Stop Motion Animation Lesson

WHAT YOU’LL NEED
The first thing you need is, of course, an idea. Try to stick with something simple for your first one–any action that can be split up into smaller parts works well.
You will need a DSLR camera and IMovie on your IMac.

STEP 1: SHOOT YOUR ANIMATION
Shoot your pictures using the DSLR camera. Set the camera settings to shoot in continuous mode. You will want to use a tripod to keep the camera in same place picture after picture.

STEP 2: DOWNLOAD YOUR PHOTOS
Now that you’ve captured your images, you’ll need to get them onto your computer. This process varies widely from camera to camera and computer to computer.

STEP 3: FIND YOUR PHOTOS IN IMOVIE
Create a new iMovie project and give it a project name.
Select your stop-motion album of photos. All of your photos should now appear in order.

STEP 4: ANIMATE YOUR PHOTOS
In order for your animated short to play properly, you must tell iMovie how long you want each photo to appear before showing the next one. You will most likely want to set the timing setting of each photo to 1 second or less.
You just created your first stop-motion animated video!

FINAL TOUCHES: MUSIC AND SHARING
To make your video more appealing you can also add music to your project by dragging MP3s or AIFF files to the timeline, or browsing your iTunes library from within iMovie.
To share your stop-motion video, you’ll want to convert it to at Movie File. Look for “Export” or “Share” options, and try one of the default options. Don’t forget to save your project often as you go along, and upload to SchoolTube!
Have fun, be creative and always EXPERIMENT!