YouTube data project

So, it’s been a while since I’ve been around here, there’s been quite a few visual changes to the forum I see!

Anyway, I’ve got a new project, but nothing to show for it yet, because I have some questions on how to do some things.

A very rough description of my goal and project:
The project is about displaying and representing statistical data in an artistic form. Now, this is a class that is normally about “real” 3D design, and tangible artworks, however my teacher has suggested that since my data is on YouTube, it would be interesting to make my project a YouTube video. With that in mind, I’d like to use Blender to make an animation that is satisfyingly artistic in representing the data.

SO:
For at least a part of the artwork, I want to display a massive wall of video clip thumbnails from YouTube (a couple thousand or so, perhaps more if not too taxing).

I already know that it is possible to download thumbnails from youtube…and theoretically, using Python (variant Jython is what I know, but they’re close to the same thing) I should be able to download masses of images to a directory.

The question is: can a script be made for Blender that would import an image from a directory, apply it to a plane, import another image, apply it to a plane, etc, etc. Is this possible? Can Blender handle that many materials? How do people tackle this sort of task? Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks, and have a great day!

i think there was a script to convert an image to a transparent plane for 2.49 but that was for modelling from reference images. im interested also on how it’s done so i can complete one of my scripts(an improved star system).

So, some links.

Concept
Similar to what I’m looking for, except on a bigger scale and probably with pictures instead of video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Znaz67gQAH8&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0B-CeFc2rEk

My data sheet that I’m using for my primary source (also using the YouTube blog itself)
http://www.viralblog.com/research/youtube-statistics/

I’m using primarily the Key YouTube stats relating to views and uploads.