Stop Motion is an animation technique in which an object is physically manipulated to give the object a sense of movement. As seen in the Tim Burton classic a nightmare before Christmas.
People can use a wide variety of 3D model materials such as clay, wood, plastic and even metal to create a short stop motion film. For my own animation I will use a deck of playing card and animating the cards by using stop motion techniques.
People can also use Lego to animate their own short stop motion films, which can be put on YouTube to show the world.
In this picture we see how the stop motion classic Wallace and Gromit is filmed using special cameras and technology to create this scene.
With the invention of computers and the internet, stop motion objects can be digitally enhanced to be manipulated with certain computer programs such as stopmotioncentral.com and stopmotionpro.com. I will mainly experiment with windows movie maker to edit my stop motion animation.
This picture show how many stop motion animation studios film individual scenes of their stop motion films. The types of equipment I will experiment with mainly include a camera and tripod to help product my stop motion animation.
I also highly recommended you buy the advanced art of stop motion animations by Ken A Priebe if you are interested in stop motion.
A common technique used by stop motion model makers is to make different facial expressions to express the character’s emotions.
For example, here we have the many faces used to film the 2012 stop motion film Paranorman.
Here is an example of a piece of a stop motion animation program which is used to effectively create a stop motion production. I will experiment with the features of windows movie maker such as frame rates and lighting to create an effective stop motion animation.
Many of these programs can allow the user adjust the amount of frames per second to make the stop motion object appear to be moving. For my own project I will attempt to experiment with different camera angles to find out which angle suits my stop motion project.
Some stop motion programs even give more advanced options to edit and create stop motion, such as stop motion pro. This allows you to adjust the zoom, frame rate, audio sync, slate and timeline, just to name a few of these options.
Here is an example of a stop motion animation being created in a piece of stop motion production software. Notice how each frame is carefully edited to make each frame slightly different from each other.
In this image we see how the film Paranorman is being produced as animators use specialised computer programs to edit this scene to make the stop motion models appear to be moving and have human like characteristics.
I have chosen to make my animation about playing cards, which I will animate to have a sense of movement. I made my animation about playing cards because animating playing cards is a good starting point for people who want to get into stop motion animation.
In this image we see playing cards moving out of the deck to show a sense of movement, which will be similar to what I will do in my stop motion animation. Another reason why I made my animation about playing cards because using playing cards is a popular leisure activity, making the animation easily identifiable.
Different techniques can be applied to a playing card animation such as flipping the cards in a certain order, moving a number of cards simultaneously, rotating cards about the deck, etc.
In this image we see early use of stop motion animating the movement of a horse back in the black and white film era. Fun fact, one of if not the earliest use of stop motion was in the film The Humpty Dumpty Circus back in 1897.
A common particle used in stop motion is to take pictures of an object slowly change over a period of time. This is seen in this image of a chocolate rabbit slowly being melted.
So next time you see any stop motion animation, thick if the different techniques used in making it, as well as the amount of time and effort put in to the production of the animation.