Toy Robot's Cross-Country Road Trip, via Google Street View

Like a Toy Story for the Internet age, Tom Jenkins's short film Address Is Approximate tells the whimsical and inspiring story of one toy's journey to the California coast. Using stop-motion animation to bring an office space to life, the little film packs so much imagination into three minutes that I wouldn't be surprised if Pixar had Jenkins driving to California soon enough. The U.K.-based creative director talks about the making of the short in an interview below. 

The Atlantic: How did you get the idea for the story?

Tom Jenkins: I came at this from the Google Street View side as I love the possibilities it offers. Also because we run a busy production company I wanted to create a personal project which I could work on easily around our other more commercial work, so ideally it needed to be set in our office and at night so I could have free reign! With these factors in mind I came up with the film's simple story as everything seemed to fit.

Are all the images on screen from Google Street View? How did you animate them?

Let's just say all the imagery in the film after the office guy leaves is 100% stop motion animation, and the iMac screen is for real and was animated during the shoot too.

How long did it take to complete the video?

It took six long nights to shoot (I was the only crew member which made for a depressing wrap party!) and post production took another month, but this was working around our other projects.

What's next for you?

As well as running our commercials and corporate production house The Theory with my fellow theorist Simon Sharp here in London, I've also almost finished producing another personal project. This one's very different, and all I can say at the moment is it should be record-breaking, innovative, and guess what—100% filmed in my office!

For more work by Tom Jenkins and The Theory, visit http://www.theoryfilms.co.uk/.

Via the Creators Project.