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Animation (stop-motion)

Fonzijr1964

Fonzijr1964

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Feb 26, 2008
1,648
1
Maryland
I want to make some sort of stop-motion animation movie or cartoon but i am not sure where to start. I think i will be working with scanned drawings (but maybe cut outs in a small set. Any help on suggested programs or concepts or websites i should look at?
 
i think its done the goo old fashion way.

importing them into an editing software and placing them next to each other in the timeline.
 
Camera and scanner

Yep I agree with the above post.

Practice scanning in your documents cleanly, perhaps making them vector graphics in a program like Illustrator, Flash, or perhaps the open source program Inkscape (I'm not sure Inkscape has this capability). You'll then have more options and control should you want to color in the characters.

If you go the cut-outs on a small set, get a nice quality camera, I suppose anything over 3Megapixels will do, practice getting the framing and focus on your subjects and you'll come out with a nice product.

Also you should be able to do this edit in anything from iMovie to Final Cut Studio, but why not try iMovie first, it's free after all.
 
camera and quicktime

Another option is to set up the camera on a tripod over your working area, and photograph each frame, (a steady set up and good even lighting from both sides is essential - checkout 'copy stand' set ups in any good technical reference), once all the shots are imported from the camera they can be exported, resized to screen res, and dumped in folder. Then open quicktime and import image sequence - select frame rate - and its all done.

I think scanning is very time consuming and makes it hard to maintain registration across the series.

M
 
not free, but check out iStopMotion by boinx.
it's the goods. i got my copy in the last machiest bundle.

there is a demo download on the boinx site, but i have no idea how limited/restricted it is.

the $49 version allows time lapse, import/export to image editors, onion skinning, tethered camera capture (with supported cameras), and a whole bunch of other useful features.

and no, i'm not on the boinx payroll. i've used iStopMotion and think it's great, that's all ;)
 
I did an animation a while back and basically did the old fashioned way of doing animation, photographing (on a tripod) each movement frame by frame. For some reason we used After Effects to import the frames as batches and edited it together. When we redid it to clean it up some we used Avid Media Composer.

Basically what you do is take your images or scans or whatever you have, batch import them in sequence to make clips, then you just edit like a video.

Here's what we did, it looks terrible after youtube switched over to the widescreen format; we're redoing it....again....so it won't look so bad, but you get the idea):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mu-IcXAaO7s&feature=channel_page
 
scan one picture, cut out all parts in different layers in photoshop, (I don't know if Gimp will work, probably have to export everything apart). than save it as a .psd file. Open that in fcp. Import the psd file. then double click on the psd file and do the motion (like moving the arms, and legs). Now your character is moving. To let him move from left to right, go to the original sequence and move the entire picture with keyframes.
 
Ok thanks for the info guys. That youtube vid was really good. I guess i want to use iMovie but i thought you could only make pictures .5secons or greater.

arjen92 said:
scan one picture, cut out all parts in different layers in photoshop, (I don't know if Gimp will work, probably have to export everything apart). than save it as a .psd file. Open that in fcp. Import the psd file. then double click on the psd file and do the motion (like moving the arms, and legs). Now your character is moving. To let him move from left to right, go to the original sequence and move the entire picture with keyframes.
Click to expand...

do u mean like take the background and photoshop on the people and than photoshop there moving arms?
 
Fonzijr1964 said:
do u mean like take the background and photoshop on the people and than photoshop there moving arms?
Click to expand...

yeah something like that. You cut out everything, so that everything that can move is seperate (head, body legs arms, and more if you want) then just place a background, and make the parts move in fcp. You can't make them move in ps. Only to make them apart.
 
Fonzijr1964 said:
very cool

what did u use to put them together
Click to expand...

Ive HEARD you can use imovie but i was ready to kill myself last night!
iMovie HD & iMovie 08 wouldnt let me set the "display time" for the picture as low as i wanted. No matter what i did!
I came across a GREAT FREE program that couldnt be easier to use! Its called FrameByFrame. Id recommend it simply for its ease of use! Import your pics, save movie, DONE!! check it out!

FrameByFrame its on apples download page.... Let me know what you think about it
 
I personally think the easiest solution is to take stills of each frame of your animation and put them all into a final cut pro or express bin, preferably number them in order (0001.jpg 0002.jpg etc), then highlight them all and then either;

1. If you've worked out how many fps you are using right click and select duration and change it to the desired length. Then drag and drop the whole selection on the timeline and it'll put them in the order selected (hence suggesting numbering the images).

2. Whilst selected, drag and drop them onto the timeline at the default duration. Next right click in the bin and create a new sequence, double click it to open it. Now drag and drop your original sequence from you bin onto the new sequence timeline (This is called 'nesting'). Now right click on your new 'clip' (nested sequence) on the timeline and change it's duration to a length that looks good.

The second one is effectively cheating and won't look as good as properly planning out your frames against total duration.

Probably more complicated than what you're looking for but it could come as good reference to others.
 
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