How to make a stop motion animation film.

Stop motion is the art of moving the subject, taking a picture, moving it again, taking another picture, in order to perceive the look like it is moving.


The main things you need to make a stop motion animation film are:

1. A camera
2. A computer
3. Something to animate

Once you have these 3 things, you're ready to go.

The camera is the most essential part as it is required so that you can actually film something, otherwise your'e just playing with the puppet. A webcam is a good camera to get to start off with.

The camera should have most of the following criteria:

1. Manual focus in order to focus on the subject clearly.
2. Manual settings (Exposure, white balance etc, otherwise you will get light flicker)
3. A CCD sensor.

In order to use the webcam, you simply need to install the camera drivers, and plug your camera into your computer.

The 2nd main thing you need to make a stop motion animation was a computer, this is essential for many reasons:

1. Capturing the frames from the webcam
2 Editing the frames together to make a film

A popular software to capture frames is MONKEYJAM, this is designed for pencil animations, but is perfect for any form of stop motion animation, as it enables you to capture frames, and then assemble them into a raw AVI, ready for editing, this is key, when it comes to animating.

Editing software is used to assemble all the AVI's made in monkeyjam, and is used to add sounds and titles. I'd reccomend Sony Vegas or adobe premiere as after a while, everyone gets bored of them rubbish Windows Movie Maker titles, and its nice to see something new and swanky.

Finally, the last piece to the puzzle is finding something to animate. There are many things that you can animate with, as all it involves is moving them about, the following is what most people animate:

1. Themselves, or friends.
2. Lego, or something similar
3. Clay is a popular one
4. Household objects
5. Drawings.

You can basically animate anything.

So yeah give it a go, it's rather easy when you get used to it.

If you have any questions, just leave a comment, or visit my website at http://www.rsteenoven.co.uk , and email me.

Brickfilming (Lego animation) community at bricksinmotion.com, if you are interested in the hobby even more and need to ask more detailed questions.