The Complete Guide to Making Stop Motion Video
Stop motion videos are a really fun and creative way to engage your audiences. Stop motion makes a refreshing change from computer animation, particularly when the objects being animated have been hand-crafted, like models or props.
Stop motion lends itself to all kinds of video content, from short student films to online promos and TV commercials. It’s an adaptable style that can work with any object, and the process is very much the same whether you’re animating a character or some inanimate objects. It can be done very simply, without too much in the way of specialized equipment.
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What equipment do I need?
To make a stop motion video, you don’t need very much at all. To boil it down, you really only need a camera, the thing you want to animate, a tripod, and something to edit in. The process is very simple, and it’s something you can do with the camera on your phone to get a rough result. But the more you put into it, the more professional the results will be.
For example, you can use a more premium DSLR to get better quality still photos and then cut them together in professional software like VideoStudio to get a seamless result.
How to make a stop motion video
The process of making a stop motion video is very simple. Let’s say you want to animate a clay person walking across the frame. You will set up the scene in the first position - the person standing still - and take a photo.
Next, move the character a tiny amount. Maybe the foot comes slightly forwards, or the knee bends. Then when you’re happy with the second frame of your video, take a second photo. Next, move the character a very small amount once again. Take the third photo. Keep doing this until you have a long series of photos that document the character having walked from point A to point B.
It’s a very long process, and it’s not for impatient people. But the results are well worth it when done properly. Something to bear in mind is the lighting you use. If you’re using natural light, because it takes a long time to create what will be a very short moment, the sun will change over the day. To mitigate this, try and control the light as much as possible. Create your animation in a dark room with artificial lights that do not change throughout the day. That way the light will remain consistent throughout the day and the scene will look like it takes place in real-time.
How to edit stop motion video
Editing a stop motion video is as simple as taking all of the photos you have captured of the scene, and then stringing them together in order. The frame rate for effective animation is around 18 frames per second. That means for every second of video you need 18 still frames to play in order.
You can use software like VideoStudio to take all of the photos of your scene and place them together at that time. Then when the video plays it will be playing 18 of those photos back to back over the course of a second. Next, add music and titles to finish it off, and before you know it you’ve created your first stop motion video.
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