How to do your own Stop Motion Animations - The Tutorial

Now hook up your camera to your computer and upload all the pics in the normal way you do with pictures from your camera. Create a new folder for them though. So they will be easy to find. Your digital camera creates default names for the pictures and often times these pictures are numbered. You can rename the pics if you want but it is okay just to leave the defaults. My camera does this:

• 000_001.jpg
• 000_002.jpg
• 000_003.jpg
• and etc..

This numbering system makes it easy for me to know the order of the pictures. If you rename your pictures make sure you use a numbering system so you know the order.

Now open up Windows Movie Maker

Press the Start button, Select "All Programs" then Select Windows Movie Maker and Movie Maker starts up.

It looks like this:

At the top of the screen is the menu bar. Press the "File" button and from the drop down menu select "New Project"

And before we start we are going to set a global setting for how fast this movie plays. Pull down the tools menu item and select options.

The Options dialog comes up -Press the Advanced Tab and scroll picture duration so it reads .250 and scroll the transition duration so it reads .25 then press OK. This sets the amount of time each picture will be displayed and the amount of time in between pictures. You should tinker with these settings to get your movie to look the way you want. For now these settings should be good.

 

 

Now we are going to start making our movie and Movie Maker makes this very easy for you. On the left side of the screen is the Movie tasks panel and you can see that it has 3 steps to making a movie. Capture Video, Edit Movie, Finish Movie. We are going to follow these steps.

Press the import pictures button

Now browse to where you stored all the pictures you took.

Select all the pictures and Press the "Import" button. You can easily select all the pictures by single clicking on the first one, hold down the shift key and then single click on the last one. All the pictures will turn blue which means they are all selected.

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Voila, your pictures come into the Movie Maker software. If you single click on one of them it will show up in the big screen image on the right. Just like my picture shows here.

 

I had a little problem with my video! Oops My hand is in one of the pictures! I had to take this out. Make sure you delete any pictures that don't belong in the sequence.

 

 

 

Now single click on the first picture in the collections window so it turns blue just like mine shows above. It shows up in the big window.

Pull down the Edit menu item from the tool bar at the top and select "Select All". Now all the pictures turn blue.

Look at the bottom of movie maker. You should see a bunch of empty white squares. This is the story board.

If you don't see these white squares then you have the timeline option displayed. Look for the little button called Show Story Board and press it. The white squares show up.

Single left click on your first picture in the collections screen, and hold the mouse button down. This selects all the pictures. Now drag the mouse down and drop the pictures into the first frame of the animation timeline bar. That's the first white square.

Each picture is placed in a white square.

Now you can see your animation in action. In the movie player press the play button (shown by the black arrow). There ya go, a movie!

 

 

 

 

 

Let's Format it so it can be put on the web, on youtube or in a file so other people can watch it.

Under Step 3 of the Movie Tasks Panel "Finish Movie" click "Save to my computer"

Give it a name, choose where you want to save it and follow the prompts. You are done! You have made your first stop motion animation. Now there is lots more to learn and I have more tutorials coming but for now you should experiment and learn some things on your own. Make another movie but this time get more creative.

 

 

 

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