Create amazing animations.

How to bring toys to life using Aardman Animation's 'stop-motion' techniques

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One of the most famous creators of stop-motion animation is the award-winning Aardman Animation studio – the creators of beloved characters such as Wallace and Gromit.

Stop-motion animation is the art of snapping a photo, moving your subject by a small increment, then snapping another. After repeating the process, you can run the consecutive still images as a series of video frames to make a movie in which your subject appears to move as if it is a living character!

Aardman has released a free iPhone app – Aardman Animator – that enables you to delight friends, family, and social media followers with your own stop-motion creations. We’ll show you how to put this fun app through its paces.

Instead of building a fully articulated character from scratch to animate (although feel free!), you can grab a toy from your shelf and move its various components to add character and tell a story. Here’s how to bring your toys to life using the tried and tested stop-motion process. George Cairns

EXPLAINED... The Aardman Animator app interface

1 Settings Tap here to choose Camera settings such as Auto Focus, Auto Exposure, Timer, Playback Speed and Onion Skinning.

3 Timeline Each frame that you capture is then run together as a series in the timeline to create an animated video sequence.