How to do STOP MOTION with Your PHONE!

Today we are going to learn Trisha’s trips and tricks in order to make great stop motion with your phone!

So I’m going to turn it over to Trisha to walk us through all of her tips.

A lot of these tips apply whether you are using your camera or your phone. These are really great stop motion basics to know, they are super helpful if you are just starting out, and I suggest if you are a beginner with stop motion, you should start with your phone!

Before you invest in lighting, cameras, stands and all these things – try it out on your phone and then if you catch the bug THEN dive in.

This is also a great place to start because there’s a simple app on your phone to make great stop motion, with a simple device like this clamp that was only $15 off Amazon.

SET UP THE PHONE

You need to be able to get your phone over top the things that you are animating.

You want to keep your phone as steady as possible.

For your remote shutter, you can use a pair of old school iPhone headphones, plus that into your phone and you use the volume button acts as a remote shutter. And I’m pretty sure that a pair of earbuds would do the same thing!

USE A STOP-MOTION APP

There are a lot of apps out there – one of my personal favorites out there is “Stop Motion Studio” – you can use the free version and it’s actually quite robust. There is a pro version that gives you capabilities like green screen and some more advanced editing, but you can use the free version and get some really great videos.

Another app to use is “Life Lapse Stop Motion Maker” and they charge a monthly fee, but the app is very advanced and it’s a really well made app.

SET UP YOUR BACKGROUND

So we’re actually going to tape down this background so it doesn’t move. If there’s anything on your background that you also don’t want to move, tape that down as well.

Then we have our paper weightlifting dude. He’s a little bit finicky because paper puppets just are. So we’re just going to stick his torso to the paper, and then we’re going to situate his legs where we want them.

As we want to make this a looping GIF, what we really want to do is just one motion. The best thing would be to go from down to up, and then we just replay it forwards and backwards.

A tool that could be helpful in this scenario could be tweezers. These are great for fine-tuning the image to make sure you are getting the correct movements.

So the app isn’t open yet, but before I started working I made sure I had it in a place good for the images.

READY

We are ready to start shooting! There are a couple things we need to do on our phone to get it all ready. And on this app the red button takes the pictures or the volume button takes the pictures.

What if your phone dies?

If you are going to be making an animation that will take a while, make sure you are fully charged or plugged into a power source.

This phone is fully charged and we’re going to do a really quick animation, so we’re not worried about that right now.

I like to wear black when making an animation to be sure I’m not being a reflection.

Speaking of lighting, you want to have lighting that is going to be as continuous as possible. So don’t be by a window – use a task lamp or any sort of light that is going to be consistent for you.

You can get a really pretty $42 dollar light at Lowes and it has a built in softbox that gives you a nice glow.

LET’S GO

Turn on your app, move the camera to be exactly where you want to be shooting.

The basic explanation of stop motion is – you take a picture, move an object, take a picture, and etc etc.

So for our stop motion, we want that strong man to lift his arms and lift that bar bell, so we’re just going to move it tiny bits at a time and take pictures.

Let’s start by taking out first picture.

Now we’re going to move it slightly, and take another picture.

Once he’s got the bar bell at the top we’re going to hold the pose there for 2 frames.

We’re going to give the weights a tiny wobble. and then you are ALL DONE!

So that I how you film a stop motion on your phone!

There are so many other ways to use this as well! You could have it spell out something on a wall, show things going into cases, OR you could even put your phone on a tripod and you could take images of yourself in front of the Eiffel Tower or any cool setting you like!