- Cobostories
- November 21, 2022
- 8:29 am
What is
stop motion?
Stop-motion animation is a series of individual images that are played one after the other, with a selected number of images per second, also called FPS (frames per second).
Pictures are taken of one or more objects, they are moved a little, they are photographed, they are moved, they are photographed, they are moved, they are photographed, they are moved, they are photographed, they are moved….. And so on and so forth until all of a sudden 3 hours have passed and you have 40 seconds. movie.
When you work with stop-motion, you decide yourself how many frames per second your film should be played with.
More frames per second will make your movie look much more fluid, but of course it will also take much longer. You can easily make a good stop-motion film with 6, 8 or 12 frames per second.
What do you need?
All you need is a tablet or a mobile phone that has a stop-motion app installed.
We would of course recommend the CoboStories app, as it is easy to use, GPDR friendly and can be used on both mobile and tablet.
But of course there are many free stop-motion apps that you can also use.
In addition, it is an advantage to have a tripod (like our CoboStories tripod), so that you have a physical and solid frame in which to make your stop-motion film.
The last thing you need is your imagination, because with stop-motion, the only limit is your imagination.
Good rules of thumb
Color in characters and the shapes before cutting them out.
Then you can paint loose without worrying about staying within the lines, it will be clipped away afterwards anyway. It is also much easier to paint smaller parts before they are cut out.
Cut out arms and legs separately.
When designing your figure, draw the head, body, arms and legs separately and cut them out. Afterwards you put them together with elephant trunk. That way you can move the different parts of the body. Extra tip, you can also split the arms and legs into multiple joints for even more movement here. See an example here .
Watch the film many times when making it.
Then you ensure that the figures move as you would like them to, and that you can adjust if there is a hand in one of the images.
Secure the background with elephant trunk so it doesn’t slide around.
So you don’t have to worry about having to put the background in place all the time.
Stop-motion takes a long time, so set realistic goals if you don’t have that much time.
If you are going to make stop-motion films with your students and you only have a module or two, be aware that they don’t spend too much time making all their characters so they don’t have time to film.
Use a structured process if you want to make stop-motion films with your students.
We have developed a creative process that acts as a guide, so you have a process you can follow when making stop-motion films. You can read more about the process here.
Inspiration
MORE INSPIRATION?
We have created an inspiration bank where the focus is on the creative learning environment.
Here you can discover and read about innovative learning approaches, creative processes, fun animation techniques, new research and much more!
Enjoy!
