iPad Animation: - make stop motion movies on the iPad with iStopMotion, GarageBand, iMovie

– how to make stop motion movies on the iPad with iStopMotion, GarageBand and iMovie

Craig Lauridsen

©2014 Craig Lauridsen

Acumen

19 Trevor Terrace, Newtown

Wellington 6021

New Zealand

www.ipadanimation.net

ISBN 978-0-473-27217-3

Also available as interactive rich-media version for iPad from the iBookstore (ISBN 978-0-473-21479-1)

Notice of Rights

All rights reserved. This book is the property of the author and no part of it can be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the author.

Contact the author at ipabook@acumen.net.nz

All music files are copyright to Theo Corfiatis and are used with permission (see Soundtrack license) for more information.

Notice of Liability

The information in this book is distributed on an ‘as is’ basis without any warranty. While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the author has no liability to any person or entity with respect to loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the instructions contained in this book, or by the computer software and hardware products described in it.

Trademarks

iPad, iPod Touch, iPhone, GarageBand, iMovie, iPhoto and iTunes are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the US and other countries.

Boinx and iStopMotion are trademarks of Boinx Software Ltd.

Olloclip, Viewbase, Stabile Coil, djay, MiC and Jam are all trademarks of their respective owners.

Also by Craig Lauridsen

Stop Motion Handbook: Creating stop motion on a Mac using iStopMotion, GarageBand and iMovie – www.stop-motion-handbook.com

Watch stop motion movies made at Newtown Movie School – www.newtownmovieschool.co.nz

Downloadable files

There are a number of downloadable files which accompany the examples in this book. Look for the download instructions in the Projects chapter.

Stop motion

Stop motion is a movie made from a sequence of individual pictures. When the pictures are viewed quickly, one after the other, our eyes are ‘tricked’ into thinking the objects in the pictures are moving.

There are two main types of stop motion – time lapse and animation:

Time lapse

An automatic recording of a sequence of pictures at a certain time interval to produce a faster view of an event. Time lapse compresses time.

Animation

A repeating process of 1) recording a picture of a character or object, and 2) moving the character or object a small amount to dramatise a story or demonstrate a process. When the pictures match the soundtrack the character comes alive. In iStopMotion this is called ‘single’ mode.

What makes good stop motion?

There are two broad aspects to making good stop motion movies:

The story – Why should someone should watch your movie? Your story doesn’t have to be original, but you need to tell it well. Every movie, whether it is a work of fiction or an informative non-fiction topic, needs to have something to say. A story doesn’t always need words, but it should show a progression of ideas in a way that benefits the audience.

‘Random’ movies, ie, actions without any particular story or logic, are popular, but are often an excuse for lazy thinking. It might be fun to make stop motion about a chair moving across the room all by itself, but it is not very creative. Movies are a powerful medium – use them well. Life is too short to make bad movies

Technical quality – this book covers topics such as image composition, lighting, camera movements and sound.

The apps

This book uses these apps to perform the various tasks for making stop motion movies on the iPad.

iPad iStopMotion app from Boinx is a complete and portable stop motion and time lapse recording studio in one piece of equipment.

We’ll also use the GarageBand app for creating a soundtrack, and the iMovie app for editing the stop motion clips into a movie.

We’ll have a quick look at djay app from Algoriddim as an alternative for creating a rhythmic soundtrack.

How the apps work together

Pictures

Record the stop motion and time lapse pictures in iStopMotion.

Soundtrack

There are many ways to create and add the soundtrack. In this book we will cover GarageBand and djay.

Editing

Edit the pictures and soundtrack together in iMovie. Add transitions and titles. Save the completed movie to the Camera Roll.

Camera Roll

The Camera Roll is a folder on the iPad for storing photos and video clips.

Photos and video clips, from apps such as iStopMotion and iMovie, can be saved into the Camera Roll.

View the contents of the Camera Roll with the Photos app.

When you connect your iPad to a computer, transfer the clips in the Camera Roll to the computer (see Transferring stop motion to a computer).

Music library

The Music app stores music and sounds which can be accessed by other apps.

Stop motion on a Mac

If you want to perform some stop motion tasks (such as creating the soundtrack or editing the movie) on a Mac, refer to Stop Motion Handbook (www.stop-motion-handbook.com). This book is a comprehensive guideline for making stop motion movies on a Mac using iStopMotion, GarageBand and iMovie.

Recording video clips with iStopMotion

Let’s have a look at the iStopMotion app. If you don’t already have a copy buy it from the iTunes App Store.

The app has two main screens:

Gallery – stop motion clips made in iStopMotion are stored in the Gallery. The Gallery has buttons to create a new clip, edit an existing clip and export a clip to the Camera Roll for use in other apps.

Clip Editor – controls and features for recording a stop motion clip.

Boinx forum

If you want to connect with other users of iPad iStopMotion, ask technical questions, or get support, check out the Boinx forum.

Gallery

Open iStopMotion. If it doesn’t open in the Gallery, tap the centre of the screen and tap the Gallery button in the top left of the Information Bar.

