Stop Motion Technical Resources

Working with Adobe Bridge to Batch Process and Rename

Working with After Effects

Importing multiple images into AE as one stop-motion file

YouTube Video Settings for best Export (.MOV or .AVI are best since .MP4 isn't available)

COMPOSING STOP-MOTION FRAMES

There are several considerations to keep in mind when setting up stop-motion scenes and taking photos. Below are a few of the main things to keep in mind when planning out your stop-motion and taking photos.

Maintain a Consistent Frame Dimension and Orientation

For this project, the whatever your camera / phone photo dimensions are, the final stop motions animations should either be horizontal, 16:9 or 4:3 aspect ratios, and be between 1920 pixels wide and 720 pixels wide. A few standard sizes for this - especially working with an iPhone are 720p (1080w x 720) or 1080p (1920x x 1080). I will go over batch resizing on Monday, for now, just make sure to keep your photos the same dimension and horizontal orientation.

Helpful link for working with iPhone 6 + 7 when taking multiple photographs at high resolution

Consistent Camera Position + Angle

For the most part, unless you are working with camera movement, you will want to keep your camera still and stationary for all photos, which will require marking the camera position in relation to the photographed scenes and using some kind of tripod device to keep the angle consistent. There are many iPhone tripod options available, as well as simple and inexpensive DIY options. You can use things like tape or chalk to mark where your iPhone or camera / tripod is set up.

Lighting

You want to be sure your stop-motion objects are well lit, and also ensure that no shadows are being cast by your camera or yourself due to overhead lighting (either artificial or natural). Changes in lighting can also effect the overall flow and cohesiveness of stop-motion animations, but when used intentionally they can create interesting effects.

This can happen a lot with beginning stop-motion

Background and Frame-Edges

It can be very difficult to edit the background / frame edges of individual stop-motion frames, so be sure that you have a clear background in terms of both the ground - so, if your scene is on a table with a white sheet over it - AND what is above the horizon-line - so, if you aren't shooting overhead and things like walls are visible.

Do you want to have this wooden frame / does it serve a purpose, or should you make the yellow background large enough to fill the frame?

Storyboard / Plan + Number of Frames

You want to know the number of frames / photos you are working with (12 x length of animation in seconds) then sketch out a plan for the different groupings of seconds to know roughly how many frames you will need to shoot for each "beat" of your animation. One way to do this for the project would be to listen to your audio, break it down into different beats or scenes by seconds, then multiply each by 20 to know how many photos to roughly assign to each scene.