Stop Motion Video

Stop Motion Animation is a video or film process that produces the illusion of movement from a series of photographs of stationary objects. By moving objects in succession, students will create the illusion of movement.

Students will create a character with a four part movement and contrasting background elements turned in as a looping gif.

The unit includes one exercise, two video loops, a rubric and reflection.

Character Movement in Four Parts

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Exercise One: Character Movements

Analogous Background

  • Analogous Color Scheme
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  • Moving Elements

Character Creation

•    Contrasting Color Scheme

•    Four movements
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•    Equally sized elements
​     (consistent head size, torso size, foot size, etc.)
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Not so good...

•    Needs background movement

•    Timing of movements is off
     (should repeat fourth position to extend swimming motion)

Better...

•   Background moves with character

•   Foreground layer adds visual interest

​•   Motion of character is more fluid

Also good...

•    Same background, new character

•    Character contrasts with environment

•    Foreground and background elements with character occupying mid-ground

Example 2: Bicycling

Character in Four Movements

• Character loop happens multiple times across screen

• Three layers of movement (background, middle ground, foreground)
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• Character enters on the left, leaves on the right

• GIF loops - it begins and ends with the same elements in the frame

Example 3: Deer

Character in Four Movements​

•  It is okay to have to rotate the image to get it to line up properly.
​•  Character's feet maintain the illusion of the ground by lining up the same distance from the bottom of the frame when on the ground

Improved Character Loop

​•  Six frames (two positions are repeated to improve the visual flow)

•  Character colors contrast with background colors (Tetradic color scheme)

•  Back legs are darker in value than front legs

Static Background

Moving Background Elements

Moving Foreground Elements

Background Wolf Loop
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Two-legged Walk Cycle Tips

4 Position Walk Cycle

• Position 1 & 3 are lower

• 2 & 4 are taller because one of the legs is straight

• The back leg and arm should be a darker value than the front leg and arm
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Grid Worksheet
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Video Mask

• Align the feet to the ground, rather than to the head. The foot holds the weight of the character when in gravity.
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• Try to center the body in each frame, so that the body bobs up and down but doesn't move much from side to side.

• Fill in the back leg and arm so that it is easier to see the movement. Keeping the back leg and arm behind the other body parts is critical for understanding forward movement.

• Use two values of one color to differentiate the back leg and arm from the front.

Turning in your Animated GIF