In the Gallery, each clip has a large thumbnail with a name, designated ‘iStopMotion Clip X’ until you rename it. It also shows the date it was created and its duration – time and number of frames. If you want to change the thumbnail of the clip, tap the clip to open it, select a different picture in the Clip Editor, then tap the Gallery button to close the clip.

It is a good habit to rename clips to avoid confusion. Tap on the name and type a new name. If you are using the iPad keyboard, hide the keyboard by tapping the keyboard key in the bottom right.

To look through the gallery of clips made in iStopMotion, swipe your finger left or right.

The buttons along the bottom of the Gallery include:

New – starts a new stop motion clip.

Share – options for exporting the clip to the Camera Roll, emailing or uploading it to YouTube or Dropbox (see Exporting clips from iStopMotion). Until you share a clip, it can only be viewed in iStopMotion. Save a copy to the Camera Roll if you want to play it directly on the iPad or upload it to your computer. The original stop motion clip remains in the Gallery until it is deleted.

Delete – from time to time you will need to delete a clip from iStopMotion to free up space on your iPad. If you want to keep a copy, make sure you have saved a copy to another device before deleting it (see Exporting clips from iStopMotion).

In the top right of the screen, the Info button lets you set a number of features such as turning the app sounds on or off, choosing the maximum picture resolution (720p/1080p), Dropbox settings and providing feedback on the app.

Clip Editor

The Clip Editor screen is displayed when you tap on a clip or tap the New button in the Gallery. Across the top of the screen is the Information Bar. The centre is a large preview window and at the bottom is the Timeline.

Information Bar

The Information Bar appears across the top of the Clip Editor and automatically hides after a few seconds. Touch the centre of the screen at any time to show it again.

The Information Bar has these buttons:

Gallery – (in the top left corner) goes to the Gallery, like a ‘back’ button.

Camera – choose the camera you want to use to record pictures.

iStopMotion can use these cameras:

The iPad’s back camera – this is the best quality iPad camera and will be the one you’ll use most often (see Cameras)

The iPad’s front camera

A remote camera from another iPad, iPod Touch or iPhone running the iStopCamera app (see Remote camera). Other types of cameras can’t be used with iStopMotion.

The Settings button for each camera allows you to set the brightness of the picture (see Camera exposure). You can also set the focus on some devices – iPhone and 3rd gen iPad and later models (see How to focus).

Time lapse – turns on time lapse mode and sets the interval between pictures. The icon changes to blue as a reminder that time lapse is selected (see Time lapse).

On each side of the Clip Editor are two large buttons. These are the controls you’ll use most often:

Play button

Plays the clip at the speed defined in Clip Settings.

If the movie does not play, touch and hold the Play button for two seconds. iStopMotion will re-create the playback movie and will show a message ‘Rendering Playback Movie…’.

Capture button

Records a picture or starts/stops a sequence of time lapse pictures. When time lapse mode is selected, the centre of the Capture button changes to show a timer.

If the Capture button is unresponsive, it may be because the iPad memory is full. Delete unwanted stop motion clips from the iStopMotion Gallery or delete other content from the iPad before you record more pictures.

Timeline

At the bottom of the screen is the Timeline which displays thumbnails of the recorded pictures.

The Timeline can only show a few pictures from the clip at a time. To see an overall view of the entire clip, turn on the Navigator in Clip Settings.

The total recorded time and number of frames are stated after the last picture.

Clip Settings

At the right of the Timeline, the gear button displays the Clip Settings. These are options for recording and playback.

Show

‘Show’ settings which determine what is displayed in the Clip Editor – the last recorded picture, the current camera view or a combination of both:

Use the left-most button when you want to see the pictures in the clip and don’t want to see the camera view. This is helpful when reviewing the recorded pictures

The overlay view (middle button – shown highlighted above) shows a ghosted image of the selected picture from the clip and the camera view. This is the view you’ll use most often when recording pictures, as it clearly shows which objects have moved and which have not. In most cases, you want the character moving, while the rest of the set (objects and background) stays still. Touch and hold the centre of the screen to adjust the transparency between the two images

The right button shows only the view from the camera and is useful when changing the camera position so you can clearly see the picture composition (see Picture composition).

Speed (frames/sec)

The ‘Speed’ setting determines how quickly the pictures play. Changing the speed will change the length of the clip. Tap ‘+’ or ‘–’ to change the speed between 1 and 30 pictures per second (see Frame rate):

300 pictures at 12 frames per second (FPS) will play for 25 seconds

300 pictures at 30 FPS will play for 10 seconds.

After you’ve tapped the Play button, tap again on the Clip Settings and change the speed of the clip as it plays. Sometimes with time lapse you need to view the clip at several speeds to decide which ‘feels’ right.

Grid lines

Grid lines divide the screen horizontally into three equal areas and vertical into three equal areas. Use these guides to help arrange the picture composition (see Rule of Thirds). Grid lines are only seen on the screen and are