Animation
Stop Motion Video
Timeline: February 2024
There are many types of animations used to tell a story. One of which is a stop motion animation. They are created by editing together multiple pictures to show movement. It’s a time consuming process, but I made one called “The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow”.
Research
To get a better idea of what I would need to accomplish in my stop motion video, I found some inspiration.
This stop motion animation is a paper cut out animation where the animator moves the pieces of paper to move along the story. It’s a cute story about a dog left alone. I like how the music and sound compliments the animation.
This stop motion animation doesn’t tell a strong story, but it’s fun to watch. It shows a variety of objects moving and transitioning between each other. I like how seamless the transitions are and how creative the animator is with his choice of items.
This animation tries to convince the audience to use less paper to save trees. The sound used throughout helps tell an effective story and helps persuade the viewer to feel a certain way.
This one is all focused on a white board and someone’s hand. This is a highly complex animation because there is constant motion and many things happening at one time in the scene. The transitions are fascinating to watch and keep the viewer intrigued.
The Process
I knew making a stop motion video would be a new task for me, so I made a practice animation to learn more about the process.
Using my iPhone and the “Stop Motion Studio” app, I easily created an example of a stop motion animation. I put my phone on a tripod and took pictures through the app as I moved plants along my desk. It helped me get a better understanding of what needs to be done to create a stop motion animation. After editing the pictures together, I can see the camera seems to move a little bit. I think the tripod may have been shaken when moving the plants.
Then I came up with an idea for my final animation. I decided on a linear story, which has a beginning, middle, and end. I chose to show a cloudy sky becoming a rain storm. Then at the end, the sun comes out. It was made with paper cutouts and edited with music and sound effects to match the action. There is more pre-production details in this planning document.
To start the process, I used my phone to take 95 pictures to bring my animation to life. I used Adobe Premiere Pro to edit them together at 12 frames per second. Then I added the planned music and sound effects from freesound.org and Free Music Archive to make the story feel real for the viewer. Without the sound, this animation would be extremely boring to watch. I also added a flash effect to emphasize the lightning. In Adobe After Effects, I added text at the end of the animation with the title and some information. I used a preset effect to have the text slowly appear.
Conclusion
This was a really fun project to put together. My storyboarding and pre-production planning helped with the execution and I’m happy with the way my stop motion animation came out. It’s simple but tells a linear story with sound that emphasizes the important moments.