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What do you think?

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What Is Stop Motion Animation and How Does It Work? | Mashable Explains

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Dot. The World's Smallest Stop-Motion Animation Character Shot on a Nokia N8 - SymbianZone.us

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Gulp. The world's largest stop-motion animation set, shot on a Nokia N8..flv

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Which is your favourite?

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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.

Add music to make this animation more captivating

In fact, on that same note, now that we know the basics, let's try to do stop motion ourselves. You'll see below, it doesn't take expensive equipment to pull off.

How to Make a Stop Motion Video

Make a stop motion video at home

Now that you have an understanding of what stop motion is, let's try it. Rob from Science Filmmaking Tips, takes us through his process of doing stop motion at home. Take a look.

How to do stop motion

As mentioned, using stop motion in your videos isn't complicated, but it's also even cheaper.

Here's what you need

If you have a smartphone, you're nearly good to go. Many stop motion apps are free, and special add ons are only about 5 bucks. The app literally entitled Stop Motion works well, especially for your first few stop motion projects.

Don't kid yourself into thinking you need fancy cameras or expensive software to pull this off. You really don't. But hey if you have gear, even better. If you have a solid DSLR, awesome.

Dragonframe for example, is a fun stop motion software that runs about $300 and you can do some pretty cool stuff with it. This is great if you own a small business and are trying to put out professional quality looking videos, fast. But again, you don't need it.

So with your smartphone, open up the Stop Motion app, and start taking pictures. It captures one picture at a time and adds each one to a timeline. You can scroll through this shots and see if any look off, and simply delete them.

What to consider before stop motion video

Your camera needs to be steady!

Having a good setup helps with this. You'll see in the video how Rob set up his iPad to avoid any shakiness in the frame. Most likely though, you'll either be using a tripod to limit camera shake, or set your phone down in a stable position.

You'll have the cleanest looking stop motion animation if you avoid hitting the button every time. Try triggering the camera to a picture by using either a remote trigger (not expensive) or just set a timer on the app to take a picture every few seconds.

No "auto" setting for anything here - keep your shutter speed the same for each frame taken, ISO, aperture, white balance, all of it needs to be the same for each picture taken. You can choose the settings first and lock them on the app. If you're not working with the app, that's okay too, just make sure your settings are the same for every picture. If you keep them on auto, as you move the objects, settings will adjust themselves, potentially creating a flicker from frame to frame.

Get your lighting right

Shooting inside is best - it's controllable and keeps us away from ever changing light. Be mindful of windows, and of course it depends how in depth you're getting. For your first test run, just keep the lighting basic, where you can clearly see your objects, and where the light won't be changing much. Sometimes where you are outside of the frame can cause shadows, and minor flickering can be seen. Some people like that flickering, sometimes it even goes with the animation, but just make sure it does, and isn't jarring to your project.

You don't need to get too in depth with this early on, but you do need to know how many frames you need to shoot to get the sequence you want. Typically, as mentioned above 12 pictures or frames equals about one second of video. Your video may only be a few seconds, otherwise you start getting into that super jittery looking stop motion.

As you're shooting your silent stop motion animation, you can think of unique ways to add in your audio later. Notice how Rob did it as he scrunched up paper for his opening of "52 Things." Have fun with it!

Up Next

Best Stop Motion Movies

If you still need some inspiration on stop motion videos, check out our next post that explores the best stop motion movies ever made. Maybe those were worth the years of production?

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DIY Animation: What is Stop Motion Animation & How to Try it at Home

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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.

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How To Do Stop Motion Photography - Frame Rates