Cheap Software Tools Give New Life To Stop-Motion Animation

An anonymous reader writes "The NY Times reports that a wide variety of new stop motion animation tools are making it simpler to create stop-motion movies. The new tools are helping animators run more than three times faster than they did just a few years ago. Some even say that stop motion is cheaper than computer generated animation. Tools like Dragon Stop Motion, Stop Motion Pro and iKitMovie are just a few of the tools that are reinvigorating the space."

Comments

Finally

[Stregano]

I can finish my glorious recreation of the California Raisins singing "Heard it to the Grapevine"

Plenty of smartphone apps too

[jordan314]

There are plenty of smartphone apps out there too (several on the iPhone at least), which is a really great use of the camera and software at once. They support previous frame overlays, time-lapse, and frame-by-frame deleting and editing, which are a boon for quick creativity.

Uhhh... Yeah

[Monkeedude1212]

Some even say that stop motion is cheaper than computer generated animation

Well yes - that's why when computers were invented we didn't instantly switch to CGI for our movies, it took time to come around - Stop motion has ALWAYS been cheaper.

The problem is: It doesn't look as nice.

Cut out the director's and actors' Salaries from the movies, and guess which one had a higher budget: Rudolph the Rednose Reindeer or Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Clones.

Re:Uhhh... Yeah

[miserere nobis]

re: "doesn't look as nice". Actually, that isn't something you can say across the board. Filming physical models can often produce superior results. In fact, it takes a whole lot of work on a computer to produce something that looks half as good as simply taking a picture of a real-life object. I actually think a lot of the spaceship action in the original Star Wars movies looked better (where, of course, "better" is definitely a subjective, artistic judgment based on sense of "realism", sense of how much its look fits with the feel of the overall film and so on) than the newer ones which relied more on computer graphics. The difference isn't solely that CGI looks better (though it does in some cases-- think, say, a Godzilla monster, that would rely on a very difficult model or a person in a suit), but that you can do things with it that you can't do with a camera and a real scene, and that you can much, much more easily re-film a scene with slight adjustments.

Re:Uhhh... Yeah

[EdZ]

Because good stop motion and bad stop motion cost almost exactly the same: it's nearly entirely skill based (a good stop motion artist might even work faster than a bad one). Bad CG, however, is a lot cheaper than good CG, because a lot of steps are skipped or slimmed down. More tweening (fewer keyframes), simpler lower resolution textures, no normal maps, specular maps, bump maps, SSS maps, etc, simpler lighting to shorten render time, and so on and so forth.

Re:How can it be cheaper?

[EvanED]

What is a computer going to do, move the model for you? Snap the frame for you?

Um, yes. That's the idea behind setting keyframes: you only specify where things are at certain points, and the computer interpolates for you.

It also means that if you messed up a shot in some way you don't have to go all the way back and reshoot: you can just fix it and rerender.

It also means that you don't have to build physical models or buy a camera.

Re:How can it be cheaper?

[MeanMF]

RTFA... "To simulate movement and expression, animators bend or twist their objects ever so slightly between shots, a painstaking process that makes it difficult to achieve consistency from frame to frame. But now, software can help remedy that, with programs that help check the alignment of the camera and the lighting of the scene while letting the animator flip between recent images to see if the items are moving realistically. That part of the process — synchronizing the shots — was what made it difficult for amateurs to make a good movie."

Re:How can it be cheaper?

[Hognoxious]

Um, yes. That's the idea behind setting keyframes: you only specify where things are at certain points, and the computer interpolates for you.

Speaking as someone who's heard of Ray Harryhausen, that's not stop-motion. That's some kind of half-assed CGI mashup.

Now get, in a slightly jerky fashion, off my lawn.

Apples & apples

[dazedNconfuzed]

Better CGI-to-stopmotion comparison is SW2 with Corpse Bride, with budgets of $115M vs. $40M respectively, which lines up pretty well accounting for subtracting non-animation costs, and considering they were made only 3 years apart and done within the same general Hollywood system.

Even better would be pure-animation Robots vs. Corpse Bride, made same year with $75M vs. $40M budgets.

Re:Apples & apples

[sznupi]

...and how many of us know people who thought Corpse Bride had to be CGI?

(I also knew some thinking the same thing about Sony Bravia San Francisco bouncy balls commercial; and refusing to accept otherwise until linked to "making of")

Plug: iStopMotion

[SillySilly]

I've used iStopMotion -- and loved it. Only a customer, not connected with the company in any way.

Lego stop motion

[mischi_amnesiac]

Two weeks ago I spoke with a man who shot the last harry potter book as lego stop motion. Here is the english trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xedFmxo7hc0&feature=channel

He uses 25 pictures per second of film. It is a hobby of his and he spent two years making it. Every evening during the week and the complete day on weekends. In my opinion it nearly looks as good as rendered.

Made a stop-motion movie with my kids

[Eponymous Coward]

One boring Saturday, my kids and I made a couple of stop motion movies using their toys, our crappy point and shoot camera, and iMovie. We put the camera on a tripod and moved the toys around in front of it (it was a chase scene). Take a picture, move the toys a bit, take another picture, etc... After taking hundreds of pictures, we had iMovie make a slide show with them, showing each picture for 1/10 second (at the time, that was as fast as iMovie would go), then burned it to a DVD. The movies were only a minute or so long, but it was fun and easy.

The kid's Rudolph

[westlake]

The real question is what could "Rudolph the Rednose Reindeer" have looked like if it had the time, modern benefits and budget you mentioned. Not to say it'd look as nice, but I'm sure it'd be better (assuming they don't stay with the kiddie looking format

The "look" persists because Rudolph" has always been a story for kids.

"Rudolph" began as a 1939 coloring book distributed freely to children by Montgomery Ward. Gene Autry recorded the Johnny Marks song in 1949. The Rankin/Bass special for NBC was broadcast in 1964.

Whoever Wins - We Lose

[Dogtanian]

First there was Alien vs. Predator. Then there was Freddy vs. Jason. But it was clear that the crossover fad had gone too far when they announced...

Robots vs. Corpse Bride