The important thing here is that the young person is exploring his creativity, not whether some of us like it or not. Better than sitting on his behind playing video games and the like.
This "stop action" technique is part of what I did for a living for a long time. Many TV commercials have to be tested prior to being actually filmed at a staggering expense. So, often 2 to 4 different commercial ideas will be tested with consumers to see which is most effective ... however, shooting them for real, or even on video tape is cost prohibitive.
The proposed test commercial can be done using what is called an "Animatic" ... basically a stop action "Cartoon" drawn version or animated "Storyboard" of the commercial, or as an "Rip-o-matic", where stock images or tear sheets are assembled and animated to convey an idea. Finally there is the "Photo-matic" where something similar to this video is employed to actually shoot the scene sequences. In my case, commercials that my staff and I created would be shot and animated ... also being a photographer, I shot many of them myself, dozens and dozens of them.
The series of stop action stills would then be animated on an Avid or similar type editing machine using specifically timed cross dissolves to simulate the impression of motion that is usually shot at 24 or 30 FPS on motion cameras. In reality only a few frames per second is needed to accomplish this. Usually under 100 frames max for a 30 second TV commercial.
My first attempts at it looked like this video ... Herky-Jerky and vomit inducing. Better story board planning, a locked down tripod and simulated motion control fixed the issue and led to great success ... at far less cost per test commercial (around 22K each verses 40K for video).
The difference between a Photomatic and a Video was also clear when client changes had to be made. Photoshop layered corrections on a couple still frames verses motion tracking corrections on 24 frames a second of video is a huge price difference ... like $100 per hour verses $800. per hour with less time needed.
Probably more than you all wanted to know ... :ROTFL:
But I would LOVE to teach this to others ... because with home desktop editing like Final Cut, anyone could do it and it is a blast to alter the stills at will, then animate them ... something much harder to do with video.