Stop motion animation question

[The Mad Monkey]

Hi guys.

I was thinking, I have loads of action figures and stuff and was thinking about doing something with them. I've got one of those handheld camcorders and was thinking some sort of stop frame animation would be fun, but I'm not sure how to go about it. I know I could just do each frame as a still and just use a gif animator to do it, but that seems a lot of hassle, is there any easy way to do it, like some sort of setting on the camcorder or something.

Has anyone got any experience with this sort of thing who could help me out?

[Shorty]

Record, pause, adjust scene, repeat.

 

Tripod and a remote would help.

 

But if you want to take it seriously, you want some dedicated stop motion software, which would mean having your camera hooked up to a computer/laptop while recording. With such software you can view your previous frame and next frame at the same time making for smooth animation.

[The Mad Monkey]

Record, pause, adjust scene, repeat.

 

Tripod and a remote would help.

 

But if you want to take it seriously, you want some dedicated stop motion software, which would mean having your camera hooked up to a computer/laptop while recording. With such software you can view your previous frame and next frame at the same time making for smooth animation.

 

Okie Dokie, the extra software business sounds like hassle, I just wanted to make something simple for some friends. I think I'll just have to rapidly pause recording to make adjustments, if all goes well I'll eventually have an epic starring Cartman, Bart Simpson and Betty Boop, just need to write a script.

[dazzybee]

There no quick way of doing stop motion. Bt you HAVE to whack it on a tripod (or something to keep it still). Some cameras have a photo option, use this, will save time when you edit, sometimes you can change the frame settings (so it records 3 frames) this can be very useful. You need decide how many frames you're going to do in a second. Mre the better obviously, but you can get away with a surprisingly low amount

[Ashley]

There is no quick way of doing animation easily in general, its very laborious (but rewarding).

 

As point of reference PAL (us) use 25 frames per second, NTSC (America) uses 30fps.

[Eenuh]

Animation generally is 24 frames per second. But you can use one frame two times, so it's 12 frames per second (but remember to repeat the frame then).

 

For stop motion, it's best to just take photos I think. Use a tripod and make sure your camera doesn't move at all. Like Shorty said using a programme that lets you see the previous frame is good, but might be a bit much.

 

For editing the video you could use any kind of programme that lets you use frames. Something like Flash would work for example.

 

Stop motion is realllllllly time consuming, but very fun too. I like the results you get usually. =)

[The Mad Monkey]

Thanks people, wasn't planning on doing anything major, just some little fun thing, got a tripod somewhere so will be OK.

[Llama Juice]

Eenuh preety much nailed it.

 

I haven't done any stop motion, but I've done my fair share of CG animation... and the principals of animation still apply... so the best advice I can give you is that the tripod is a MUST (which you said you have so YAY!) and then timing is a huge issue.

 

Notice how Eenuh said it's 24 frames per second, or in stop motion 12 pictures per second. This is extremely important... because it's hard to keep track of how much 1/12th of a second really is while you're going at it.