Stop motion Magazine

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What Is

STOP MOTION?

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Stop motion is an animation technique in which a camera is repeatedly stopped and started, frame-by-frame, in order to give inanimate objects and figures the impression of movement.

Stop motion is similar to traditional animation in that it’s also a frameby-frame process. While traditional animation is 2D and mostly handdrawn, stop motion is photography turned into 3D animation.

Stop motion is a niche style that is growing in popularity despite often being classified as “old school.” Its steady presence in the video world can be attributed to the likes of popular films such as The Nightmare Before Christmas, of course, and the award-winning projects from production company, Laika, such as Coraline, Kubo and the Two Strings, and Missing Link.

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Types of

STOP MOTION

It’s important to note that this kind of animation can take a really long time because as mentioned above, 12 frames equals about one second of video.

Depending on which type of stop motion animation you choose, will determine your limitations. The material and physical nature of each type comes with their own brand of challenges.

Claymation

Clay animation or claymation, sometimes plasticine animation, is one of many forms of stop-motion animation. Each animated piece, either character or background, is “deformable”— made of a malleable substance, usually plasticine clay.

Traditional animation, from cel animation to stop motion, is produced by recording each frame, or still picture, on film or digital media and then playing the recorded frames back in rapid succession before the viewer. These and other moving images, from zoetrope to films and video games, create the illusion of motion

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RANKENWEENIE (2012) Each object or character is sculpted from clay or other such similarly pliable material as plasticine, usually around a wire skeleton, called an armature, and then arranged on the set, where it is photographed once before being slightly moved by hand to prepare it for the next shot, and so on until the animator has achieved the desired amount of film. Upon playback, the viewer perceives the series of slightly changing, rapidly succeeding images as motion.

A consistent shooting environment is needed to maintain the illusion of continuity: objects must be consistently placed and lit.

Cutout Animation

The cartoonish route you can experiment with is a ton of fun, but also significantly more controlled, through your own art and detail. Though, obvious downside? Cutting up hundreds of pieces seems overwhelming.

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Cutout-motion or animation is pretty cool because there are so many things you can do with cutouts. 2D pieces of paper may seem lifeless, but you can color them and cut them to express a level of detail unlike any of the other styles.

Pixilation Stop Motion

Animating people!

Not used all the time for the most obvious reason. It takes a long time so the level of patience you need for an actor to move just a smidge every frame, and the amount of frames you’d need, will not only test their patience but probably your budget assuming you’re paying them.

The amount of control they have with their movement is also a factor. But if done well, this kind can look pretty cool, sometimes though, it kind of gives me a headache.

Can be called Object Animation as well, and it’s simply the moving of objects per frame.

You’re unlimited with what you can do here, because you get to create stories using any and all of the objects around you.

Stopmotion

Object-Motion

Silhouette Stop Motion Using a thin white sheet or blanket, place the objects or actors behind the sheet and using a backlight, illuminate their shadow on the sheet.

You can easily create some beautiful silhouette animation without spending a fortune.

Silhouette animation is animation in which the characters are only visible as black silhouettes.

This is usually accomplished by backlighting articulated cardboard cut-outs, though other methods exist. It is partially inspired by, but for a number of reasons technically distinct from, shadow play.

Puppet Animation U

sing puppets can produce some pretty cool results and tell very unique stories, but the trouble can come later, when you’re dealing with a ton of strings in the shot. Experienced stop motion animators probably have no problem with this, but may not be the best type to work with, initially. These are conventional style puppets.

A lot of times animators will refer to their wirebased clay covered figure as a puppet, which also falls under claymation. Traditional marionette style puppets aren’t as commonly used.

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uppetoon animation is a type of replacement animation, which is itself a type of stop-motion animation.

In traditional stop-motion, the puppets are made with movable parts which are repositioned between frames to create the illusion of motion when the frames are played in rapid sequence.

In puppetoon animation the puppets are rigid and static pieces; each is typically used in a single frame and then

switched with a separate, near-duplicate puppet for the next frame. Thus puppetoon animation requires many separate figures. It is thus more analogous in a certain sense to cel animation than is traditional stop-motion: the characters are created from scratch for each frame (though in cel animation the creation process is simpler since the characters are drawn and painted, not sculpted).

PUPPET ANIMATION

used in the movies

Make a

STOP MOTION video at home

Capture the perfect picture.

Capturing images has never been easier before.

No matter if you choose automatic or full manual control of camera settings such as focus, exposure, ISO, and white balance.

Capture images in 4K or use a live green-screen effect. You can also use a second device as a remote camera to get a new perspective.

Use your digital camera.

Stop Motion Studio supports digital cameras from all the most popular camera makers, including Canon, Nikon, and Sony. Use live view to easily control objects and movements.

Control shutter speed, ISO and aperture directly from the app and take advantage of the full-size camera quality.

Desktop-class movie editing.

The unique frame-by-frame view shows you all the images you took in chronological order, much like the single frames of a movie. Cut, copy, paste, delete, and insert frames at any position. Zoom in and out on the timeline view so you never get lost, even if you have hundreds of frames. Add audio clips, titles, credits, and filter effects. Creating the movie the way you want it.

Discover the ease of animating with In- and Out Points.

With Stop Motion Studio you can quickly set In and Out points to mark a specific portion of your movie for playback and looping. Then use the loop playback to animate the sequence until it looks perfect.v

Use composition guides for perfect positioning.

Use the Grid and Onion Skin controls to help you position animated objects more easily and precisely. Define aspect ratio masks and safe guides. Add a path layer to define movements, use the draw tool to mark positions or load an image or video file as a reference.

The onion skin overlays the last captured frame on top of your camera’s live view. This way, you can see how far you have moved your character between frames.

Bring it all to life with great sound effects.

Stop Motion Studio comes with dozens of sound effects and music clips for you ready to use in your movie. Bring characters to life by recording a voice over track directly to your movie. Use the built-in audio editor to trim the audio clip, set fade-in and -out, change the volume or add dozen of funny audio effects to sound like an alien, a robot, or an old radio station.

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