Single Frame Animation

Izzy Video 041 – Single Frame Animation

izzyvideo41

In this installment of Izzy Video, I demonstrate how to do single frame animation. It’s easy to do, and if you have children (like I do), you might want to get them involved. They’ll love it too.

The editing software I use is Final Cut Pro, but you could just as easily use iMovie or any other video editor that allows you to import digital photos.

As always, thanks for watching!

This video is available to members only.

Update –

Within a couple hours of when I posted today’s installment of Izzy Video, I received this great email from Dave Morrison. Dave, thanks for the helpful tip!

Hi Izzy,

I’ve really enjoyed your video tutorials over the last few months. I REALLY
enjoyed tonight’s offering about single-frame animation because I can
finally contribute back to you! There’s a MUCH easier way to do this
operation and you already have the necessary software.

Here’s all you do:

1. shoot all your still-frame images in just the manner you described
2. put them all in one folder
3. open Quicktime Player Pro.
4. go to the pulldown for Open > Image sequence
5. point it to the folder where the images are contained
6. pick whatever frame rate you desire
7. sit back and enjoy your movie

I’ve used this for a multitude of timelapse projects and it works great. If
you’re into a more “long form” video, here’s a site where they describe a
fairly inexpensive intervalometer that you can get to capture images at any
rate you want:

http://www.digitalsecrets.net/secrets/Accessory.html

have fun,
dave morrison
st. pete, fl

Additional update:

Another time-saving strategy, this time from Ryan, who writes:

Izzy,

Good podcast, just a few shortcuts for if you are doing stop-motion (single frame) animation in FCP:

1) You can change the default still/freze frame duration in the USER PREFERENCES to be 1 or 2 frames (or any duration) so that when you add the images to your project, FCP automatically assigns them all the same 1-frame duration. (note: you must change this setting BEFORE importing the imgages into FCP)

2) Since digital photo cameras number the photos filenames sequentially, you can just select all the photos from the browser and drag them into the timeline. It will order the photos numerically according to the filename, so it will add them all in the timeline at once, and in the correct order.

Thanks for the great Podcasts!! Keep up the great work!!

-Ryan

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Ryan says:
August 14th, 2006 at 12:16 pm

Izzy,

Good podcast, just a few shortcuts for if you are doing stop-motion (single frame) animation in FCP:

1) You can change the default still/freze frame duration in the USER PREFERENCES to be 1 or 2 frames (or any duration) so that when you add the images to your project, FCP automatically assigns them all the same 1-frame duration. (note: you must change this setting BEFORE importing the imgages into FCP)

2) Since digital photo cameras number the photos filenames sequentially, you can just select all the photos from the browser and drag them into the timeline. It will order the photos numerically according to the filename, so it will add them all in the timeline at once, and in the correct order.

Thanks for the great Podcasts!! Keep up the great work!!

-Ryan

Ryan Mast says:
August 14th, 2006 at 4:41 pm

Another way to save time is:

Drag all of the images into the timeline. Select them all in the timeline.

Right-click on them and choose “Duration,” and change it to one or two frames — whatever you like.

Then, to smooth it out more, drag that sequence into a new sequence and apply the filter “Stop Motion Blur” from the Video subset, and set the Amount to 1 and steps to 1. It’ll blend the frames together a little so it’s not quite so jerky. Or, it could just look weird. Depends on what you’re doing.

For those of you without Final Cut, you can piece stop-motion video together with tools like Framed X, GraphicConverter, or Boinx iStopMotion.

Moviespo says:
August 15th, 2006 at 11:19 am

Did you know you can make scrambled eggs in the microwave too?
Oh, the following math problem no matter how you add it you still get the same answer:

1+3 = 4
3+1 = 4
4-1 = 4

The average of the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 is 28 divided by 7 which is 4

Too many parenthetical remarks cause confusion.

Excellent podcast, you really put a lot of time into creating that episode.

christian says:
August 16th, 2006 at 12:20 am

Whatever Moviespo thinks, I think it was a good episode! An excellent idea how to get children involved. I can use that on my work. Thank you Izzy!

Dr. Linton Hutchinson says:
August 17th, 2006 at 3:16 pm

Hey Blake and Trinity and IZ! Loved the animation – just finished one as well -

http://socialworkexam.com/miniinspiration/inspiration31.html

PS. Where did your theme music come from??? Love it!

With friendly greetings,

hutch

Salehmeka says:
August 20th, 2006 at 8:24 am

A great new Episode …

Izzy Video is the greatest Podcast I’ve ever seen.

Thank you and Keep Walking

mitch says:
August 26th, 2006 at 7:21 pm

ONCE AGAIN!! you & your father’s podcasts are WONDERFUL! I have a canon 20d and I always set to Tv

so I can shoot in raw, but the colors always look washed out. Any suggestions. thanks for the help

setting at Tv wrong?

Israel says:
September 2nd, 2006 at 7:31 pm

Hutch,

The intro theme music was some stock music that came with Soundtrack Pro as part of Final Cut Studio. The closing song is a little something I created in Garageband.

Mitch, I’m not sure why the colors are washed out, unless the sensitivity is set too high and you’re over-exposing by accident. Or maybe your LCD Screen brightness needs to be adjusted. I’d have to know more…

Hassan Monteleone says:
September 6th, 2006 at 12:49 pm

Izzy i think one great program to do still animation is:
i can animate…i use it just for fun!!! but tips you give on this
chapter are very useful, now i know how to animate better!!!
thanks

Mike Moon says:
September 10th, 2006 at 8:58 am

Longtime viewer of your stuff Izzy, very helpful…thankyou.

Take note of what frames you’ve taken because in many cases you can reuse the same frame you’ve already shot.

Just to go on and show you how easy it is, this video was completely created by my 10 year old daughter with next to no intervention from Dad. Fun for all ages.
http://vlog.mikemoon.net/2006/06/lego-space-camp-terror.html

This was shot with a $20 webcam.

Animate The Easy Way « Will Video for Food says:
September 11th, 2006 at 7:25 am

[...] Izzy Video did a nice tutorial about creating animated videos. A reader offered this suggestion for even simpler animations: [...]

Nathan says:
June 20th, 2007 at 8:05 am

I’ve done single frame animation, better known as stop motion animation, or claymation if you are using just clay. It’s fun to do, but it’s time consuming to take the pictures. Why would you want to spend even more time changing the settings per picture and importing them 1 at a time. Especially with those people that make one several minutes long, 1,000+ frames, it’s not an efficient way to import the pictures. On both Sony Vegas and Windows Movie Maker (the only 2 I’ve used) I can change the settings so each picture will be the same duration before importing. Also, it doesn’t necessarily mean you need it to be 30fps. I’ve seen some really smooth stop motion videos at only 14fps…