Stop Motion
Lockdown continues, and my mission to find things to amuse our toddler continues too. Painting, outdoor time, dinosaur creative play; there’s plenty to keep us busy. Last week, I wrote about a couple of photography projects which I’m working on and can be done around parenting.
This week, I’ve been experimenting with stop motion film making. The idea came from Jo, at cup of toast, whose children have been creating some very imaginative animations. Our son is a bit young to make his own films, but enjoys watching what I’ve put together.
Stop motion is a bit like a photographic flip book. A series of photographs are taken, which are then combined to create an animation. As with drawn flip books, each new frame is composed to be slightly different to the last. In this way, the illusion of movement is created.
History
The first stop motion animation is documented as ‘The Humpty Dumpty Circus’, created by J. Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith in 1898. Perhaps one of the most famous is the French film, ‘A Trip To The Moon’, which was directed by Georges Méliès in 1902. The iconic picture of the Moon with a space exploration capsule embedded in one of its eyes is recognisable instantly! Over 13,000 frames were combined to create 14 minutes of film. More recent films, such as ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’, have over 100,000 frames. It can take about a week to shoot a single minute of the film. My own efforts to date have involved significantly less time and camera space.
Eat Me
I use my mobile ‘phone and an app to create films (the app is free, and for a small amount, you can buy an add on with titles and sound effects). There are myriad stop motion apps available; I’ve been using ‘Stop Motion Studio’, which I find fun, and easy to use. Having started a project with one of our son’s dinosaurs last week, I’ve kept to the giant lizard theme for this week. It’s a clumsy attempt, but our son enjoys watching it. I present, 114 pictures, to make 28 seconds – ‘Eat Me’.
18 April 2020
Yep! Very clever! Reminds me of when I was teaching ICT. I showed the GCSE groups how to make a stick-man animation. Some were really clever whilst others were quite gory with limbs being chopped off and blood everywhere! All done within a piece of software although I can’t remember what is was called.
That sounds like fun! I can imagine it was an opportunity for them to release hitherto unseen creative streaks!! Thanks for reading and commenting.
Thanks for the mention! I’m glad that you’re having fun with it 🙂 xx
Thank you. It certainly is fun creating!! I enjoy the story telling element; building short pieces around toys. Our son watches his toys moving around on screen in wonderment! xx