Stop Motion Tutorial: Timing is Everything!

The key principle to animation is timing. Have you ever taking a huge amount of time to animate something, only to play it back and have it fly by too fast? Or possibly even too slow? The solution is to carefully plan out how long an action should take, even if the action is exaggerated and the movement is stylized. This tutorial explores methods for planning out the timing of a stop motion scene. Please see my other tutorials on how to animate to music, dancing, make a puppet, cut-outs, lip sync, and other stop motion subjects: Music by Mixaund: PeriTune - Royalty Free Music Material Stopwatch Photo by Stanislav Remnev on Unsplash Software: Dragonframe and Stop Motion Studio. iStopmotion (Mac and mobile) is a good frame-capturing app for the price. I understand iKITmovie is a good free option for Windows. If you have a favorite stop motion app, please tell us about it in the comments. Edited using Adobe Premiere. Camera: I’m using a DSLR. But if you’re not there yet, a good option is a camcorder that can run a live video signal to your computer. But these days a mobile device with a camera running a stop motion app is all you need. The principles discussed in this video will also apply to animation recorded with a mobile device. Shopping for Puppet-Making: Clay (Van Aken, Sculpy III), armature wire, cotton batting to build up puppet: Arts/craft store like Hobby Lobby or . Armature kit: Puppet clothes (Barbie/Ken clothes: dept store, ebay, 16-gauge aluminum armature wire (from an art store or Amazon, not the hardware store) Pre-wrap (Sporting good or drug store) Cotton batting or foam (quilting supplies from craft or sewing store) For the head, aluminum foil or wood ball (craft store) Just about everything here can be found on Amazon if you don’t have all these kinds of stores in your area. You can also get animation supplies from .