Stop-Motion

Stop-Motion (also known as slowmation ) is an animation technique where physical objects are manipulated frame by frame to create the illusion of movement when the frames are played in sequence, resulting in a unique and often charming animated effect.

ASSIGNMENT:

Your Task: create a 30-second animation at 8fps.

Remember, the higher the fps the smoother the animation--- but more frames will be needed! As is, you will be taking nearly 250 photos!

Your animation must have some dialogue!

BEFORE YOU BEGIN:

You must create a storyboard (like a comic strip) to show your plan. It should show key moments of the story you want to tell in your animation. See the "How To" below for details.

Portfolio Checklist:

Your Animation.
- You can upload it to your website or to YouTube (you can publish it as "unlisted" so people can't search for it if you want).
Your Storyboard.
In your Reflection, please describe your goals and process, including your choice of materials.
- If you used music or sound effects from other sources, you must credit them.

How to Make a Stop-Motion:

What you will need:

To make a stop-motion-animation, you will need something to...

take photos (such as a phone, iPad, or camera),
- Speak to Ms. U ASAP if you do not have one of these.
hold your camera device steady (we have phone-mounts in class)
animate with (play-dough, paper, action figures, vegetable peels, etc.)

Storyboarding

For longer animations, you need to make a storyboard.

A storyboard is like a comic book version of a movie or animation, where you draw pictures in a sequence to plan out and visualize how each scene will unfold. This helps you organize and understand the flow of the story before actually making the film or animation.
Aim for 4-6 major scenes.
If you have narration, write it alongside their storyboard, so that the two work well with one another.

Construction!

Gather your materials.
Build your characters/sets/props.
Set up your stage, including setting up your photo-taking device.
- If using one of the phonemounts, make sure you have a shutter remote and connect with it via Bluetooth (the remote lets you take pictures without touching/bumping your phone!)
Start taking your photos, moving your pieces bit by bit between each shot. Remember, you have 8 photos per second of footage.

ReConstruction!

Uploading, Editing, and Narrating.

Uploading:
- Goal: to get photos from your device to the computer
- Ms. U has had the best luck uploading to a Cloud Storage that she can also access on the computer, like Google Images or OneDrive.
- You will have A LOT to move so email won't work.
- Make sure ALL of your photos are saved in one folder, that is ONLY for that animation.
  - ex) OneDrive > Media Design 11 > Walk Cycle Slowmation FRAMES
Editing
- Decide if you want to adjust your photos at all (eg: increase the contrast). If yes, look up "Photoshop Batch Editing"
- Happy with your photos? Open up Windows Movie Maker
  - Yes, it's old. And it's still the best.
  - If our computers don't have it anymore, alert Ms. U immediately.
- Start a new project and copy all of your images into WMM.
- Select all of the new frames (Ctrl-A) and change their speed to 0.125 (aka 1s/8f).
  - You may adjust this for specific/groups of frames until you are happy with the speed.
Narrating
- Record your dialogue with your phone (see uploading above) or use one of the class headsets that have a mic.
- You can copy your audio file into your WMM project. Place it so it plays at the correct time.
- You can do the same for music and sound effects.
  - Music? A good source of royalty-free is Purple Planet.
  - SFX? Try ZapSplat.

Sharing!

Make sure your WMM file is saved
- It can go in the same folder as your frames, but Ms. U prefers it to be put it one hierarchically higher.
Go to File > Export
Save it as an MP4.
Upload this MP4 file to YouTube or to your portfolio website.

Rather than everyone handing in their animation project files... you must call Ms. U over and show her in person for the "Not a Robot!" check.

Get Inspired

PARTING WORDS OF WISDOM

Take Chances.

Experiment. Animations can do things live-action never could. Play with where you can situate the Point of View and the (e)motions of your characters and their environment.

Make Mistakes.

The best animators did not get there by being great the moment they picked up a pencil. Reflect on what went wrong, and fail forward.

Get Messy!

Throw perfectionism out the window. You’re just learning, and no one will notice if that circle isn’t quite a circle for the millisecond they see it.