During the first week of September, as I was starting my second year of Masters, I was without a computer. Restless as I am, I just could not wait and not do anything for a week while my computer was getting fixed, so I took out my camera, and a toy I had bought from Dubai Duty Free, and starting taking pictures. Once I had my laptop back, and fixed, I created the following video. Enjoy it in full HD… 🙂

The concept behind stop motion is very simple. You take a lot of pictures, and with very small differences between any two images. These pictures are then viewed quickly to give an illusion of motion. This is the process by which cartoon are made.

If you are doing this, I would recommend using a camera with manual exposure, such that the colors and lighting in all the pictures remain similar. If you use a remote control to take pictures, you will not risk moving the camera.

In total, for the above video, I took 60 pictures. Some of the pictures are shown below:

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I used JPGVideo to stitch them together in a video. The software is free, and very basic, but gets the job done. I included multiple copies of the final image to let the viewers have a fuller view of the final product.

Another thing worth noting is that the resolution of the video is the same as the resolution of the pictures. Hence, to have 1920 X 1080 resolution, all you need is a 2.1 Megapixel camera.

So have a go, try making a small film, and let me know how it goes, or if you have more questions. A good place to start is on a Lego set, since the places are very well defined, and the everything is small scale, easier to film.