Morell Regional High School Creative Multimedia Animation: Stop Motion Animation Notes Source: http://www.stopmotionpro.com/whatis_1.htm

What is Stop Motion Animation? Have you ever drawn pictures in the corners of old books? Drawing pictures slightly differently from one page to the next then flipping through them with your thumb makes the images animate. This is the key concept of animation - incremental changes to drawings or objects, creating movement or "life".

Stop motion animation Stop motion animation utilises this incremental change process in its own special way. Traditionally a movie film camera was started and stopped, one frame at a time. While the camera was stopped an animator would adjust the figure or object the camera was pointing at. The camera would film another frame - this would continue until all the animation was filmed. Movie film is now very expensive and most video cameras cannot capture single frames.

How does Stop Motion Pro fit in? Stop Motion Pro stores each frame on the computer, not video or film. Using a video camera, digital still camera or webcam, a Windows PC and Stop Motion Pro it is possible to capture one frame of a puppet or object, make a small change and then capture another frame. After this is repeated several times the illusion of movement builds. There are up to 30 frames every second in video, so it is possible to create very smooth animation.

What would a set-up using Stop Motion Pro be like? Connecting a video camera or webcam to your computer Stop Motion Pro lets you monitor and capture individual video frames. Because the frames are stored on your computers hard drive, Stop Motion Pro can let you play back and edit your animation instantly. The advantages of using a PC The amazing thing about Stop Motion Pro is the instant feedback you get while animating. You can preview the animation and edit frames like a word processor. Watching your animation grow and improve is great fun. In the old movie film days you had to wait until the film came back from the lab to see the results of your work - imagine how nerve wracking that must have been!

The things you can animate You can animate virtually anything that can be put in front of a camera - Clay figures, paper cut- outs, beads, sand, toys and even people. You could make a film about how your breakfast cereal hides when you go out of the room. There are some wonderful examples of animation you can look at for inspiration - the gallery on our website is a good start.

Happy animating