The Making Of Timelapse And Stop Motion Movies

"...There is no CGI wizardry here; the stop-motion techniques employed by Lord, Park, and their team have changed relatively little since the days of the original King Kong. Each of the 110,000 frames of film that comprise the movie has to be treated as an individual shot. After each frame is photographed, the animators make minor movements, change facial expressions, and so on before shooting the next frame and repeating the process all over again. Using these techniques, the Aardman team has been able to create fluid, realistic movement that gives the characters a natural, lifelike feel..."

http://www.dvdverdict.com/

It is obvious that movies like Chicken Run where done using some professional/expensive equipments and more skilled people. But you can have, as well, somehow, the same results with Video2Photo. In this page we will try to explain how to use Video2Photo for creating Time-Lapse Movies or Stop Motion Animations.

The common used technique for creating the Stop Motion Animation is:

Bringing "dead" objects to life
Instead of moving camera you move the objects and you get an approximate motion. For this you need a manual capture, onion-skin feature and finally re-encoding of the still frames into a movie file (e.g. AVI).

The common used technique for creating the Time-Lapse Movie is:

Taking periodic snapshots of low-motion objects (flower rising, sun rising, street traffic, etc.)
You fix the camera and let objects moving. You take a snapshoot every N seconds. For example for shooting cloudscapes to get a time-lapse motion, use 1 frame every 5 second and play it back at 15-30 fps.

Creating Stop Motion Animation with Video2Photo Professional

Prerequisites

We will try to create a simple Stop Animation with Video2Photo. For creating this animation we need:

• A cheap Web Cam (e.g. Intel USB Video Camera)

• A "dead" object. I took a horse toy from my daughter's toy collection

• A desk lamp with halogen light

• A PC

• and of course Video2Photo Professional

Preparing The Scene

Start the Video2Photo. In the Open Screen press "Digital Camcorders, Video Capture Devices or Frame Servers" button

In the following list choose Intel USB Video Camera. If you use another camera choose the appropriate device name.

Press Next to go to the Open Screen. A "Capture Properties" window will pop-up. Choose "Configure" button to set the various capture settings (e.g. capture picture dimensions)

In the Open Screen the Web Cam picture should be present. Fix the toy (called from now the character) somewhere on the right side of the camera view.

Press the Onion Skin button and adjust the transparency by dragging the handle on the transparency progress bar and moving the to character into the view.

As a result of onion-skin feature the snapshot which follows to be taken will be always ghosted over the last snapshot. This is very helpful when you want to decide the position on the next animation frame.

Move the character around the scene looking always to the initial frame and when you think that next snapshot will present the right motion of the character take a snapshot by pressing CTRL-G or the button. As a result, each time, a snapshot will be added to the selection list.

You may additionally play with the light or the other characters on the scene. Keep in mind that the motion of all characters need to be smooth and real.

By pressing the left mouse button inside the camera view area you can add some helper points to describe the trajectory of the character. You can manage those points later by pressing the right mouse button and select specific commands from the pop-up menu.

After taking all snapshots the selection list should look somehow filled with snapshots names.

If you move the Onion Skin Transparency to 100% you can use the selection list to preview all taken snapshots. If some snapshots are not ok, or are in a wrong position you can use the Selection List toolbar to remove them or simply drag selections to another position.

When the snapshots are ready you can  go to the Filters Screen. To give a dramatic color temperature to the animation we will add a Channel Contrast filter. For reducing the image size to 50% we will use Resample (Quick) with a 50% Scale factor. The filters will be added to All Selections.

Instead of building big movies, build small scenes and later edit them in a video editing software.

The following short animation was done with Video2Photo in 5 minutes and has around 100 KBytes.

Other examples:

If you have a web cam or a camcorder you can download Video2Photo and start your own movie!

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