Stop Motion Animation
View a sample Clay animation
Goals:
Procedure:
Step 1: Develop an Idea
Step 2: Build the background
Step 3: Create Characters
Step 4: Shoot the shots
Step 5: Make a movie
Importing the Pictures
Setting up the Video
Adding Sound
View a sample Clay animation
Goals:
- Create a short (5 - 15 sec.) clay animation
Procedure:
- Go to www.sfsu.edu/~teachers/workshops/clayanimation/index.html
- Start at step one and view the quicktime movies for each of the five steps.
Step 1: Develop an Idea
- Take Notes - Write down your thoughts on the plot, the scenes, the characters, and any extra details that come to you as you are writing.
- KEEP IT SIMPLE! The shortest and simplest concepts are the easiest to animate. Limit yourself to one or two characters, so you can concentrate on the DETAILS.
- Storyboard Your Idea - Divide a sheet of paper into frames, and draw pictures of all the major actions in your story. Your storyboard can be simple or detailed, in pencil or in color.
Step 2: Build the background
- The Background for your animation can be just about anything.
- You can use a variety of art supplies to build your set - crayons, markers, colored paper, water colors, anything.
- You can also use real objects - a rock for a boulder, a branch for a tree, etc. Objects in the foreground can give your animation a nice sense of depth.
- You can even create an animated background - one that changes during the course of your animation.
- For a short cut - use a picture as a background, such as a large photograph, a small poster, or a picture from a calendar.
- Make sure that your background is the same scale as your characters, and that it will fill the frame for whatever camera you will use to capture the images.
Step 3: Create Characters
- Get modeling clay or lego mini figures to use in your animation.
Step 4: Shoot the shots
- Use the Frame by Frame program on the Mac computer to take the pictures.
- After you take each picture, slightly move your characters into position for the next shot. Each picture you take will become a frame in your movie. Clay animation looks good at a frame rate as low as six to ten frames per second.
- You don't want the camera to move at all during the picture taking process, it may be necessary to tape the camera onto the table.
- When you finish, export as a Mov file.
Step 5: Make a movie
Importing the Pictures
- Start the iMovie program.
- Click on File and New Project
- Click on File and Import into Collections. Choose the drive and folder that the pictures are in.
- Select the pictures you wish to import. (You can do this by clicking once on the first picture, then hold down the shift key and click on the last picture)
- Click on Import.
- Next drag the pictures from the collections section to the timeline below. (you can do this one at a time or select all of the pictures by using the method described above)
Setting up the Video
- Click on Tools and then Options. Adjust the picture duration box to .3 seconds. Change the transition box to 0 seconds. Click OK.
- click on the play button on the view screen to play the movie.
Adding Sound
- Finally you can add sound to your movie by choosing File - Import into Collections and choosing any sound files you would like to use.