Stop Motion Animation

Standard
PDE Instructional Technology Specialist Competencies
Standard Used
I.A. Identification, selection, installation and maintenance of technology infrastructure, and hardware and software applications for school administration and instruction
Indicator Item
Design and production of media including projected and non-projected visual aids, audio and video production in both analog and digital forms, and photography using film-based and digital formats
Artifact
Stop Motion
Description
As a GILT521 course assignment, I created a stop motion animation using Stop Motion Studio. I used the Apple iPhone burst feature to create a unique animation featuring my son Joey.
Reflection
My goal for this project was to create a stop motion animation that showed my son Joey transforming into a fictional superhero called the “Green Gecko”. He dressed up as a Gecko superhero on Halloween and I thought it would be fun to capture his actions. My method to create the stop-motion was to use the burst technique on the iPhone camera. This allowed me to capture images of Joey crawling in rapid succession. I exported the burst images from my phone to my computer and imported the images into Stop Motion Studio.
For the title screen, I used a royalty-free comic book image from BigStock.com. I created the title screen in Photoshop. I saved one image for each letter of “Green Gecko”. When I imported the images into Stop Motion Studio, I was able to get this cool animation effect. The credit screen was a theme card from Stop Motion Studio and the audio I used also came from Stop Motion Studio. The video is set as 7 frames per second.

I enjoyed working with Joey and capturing his movements. He was very interested in seeing the final product. The challenge was that I captured the crawling with the Gecko costume and the non-costume crawling on two different days. The lighting was different and the camera positioning was slightly different.

I probably would use the Stop Motion in the future as a way to create an interesting digital story.