Stop Motion

Vlasta Peyerlová

Stop Motion is very simple animation technique: you take a picture of what you're animating, then move it a teeny tiny bit and take another. And like this, frame by frame you get animation. This of course requires tons of patience. People usually split into two categories, half that are very frustrated by this and other half that absolutely love it.

If you want to try it, here are some tips. It's good to have a camera tripod, so the animation won't be too shaky. Also try to avoid bumping into it. Before you start photographing, let your camera charge at least for two hours. Also check if you have space in memory. Because it's really irritating, when you're taking pictures and you're having the time of your life and then suddenly: ,,Beep, beep, the battery is dead." or ,,Beep beep, memory is full." Plus when you take off the camera from the tripod, it affects the image (so make scenes in one take). Also always check if you don't have your hand in the picture you just took.

When you're doing a cutout animation, don't have too much stuff on the scene, because it's hard to keep track of everything. Also use harder paper if you don't want to blow away everything with just one breath. Sticky putty (the sticky gum you use to put posters on walls) proves to be very useful here. When you have figures it's useful to create some sorts of joints for them.

For puppet animation the first thing is to attach firmly everything you don't want to move. For that I use sticky putty and pins. For beginners I recommend animating with toy figures such as LEGO, then maybe with clay figures (it's good to have clay that hardens otherwise more complicated animations become very frustrating). I don't recommend using rig much because if you don't have better equipment, the final animation won't look that good.

It's good to have photo material split into folders by scenes, so it's not one big mess.

Now you need to find a good Stop Motion program. Without a watermark, ideally. And if you don't want to pay money, it's gonna be really hard. If I find some good free one, I'll put a link here.

Use only programs indented for Stop Motion because you're saving yourself a lot of time. I've done Stop Motion in a program that really wasn't intended for that, so I know what I'm talking about. Basically I was putting pictures there one by one. It wasn't as bad as it sounds but that's maybe only because I just really enjoy animating and I don't mind repetitive work. I imagine someone else wouldn't have nerves to do that.

After you put pictures in the program you should find the best frame rate for your animation, so the animation looks fluid. The most recommended one is 24 frames per sec, the minimum 12 frames per sec. Not all frames must have the same frame rate. So play with it, add effects, sound, credits etc. And when you're fully content with your animation, you just export it and voila you have a film. So good luck ;)