Tools and Technology-iStopMotion

Tools and Technology-iStopMotion

I have always been captivated by the pain staking process known as stop motion animation.  Its incorporation in film and television, juxtapositioned by other live action, envelops the imagination and creates another depth of reality.  With the advent of new digital media and highly sophisticated methods of computer animation, stop motion animation has decreased in use but is still  emulated stylistically in some feature films, such as the Lego Movie(Tsai, 2014).  As a fan, I have always wanted to test the waters of stop motion animation but with no training or tools, the task seemed very difficult.

A few years ago, I bought an inexpensive DSLR, and through fairly low tech means, I created a stop motion animation of a few paper puppets talking to each other.  Without too much information (not like there is really much to it), I would take a picture, move the puppet a bit, and then take another picture.  Several hundred pictures later, I import the pictures into the computer, load them in Windows Movie Maker, and stitch all the pictures together.  All the while, I hoped that the pictures showed the slightest increment in movement so that there were not any jumps in action.  Essentially, this was similar to the way that stop motion animation was done on film, but I was not seeing any benefit of modern technology.

A few years later, I purchased a newer model DSLR and I found a program that would advance my prowess of stop motion.  iStopMotion is an animation software that allows so many allowances.  There are many tools/features that it has but the most useful to me is that I can connect my camera to my computer and get a live view from my camera on my computer monitor.  After I take a picture or record a frame of animation, a ghosted "live" image comes up on the screen so that I can make sure my movement for my puppets is appropriate.  This onion skin effect allows me to "See what the animation is going to look like before you capture the frame" (Boinx, 2015) and enables my animation to be more error proof.

Additionally, I plan on using a few other tools as well.  The Foregrounds Tool allows you to create an "overlay [for] your animation with a picture of video with transparency" (Boinx, 2015).
In working with the background, the Chroma Keying tool allows you to animate and place "[objects] into real background pictures or movies or put an actor into an animated scene" (Boinx, 2015).  At the moment, I am not sure how I plan on using these features but I believe that their presence broadens my scope of possibilities.

Using this software allowed me to create this test animation that shows a platform going together.  Incorporating stop motion animation into my project allows me the affordances that it does in cinema, creating things that are otherwise impossible/difficult to do otherwise.  Because of the fact that I already put together most of my platforms prior to starting this project, I am using animation to show visually how the platform goes together, utilizing multiple learning styles.

Click here for my test with iStopMotion


Boinx iStopMotion: Mac Stop Motion and Time Lapse Software. (n.d.). Retrieved March 13, 2015, from http://boinx.com/istopmotion/mac/

Tsai, D. (2014, February 20). Here’s How the Animators Made The Lego Movie: Watch | TIME.com. Retrieved March 13, 2015, from http://entertainment.time.com/2014/02/20/how-the-lego-movie-was-made-animation-video/