How to make a stop motion animation.

I love making stop motion animations, they are very satisfying and and surprisingly straightforward to do. Here are 10 steps to creating a successful stop motion animation.

 

1. Think of an idea. Harder than it sounds this bit. Try not to over-complicate things, the best ideas tend to be the simplest.
2. Make your set. Ensure that lighting is consistent and that the camera is in a fixed position. I use a lightbox (https://us.orangemonkie.com/product/foldio2-plus/) and tripod for this.
3. Clean your camera lens. Nothing more frustrating than realising all your photos are smudgy.
4. Take you first photo of your set. I always use still photos rather than short video clips.
5. Move your object a TINY bit.
6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 many, many times until you have reached your end goal. You will need around 100 photos to make a 10 second long animation. Be really careful not to knock the set/tripod or change the lighting throughout this part.
7. Download the ‘Splice’ app (or similar). https://splice.com/
8. Open the app, create a new project and add your photos-they must be added in chronological order.
9. Edit each photo length down to 0.01 seconds.
10. Press play to see your stop motion animation pan out! You can add music and sound effects at this point too.

I highly rate the Splice app for this, it’s super easy and will export your final project to pretty much anywhere. You can also link it to iTunes for endless music options.

 

Have you tried making a stop motion? Let me know how you got on or if you have any questions about how to do it.