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

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: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.

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.

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