As Ireland’s first stop motion feature film heads into post-production, a different animated short from that country has already captured our employees’ hearts.

And according to Ron Diamond, curator of the Animation Show of Shows, it’s pure human emotion that makes for a great short film.

In the case of Witold Kozlowski’s creation, that emotion shown above is the frustration of waiting hours for a slow download only to have your system crash. Luckily for our lead character in this tale, aliens heard his anguish.

You see, Kozlowski, who has worked at Dell EMC for over five years as an upgrade engineer in Cork, Ireland, made his stop motion short as part of a recent “I am Alienware” contest among our employees.

“I really enjoyed making it and it’s really nice when you get so much positive feedback,” said Kozlowski. “I’ve been an enthusiast of stop motion animation for about 10 years.”

His first contact with stop-motion was as a kid watching cartoons.

“If I remember that was ‘Koala Brothers,’ Kozlowski said. “I did some research and found behind-the-scenes photos and articles about stop motion technique, then I bought some ‘making animations’ books and that’s how it starts.”

Entries to the contest could be any video at least 30 seconds long, but no longer than one minute, that communicated their creator’s love for Alienware. Kozlowski’s minute-long entry took him “around 40, maybe 50 hours” to create.

“Most of that time was for building the puppet of the main character and other models,” he explained. “All you can see in the movie are miniature physical items, there are no 3D computer-generated objects at all.”

But what did Kozlowski used to stitch everything together? His Dell Inspiron desktop with Intel Core i5 processor and 6Gb of RAM.

“It’s a couple years old but still working like a charm,” he said.

As the first-place winner, Kozlowski will bring home some new hardware — an Alienware Aurora desktop, Alienware 25 Gaming Monitor, Alienware Pro Gaming Keyboard and Alienware Elite Gaming Mouse.

“I know the Alienware hardware and I love its outstanding design and performance. It was always my dream to get one of them,” he said. However, someone else in his household will get to enjoy this one.

“I took a part in the ‘I am Alienware’ contest as I promised my son to buy for him his own desktop, and I thought that it will be a nice surprise if I win and can give him the Alienware.”

From laptops to desktops to consoles, Alienware’s innovative design, high-performance processors and lightning-fast graphics have earned Dell’s iconic gaming brand 35 awards and counting in 2017 and the loyalty of fans around the world – including many of our own teammates.

Other top entries in the contest included one from Emily Turner of Dell EMC in North Carolina, James Joyner of Dell in Texas, as well as Hugo Ferreira and Marek Fudala both of Dell in Slovakia Bratislava.

And now, without further ado, here is Kozlowski’s winning entry for your enjoyment.