How To Make Your Own Stop Motion Animation

How To Make Your Own Stop Motion Animation

Stop motion animation is a time taking and film making technique, in which every movement is captured to talk about a subject. Only, with your mobile or any camera and by spending few hours, you can create your own stop motion animation.

 In this post, we will learn how you can create your own stop motion animation by following few steps. So, let’s start.

What is Stop Motion?

In this technique, you have to take photographs of a particular object and at the end, when this photos collect together and then they move to the form of an video, it shows an unique style which is different from any other video. One second of video requires at least 12 photos, that’s why this technique is known as time consuming.

Which tools will you need to make stop motion animation?

You don’t have to go at any studio neither, you want any special equipment to make it, following are some common gears that you will need to make stop motion animation.

1. Camera or any smartphone – Both of them can be satisfied in this technique.
2. Tripod– it keeps the smartphone or camera steady while capturing photographs.
3. Editing apps or software– After capturing the photographs you will need editing software or any app. There are a lot of programs and apps are made in both, smartphone, and computer. Even, some of them are free.
4. Object– onwards, it will be subject of your video. You can use an object which is in your surrounding or you can make it with the help of clay or any crafting material.

How To Make Your Own Stop Motion Animation

1. Set up the camera – It’s the most important step of your stop motion animation. In this step, you must make sure that your camera or smartphone will not move while taking all the photographs. Secondly, your camera should be focused on the object or whatever in photographs instead of any other part.
2. Maintain the light balance – You should try to keep the area where you are going to shoot, away from the sunlight because, sun will bring shadows in the photographs. If you are shooting in your home, then try to choose an area which is away from the window.
3. Count the frames – You need to take at least 12 frames or photographs to make one second of video. If you capture more photos your video will be smoother. Remember that more photos will also take more to make a stop motion animation.
4. Move the object slowly – If you want to make a smoother stop motion animation then, move the object or material slowly. If you move it fast also your video will be more faster comparing to the smoother one. There are many software those has an feature named ‘onion skinning’ which can help you to get multiple photos, it will be helpful for you adjust the movement of object.
5. Editing phase – After capturing all photographs, upload them into stop motion software or any app. Add sounds, effects, and music as you want.

Examples of stop motion animation

There are some different types of stop motion movies are counted, such as Claymation in this type clay is the subject of the movie, object motion in which only moving objects are exist, cutout animation (some 2d materials and paper are used )

• The Nightmare Before Christmas- This movie is counted in the type of Claymation and approximately 110,000 photos are used to make this movie.
• Coraline – This movie is counted in both 3d printing and Claymation to show different facial expressions in the movie.