Your First Animation

In this tutorial you will learn how to create a new iStopMotion document and how to create a simple animation. By following along you will get to know the most important tools of iStopMotion.

1. Create a new iStopMotion project

Create new Document

Upon opening, iStopMotion creates a new movie and presents a dialog, requesting a file name and a preset for the movie. (If this does not occur, it has been disabled. You can create a new document by selecting File > New at any time.)

2. Choose an image source.

In order to record frames in iStopMotion you need to choose the device (video camera, webcam, still camera) to be used for capturing. A live preview of that device will be shown in the preview area. In case the content of the preview area is not what you expected, you need to select the correct camera: $CHOOSE_IMAGESOURCE_IMAGEALT

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As most still cameras are not able to transfer a live preview, you will only see an image from a still camera after creating a preview manually. Create a preview by clicking the left record button in the toolbar. If your camera supports live preview you have to turn it on with the Life button next to the overlay slider. To find out if your camera supports live view, please check the list of supported cameras on the iStopMotion support website.

3. Position your camera and objects

4. Capture your first frame

If you are working with a video source you can now just click the capture button to insert the current preview into the movie. If you are working with a still camera, first press the left capture button (as described above) to generate a preview. Take multiple previews until you are satisfied with the result. Now, using the right capture button insert that preview image into your movie.

5. Bring life to your objects

A movie consists of a lot of single images. Two images of a movie usually only differ a little. Playing back lots of images in a rapid fashion will result in apparently fluid motion to the human eye.

6. Play your movie

Once you have recorded enough frames, you can make a movie. Clicking the play button will play back the movie in the preview area.

In order to smoothly play back the images, iStopMotion needs to create a playback movie. This may require some time to complete.

Congratulations, you just created your first stop motion movie!

More control over your animation

iStopMotion offers various tools to give you better control over the movement of your objects. <<<MISSING>>>

Using the overlay slider you can crossfade between the last captured image and the real-time preview of your camera. This helps you to inspect the the resulting image in the movie, the live preview or compare those two images.

Further processing of your movie

When you are done capturing frames, you can export your movie to it's final state or for post-processing in another application, such as iMovie or Final Cut Pro.

Select File > Export menu and choose a setting. To distribute the movie via email, MPEG-4 (at 320 by 240 pixels), would be quite suitable. If you prefer to edit it in another application first, you should export your movie in full size with as little compression as possible.

To edit your scene in iMovie just select File > Send to iMovie. iStopMotion will convert your movie in a format suitable for iMovie and launch iMovie automatically.

Related Topics: Time lapse recording