The Top 10 Everything of 2009

TIME charts the highs and lows of the past year in 50 wide-ranging lists

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9. Deadline: Post-It Stop-Motion

Post-it notes are cool again (if they ever were before). They've played a starring role in several recent videos, from the romantic one-upmanship of this love story to the basic yellow background for illustrator Arthur Jones. With their sticky backs, absolute squareness and bright colors, Post-its also make perfect pixels for a new wave of stop-motion animation.

And the best of the Post-it animations on YouTube — so far — is "Deadline," a class project by Bang-Yao Liu at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Bang-Yao led a team that planned for three months, plotting out every frame digitally on a computer. Then they re-created the scenes with analog Post-its on the wall, with a live human at a desk.

Four days of shooting and more than 6,000 Post-it pages later, the story of a young man's angst about a deadline plays out in vivid scenes of monsters, thunderstorms and a submarine. He even plays a few seconds of Brick. Worthy viewing the next time you're procrastinating on your own deadline.

Watch the top 10 viral videos of 2009.

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