Stop Motion
What is stop motion?
Stop motion is an animated film technique in where objects, or other things are manipulated in small increments between individually photographed frames so when they are played back the frames show movement.
Why do we use stop motion?
Stop motion is the traditional technique that was first used to give illustrated figures the impression of movement. The realism of stop motion is what makes makes it so appealing, artists and animators create their own props and objects that are used in their videos, and these videos can be used for a variety of purposes including promotional and instructional purposes.
Inspiration
Pinterest is a great source to use when looking for inspiration. I looked here when first starting to plan my stop motion videos and these were some of my favorite ones I found on there. There are also many different style that can be used when creating a stop motion. Some of these are using real objects like food or people as their props whereas others use paper cutouts made to look like something moving. I also linked below my pinterest page, where there are more stop motion videos i saved as inspiration.
Early Attempts
These were my first two stop motion videos. They were made using the stop motion app. This app is great for starting out with stop motion because you can make the videos right from your phone. Directly on this app you can take the pictures, and edit them. This makes stop motion easy and accessible anytime you come up with a new idea and want to create a video. The first one was just using a toy polar bear, and slowly moving it in between each frame to make it look as though it was sliding across the floor. In the second one my classmates and I did the same motions as I had done with bear. We each took small steps taking pictures in between each movement, therefore making it look as though we were floating across the ground. Although these ones do not have the best outcome they were very useful in learning the how to do stop motion and what skills are needed to create one successfully.
Next Attempts
When going to create my next stop motion video I took the tools I learned from my last attempts and put those into this one. I used a tripod this time to make sure the camera was very still, and made each frame was take quickly so it would like one fluid motion.
When we first were learned about stop motion I was going home that weekend and I had thought of this idea to use my brother shooting a basketball as the video. So when I got home we went to our local basketball courts and we began taking pictures. With typical stop motion videos you want to do small movements and take pictures of each frame, however it was hard to have him running and jumping and do that slowly. So instead I tried to take the pictures as fast as possible to get the same effect.
In this picture to the right it shows a small portion of the picture I needed to take in order to get it correct. I took around 300 pictures just to get the right few that would make the sequence but after many tries it finally worked.
Upload To Photoshop
Adjust Time Per Frame
Make Frames From Layers
Reverse Frames
Editing the Photos
After I got the clips that I needed, I uploaded those photos to photoshop. When importing these photos you want to make sure each one is on its own layer so it can be edited separately from the others.
Next you want to create frames from layers. This will give you a slide for each picture. After that you want to adjusting the time per frame. This will control how fast or how quickly the animation will move. The last part is you are going to want to copy the frames you have already made and reverse only the copied ones. This makes the animation play on a loop seamlessly.
Below is the stop motion video created from following these steps.
Basketball Stop Motion
Alternatives to Stop Motion
There are also other ways to get the same effects as a stop motion video without going the traditional route and taking pictures. This way is where you take a video and drop the frames, which makes it appear as though it is pictures.
Again with this I wanted to show the similarities between the two techniques so when I was home again I went with my brother to the same basketball court to take another video. Since when creating the first video I only used pictures.
For this type of video when uploading it to photoshop you have to import it a specific way in order to get the frames. For this you will select file, import, video frames to layers. It will then prompt you to select a video from your device.
After the video is imported you can follow the same steps as used to create the other stop motion, such as adjusting the speed and duplicating and reversing the frames to make the video loop. The video below shows the one I created using drop frames method.
Import
Choose Video From your Device
Video Frames to Layers
Drop Frames Video
Comparing Both Methods
I wanted to include both of these methods to create a stop motion video because they essentially have the same outcome, but can be made two different ways. For movements that are quicker and might be harder to get pictures of it would be easier to use drop frames rather than spending a lot of time to get the perfect pictures. As you can see in this side by side comparison, both videos have relatively the same outcome.