Apart from being the first award ceremony to take place in Brooklyn, New York, this year’s MTV Video Music Awards (MTV VMA) has also attracted worldwide attention for being the first channel to post its eight nomination clips, designed by Vietnamese-American Khoa Phan, on Instagram and Vine.

The clips feature the eight categories, including Best Male Video, Best Female Video, Best Pop Video, Best Hip hop Video, Best Song of the Summer, and Artist to Watch.

All eight clips use stop motion designed by 23-year-old Khoa, who is San Diego and has a limited background in the arts.

Stop motion (also known as stop frame) is an animation technique used to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object is moved slightly between individually photographed frames, which creates the illusion of movement as the series of frames is played as a continual sequence.

One day after Twitter launched Vine in January, Khoa created his first Vine, a simple video of a Keurig machine brewing a cup of coffee.

The young man, however, was not content with simple videos. It was his second creation that catapulted him to instant fame. In it, he brought whimsically constructed paper bubbles to life using stop motion. The technique creates the illusion that the bubbles are floating across a table. The bubbles pop with a message: “Have a good day!”, which is a simple, recurrent message in Khoa’s videos.

His clip was noticed by the app's editors, who then placed it in the “Editor's Choice” tab. Shortly after that, the likes started flooding in, and Khoa’s account currently has more than 41,000 likes.

In the three months that Khoa has been on Vine, he has obtained over 17,000 followers and created more than 100 videos. His reality-defying, innovative clips grabbed the attention of the Tribeca Film Festival, where two of his films were nominated in the Animated category.

Though many people have created videos on Vine, Khoa’s must-follow clips stand out thanks to his sense of humor, charm and positivity.

Corporations soon took notice of Khoa as well. Red Vines reached out to him and asked him to make a video featuring red and black licorice, instead of his favorite paper. He has also been contacted by Coke.

With the message “unlock your imagination and let it take flight!”, Khoa’s work on Vine has sparked interest and partnership from Peanuts Worldwide, Chevrolet, CNN, Samsung and MTV.

“I was really excited and honored when MTV picked me for the project. MTV, which is my favorite channel, particularly during my teen years, gave me lots of creative freedom. MTV, whom I had worked with in another project, is positive that my MTV vines will be a success. Those interested in my 2013 MTV VMA vines can take a look at them on http://instagram.com/mtv,” Khoa told Tuoi Tre in an email.

The 2013 MTV VMA awards ceremony will be broadcast live on MTV Vietnam at 12am on Aug 26.