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Can you not get your stop motion animation right? Don’t worry, we’ve all been there.
It’s a bit tricky to figure out how to make a smooth stop motion animation at the beginning but once you get to know a few simple rules it’s just a matter of practice for you to master this art.
After years of working with stop motion and learning this technique, I realized how little information and learning guides are out there.
That’s why I decided to compile a list of the main beginner stop motion mistakes and how to solve them.
So that I could help people like you avoid a few headaches in your early stages.
Want to know how to fix your stop motion animation? Here are some of the main mistakes made by people who have just started animating:
1. Animation flicker
A lot of stop motion films suffer from an inconsistency in lighting. If you are experiencing this, you might want to check you are doing the following:
Do not let any natural light in: make sure your windows are fully covered and that you are using sources of artificial lighting. You also need to be careful with your lighting set up. The lights should be in front of your camera and pointing towards your set. Natural light changes all the time and even though our eyes are not always able to tell our camera will.
Wear dark clothes while animating: this will avoid unwanted reflections or your camera sensor.
Make sure your camera is set in manual mode (including your exposure): If your camera is set in auto exposure it will try to compensate for the lighting available by making every shot look as bright as possible and separate your object from the background. This is the number one cause for animation flicker so beware!
2. Camera shake
You want your camera to be as still as possible when you animate. Touch your camera slightly while working on a stop motion frame sequence and all your hard work will be thrown under the bus.
But I get it, even if you take precautions, some accidents can happen.
I’ve also been animating for hours and then accidentally touched my camera with my sleeve or tripped over the tripod.
As much as this is annoying and unpredictable, you can always take the basic precautions in order to ensure you DO NOT touch your camera until you finish a stop motion scene.
What you’ll need:
–Tripod: Keeping your camera steady while shooting your frames is essential!
A good tripod is key for that, without it your stop motion video will not make any sense.
Try to stick it to the floor or to your preferred surface with dutch tape so that you make it even steadier.
Remember: better be safe than sorry!
A remote control shutter works as a remote control for your camera. It will help you take a frame without pressing your shutter button from anywhere in your room.
You can either connect them to your camera or get a wireless one. This is the one I use on my Canon 70D, however, there are countless options out there.
Another thing you’ll need is a battery adapter power cable. You never know how long you might need to animate your stop motion so connecting your camera batteries to the light is a must if you don’t want to run out of batteries while you are in the middle of a scene. Check some of these out, they are very good and completely affordable.
3. Low Frame Rate
Most of us animate our stop motion videos in our DSLR or phone camera and then take it to an editing software in order to edit our animation.
Animating without a stop motion animation software makes it really difficult to plan our frames accordingly. Oftentimes we will end up with very few frames to make a scene work.
At this point, our editing software will probably restrict the speed in which our images are played back and our animation will not look as smooth as we had imagined it.
So what do you do in order to avoid this? You need to take a minimum of frames per second in order to make your stop motion animation work.
A very common question everyone wonders about is how many pictures does it take to make 1 minute of stop motion.
In my opinion, it’s better to think in seconds.
The normal frame rate for a professional stop motion production would be 24 frames (pictures) per second. However, you can make your stop motion animation work with as little as 8 frames per second. It won’t look as smooth as if you were doing 24 or at least 12 frames per second but you will still create an illusion of movement.
A good FPS(frame per second) for stop motion is anywhere between 8 to 24 frames per second.
4. Blurry images. Change of focus
As mentioned previously you should set your camera mode to manual and work with manual exposure as well.
This will avoid changes in focus and make your animation look smooth.
If your camera only has an automatic focus then it will inevitably lose focus every time you make a change in your new frames.
In order to avoid getting a blurry image in-between frames work around your manual focus ring and be prepared to adjust your focus often. Do it carefully and only touch your camera ring, otherwise, you have the danger of getting a camera shake too.
5. Unwanted reflections
If you are wearing a bright T-shirt you will act as a massive light reflector without even realizing it.
The light will bounce back into your stop motion set and mess around with your frames creating a slight flickering.
When animating, always wear black or dark clothes!
6. Objects accidentally moving
Yeah, that’s also a common one. This is how it usually happens:
You try to become a stop motion ninja by mastering a pose that gets you close enough to your puppets but is still danger-free from touching your camera and lights.
You then feel great about yourself (even though your back hurts like crazy) after holding those uncomfortable poses for more than 10 minutes.
But while you were so focused on animating your stop motion puppet and in a fraction of a second your arm slightly touched one of the elements in the background.
And then bang! Your stop motion animation is ruined and you are back to stage 1 again.
Annoying isn’t it? Believe me, I’ve been there.
Well… Although this might sound like a stupid solution it is actually the only one: GLUE EVERYTHING that doesn’t need to be moving.
You will then avoid moving and dropping some props by mistake. Remember the only thing that needs to move in your stop motion set is your puppet and the objects your puppet is interacting with.
7. Character flaws
As much as your props can move and fall, so can your stop motion puppets.
You’ll find yourself laughing at the image of your puppet standing without a head or losing an eyebrow every now and then. But after some long sessions animating the joke will stop being funny and become annoying instead.
Before you start animating a scene of your stop motion video I would recommend checking all your puppet joints and parts are in place and have no risk of falling.
If you think something doesn’t look like the way it used to take the time to amend it before you start animating again.
For a more detailed guide on how to animate properly head to my next article “How to make a stop motion animation step by step- 7 tips for beginners”
Happy animating!
-Ana
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