Earlier this year I was given the opportunity to teach a stop motion animation class. I had taught stop motion to 5th graders before but this was to be an entire middle school semester focussing on stop motion animation.  With it being my first time teaching animation on this level there were certainly some ups and downs thought the semester. With that being said I am excited to be teaching it again next year.   I thought I would take this opportunity to share a little about the process we used and what I learned as a rookie.

1. Start out by making sure that students understand the stop motion process.  It’s good to have an understanding of FPS (frames per second) and how many photos are actually required for each shot.  It’s also important to understand how many small movements happen within just a couple of seconds.  We did this by looking at other simple stop motions and flip books.
2. Students should work in groups of 2 or 3.  Often times 4 is too many unless you are animating people doing supernatural things.
3. Have students brainstorm their overall story along with props and materials they will need before they story board. This will help them to get a better grasp on what they might be able accomplish within the time frame they have.
4. Never underestimate the importance of a detailed story board. If students don’t think through their whole process while storyboarding they are going to struggle when making props and shooting pictures. The groups that were the most successful with there final product had beautiful story boards and those that were not so successful had story boards that were not only extremely minimal in detail but also did not resemble the final product. Students with poorly detailed story boards quickly learned from their shortcomings and were sure to put more thought into the storyboarding process in there next animations.

   

5. When working on set design often have students look at what they are making though the camera lens to make sure it will fit properly.  Often times students will make props too small and they are not noticeable through the camera.  This makes size and scale extremely important.  Another common issue is that student often make props that will be animated but have not put thought into how to keep the prop stationary for the shooting process.  This is a big issue that needs to be properly thought out before they get to far into the construction of the props.
6. When shooting your pictures students should all have different roles. One person should be behind the camera and direct and the others as puppetiers.  They can take turns in these roles but often times you will find that some people are better as the camera man and tend to get the job done faster. Another thing to always keep in mind when shooting is you light source.  Shadows and changing light sources can often be overlooked by students and need to be kept in the forefront of their mind because shadows are not usually noticeable until many pictures have all ready been taken.

In the end what helped students to understand some of these details of the process before making mistakes of there own was constant pre-critiquing.  We got in the habit of starting class with older student examples I had collected.  It was often very easy to pick out little ways these could be improved but most importantly students were able to see how important attention to detail is.

I hope that some of you will find this overview of my process, along with some tips peppered in, to be helpful.  I’m a firm believer in the many many skills that can be learned through the stop motion process but I won’t get into all of that right now.  Should you choose to get your hands dirty I wish you the best of luck.

Enjoy this super cute animation by some of my students.  This was the groups first dabble with the process.