How To Animate

Hello and welcome to the animation tutorial page. 

Starting off

To start off with you will need:

Camera

Software

Something to animate with (Preferably plasticine) Plasticine and tools from this site  http://www.tiranti.com

However...an armature can be used and is recommended. You can make your own out of aluminium wire or buy a ball and socket one from http://www.animationsupplies.net These are good if you are making a large scale production!!!

Tripod

This is because you will want your object moving but not your camera

 
Anyway to the tutorial!

In this example I am using plasticine. We take a picture of our object. Move the object slightly, take a picture. Keep doing this until you are so excited you have to stop to see what you have created! After this put it onto a program such as iMovie, Windows Movie Maker, Effects Lab Pro, StopMotionPro or (a program for these images to go together.)

When this is done you need to speed up the images so these get a smoother movement. Aardman animations use 25 fps    fps=Frames Per Second This means that 25 pictures are shown in one second. Prefferably you can use a software like Stop Motion Pro: here is a corresponding link; http://www.stopmotionpro.com

 

Using Stop motion pro

Here is a video tutorial copyright of Stop Motion Pro

 

 

NOTE: If you plan on having a production which uses stopmotion pro, then I strongly advise you use Educational, Standard Definition or the HD version. These all can run at 30 fps and the junior one runs at 15 maximum.

Thetopbun

Chroma Key on Stop Motion Pro

When doing this, it is important that no shadows are on the back drop ( The green or blue screen ) Once this has been done, make sure that the character you want to animated with soes not clash with the same colour as the back drop ( e.g. A green charater with a green back drop )

NOTE : more to come later

P&B

Lip-sync tuorial

Now I know lots of you are having a hard time getting your mouth and your characters mouth in time! Well this will help you!

Equipment:

Cling film
Plasticine = Flesh and white colour.

To the tutorial!

Now you need your character’s head made and this is quite easy. When you are done find out how big you would probably want the mouth and chin to be. So when you are done cut off the mouth and chin area. Now put the cling film over that area and fill it with fleshy plasticine. When this is done gently pull off the cling film. Now roll out a piece of thin white plasticine and if you want add the individual teeth with a tool. Then do this again for the bottom. Now the lips: Do the same but make it a bit longer than the teeth and place it over the white but show some white. Then blend the lip into the fleshy plasticine base which you are putting it onto. Do this also for the bottom lip. Hopefully this, if it goes successful, will be your first mouth shape! Now do this for all the other ones! See the picture below to see all of them. I hope I have helped. Just leave a note on the guestbook if you need some help! You can get the software for lip-sync here:

 

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=2LEFIGEf74U it is freeware! So it is good!

Just copy and paste these and then print them off so you can see

 

 

 Thanks
TopBun

 

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