Last week Ben told me he wanted to make a Star Wars movie using their toys, but he didn’t want to see his hands in the movie.  This  turned on a light bulb and I decided to teach the kids how to make stop animation movies.

When I was a kid I made a couple claymation movies with a friend using stop animation and when my family got our first camcorder I tried making several other stop animation films, but it was difficult and not that rewarding since it was hard to share movies back then.

For our project I decided to try a small movie to see how it would work and was surprised by how easy it is to make stop animated movies now.

Here’s how I did it.

Ingredients

• Digital camera (we used our beatup old point and shoot)
• Tripod (used a cheapo tripod that came with a telescope)
• iPhoto and iMovie

Step 1

We screwed the tripod into the camera and picked a couple Star Wars guys for our first movie.  I tried a few test shots and found that macro mode gave us better photos.  We then took a photo, moved the figure, took another photo, repeat.  We took 32 photos in less than 5 minutes for our quick movie.

Step 2

I hooked the camera to the computer and took the pictures off.  The Events in iPhoto make it easy to see all your photos.

Step 3

Start a new project in iMovie.  Select all the photos in iPhoto and drag them into your iMovie project.

Step 4

By default, iMovie gives imported photos a pan and zoom effect called ‘Ken Burns’.  While cool for a photo slideshow, it messes up stop animation.  To turn it off:

• Click on a photo in iMovie and press Command-A to select all your photos.
• Press C to see the Crop options for your project
• Select either Fit or Crop instead of Ken Burns

Step 5

In iMovie click File | Project Properties | Timing.  Use the slider to adjust the time each photo is displayed.  I used 1/2 second transition and 1/10th second duration.

Step 6

Export your movie!

Very easy and a lot of fun.  We’re excited to try making a longer movie and learning some more iMovie effects.

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