Stop Frame Animation

Within my music video I have decided that I want to have a stop frame animation scene.Stop frame animation also known as stop motion is an animation technique by which an object is photographed repeatedly with a small movement of the object in between each individual frame and when all of the photos are played together in sequence it creates the illusion that the object is moving.

Stop frame animation has been used in an increasing amount of music videos and I feel that this animation technique is very suitable for music videos as the movement of the object can be fitted in time with the music in the editing stages.

For my animation scene I want to establish a clear meaning of the song as throughout the video the focus is predominantly all on the musician and so without actually filming a girl character I can still make it clear that the song is based around his relationship with a girl. I shall do this by showing pictures of my musician with his girlfriend piling up on eachother and then being destryoed in some way to symbolise the trouble in the relationship that the lyrics are about.

Below I have shown the stages of how I created my stop frame animation.

1. I first had to print of my chosen pictures as a prop for the animation.

2. I then had to establish a suitable setting for the animation. I chose to use the flat surface of a wooden desk as I do not want it to be a complicated setting that will detract from the animation and it also makes sense that the pictures are being layed out onto a desk.

3. Now that I had organised my props and settings I had to take the photos for the animation and I did this using a Nikon D40 camera and a tripod to keep the camera still as the technique is less effective if the camera moves inbetween frames. To take the photos I started off with a blank desk and then took a photo everytime a new image was layed onto the next and everytime there was a movement of the actors hand or the props.

4. Using photoshop CS5 extended edition I then put the photos into sequence. I did this by opening my first image and then creating a new layer, putting the next image onto the new layer and then continued this proccess until I had got all of my photos into order. Below is a printscreen of how I did this.

5. Once I had uploaded all of my photos in order I then had to decide how long I wanted each frame to show. It is more effective if each frame lasts less then a minute so that the movement is more smooth, after listening to song carefully I have decided that each frame should last 0.2 seconds so that it fits in time with the music and also so that the animation doesn't last too long.



6. After completing my stop frame animation I then had to save it and convert the file from a pdf into a gif so that it would be recognised by the sofware that I am going use for editing my music video.

Below is my finished stop frame animation that I will use in my music video;