Stop Motion Animation!

I've been itching to experiment with stop motion animation for quite some time. I thought about taking a class but just couldn't find the time or have the credits at school. I thought, "How hard could it really be?"

A few weeks ago, my friend gave me a lovely music box tinker toy. When I saw it, I knew this would be the perfect subject for my first stop motion "film." I figured that it would have step-by-step instructions and require a lot of care; this is something that seemed really interesting to document in pictures. Rather than read the directions and even look in the box before I started documenting, I decided to go through the items for the first time while filming.

With plenty of time to spare and some lovely sunlight coming through my windows, I decided yesterday afternoon was THE time to start working. I set up the tripod and attached my Nikon point-and-shoot onto it.


Wow! This kind of work takes so much patience. I took one to three shots of each movement and decided which one I would use before moving on to the next movement (so there wasn't too much confusion during editing). I imported my photos into iMovie and changed the timing to .3 seconds for the first few shots and .2 for the rest. I recorded the actual music in GarageBand and laid the track over the video. I had to slow down the timing at the end of the film in order to get the full music track in.

Now that I'm a stop motion expert (*wink*), I can absolutely see how the light changes throughout the film and where my camera moved, therefore, creating uncomfortably jerky movements. It's completely amateur, and I LOVE it! My next stop motion will be IKEA furniture construction. GET. PSYCHED.

You can watch the video on Vimeo by clicking here. Enjoy...

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