So we now introduce you to yet another term: stop motion. For a complete history you can always click the wikipedia link provided here. No sense in us reinventing the wheel so-to-speak. There are plenty of other places to help you dig a little deeper into this concept:
- Dragonframe, in its attempt to sell you screen grabbing software (30 day free trial available) provides an ample explanation.
- Webopedia offers an explanation with great glossary.
- Techopedia (while having to suffer through a few ads) does a nice job also with related terms
- Best yet is Lynda.com… again trying to sell subscriptions to is classes… contains a great video demonstration.
We are looking at stop motion as an introduction to time-based video.
It is interesting to note that South Park, one of the most successful animated TV shows of all time started out as a stop action movie.
But please don’t overlook the fact that audio is also time based. Harder to visualize for sure (unless you count the animated music score from previous readings). We will be getting into video editing next but we are simply telling you that you do not have to do actual video to implement time-based media into your lessons. Animated motion, stop motion flip books.. all of them add interest to your projects. The intent is to show you some easy ways to get started… hopefully, some of it will translate /transfer into the actual video editing lessons as we dig deeper into this wonderful world of time-based media.
To complete this lesson, you MAY utilize your video editor or spend some money on some specific stop motion products. We introduce you to both to give you the opportunity for the best experiences. We are not endorsing any of these products but have done some research and found the ones listed to offer the best experiences. You also need to review the module on kinestasis , which could be fun final artifact that you produce for this activity. In order to get the pictures to move according to the sound track the trick is to lay your sound track down first then editing the length of the pictures to match the sound. Kinestasis has its own metric. Each picture needs to be on the timeline for no more that 1/3 a second a piece (at 30 frames a second this is no more than 10 frames each).
Here are the specs:
- Create, as a minimum, a thirty to sixty-second stop motion artifact… the content/context to be of your choosing. It may be a flip book, an animated Gif, kinestasis, or something created using one of the paid products noted below.
- Save the file as an mp4 file and upload it using the File Uploader Function we have provided. This page is password protected (123456).
- Also name your file last_name-stopmotion.mp4.
- Once your file is successfully uploaded you will receive an upload successful message> Post your confirmation as an answer to the one question survey in Canvas.
Here are some standalone Stop Motion Products (Optional)
- Disney Storymation Studio by Wonderforge. (iPad/iPhone) The app is free but limited. You can also purchase a self-contained kit for around $30. Provides a lot of the content as well as technology to produce your stop motion.
- Stikbots (around $25) is actually a toy for which you can interface using an app on your tablet to create stop action movies. Also comes with its own You Tube channel.
- The App store and Play store offer several stop action apps to help you create stop action movies on your mobile devices. Prices vary from free to inexpensive.
- You can also find several screen grab/capture products for your MAC and for Windows.. again from free to inexpensive. What these do is allow you to capture video game play so you can create your own stop motion of a video game play… this is often referred to as machinima.
- Last, there are several free and inexpensive animated gif creation products out there… gifmaker being one of them.
