-
whats the best way to incorporate stop frame animations in AE?
Hello all,
Ive had this idea for a stop frame animation after my animation class in college. Im looking to make a stop frame animation then some how import it into AE to do some special effects and the sort. My question that is puzzeling me is how to go abouts importing this stop frame. Im not too sure what program Ill be using but I know with Premiere you can do the whole save-as-a-filmstrip thing. Is the filmstrip method the best way, other than importing hundreds of pictures?
Any tips from the pros would be greatly appreciated! THANKS!
-Aaron“Wherever you go, there you are”
-
7 Replies
-
Look into “framegrabing” softwares, i.e. softwares designed specially for stop motion animation that grab one frame at a time from a dv camera or a digital stills camera. there are quite a few out there, and some of the more basic ones are free. most of them will also allow you to export the frames as avi or mov, although importing image sequences into AE really is no problem, and it’s the best way to do it.
check out:
https://www.stopmotionanimation.com/
a great forum for everything that has to do with stop motion, they also have a newbie guide for choosing cameras and softwares
-
Try not to take this personally:
Using a still camera is probably the best bet for a beginner. However, stop motion animation is much more complicated than you imagine, judging from your post.Get a couple of books.
Hit youtube and watch a few dozen stop motion samples. You will see hundreds of terrible clips and, if you know what to look for, it’s easy to see what they have done incorrectly. Several youtubers have posted many of their animation practice pieces and they are learning nothing from their mistakes and they heed none of the advice they have received.Don’t be a dweeb. Animation is hard, really hard.
bogiesan
This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”
-
Oh yes, I well understand that animation is difficult..especially stop motion. In my animation class we did everything from claymation to cut-out animation to stop frame of people. I know some of the simple and basic techniques of stop frame animation, but Im not an expert. I just wasnt too sure the best ways of importing hundreds of pictures into AE to add effects. But, thanks to Mr. LaRonde’s tip and dixie.fever’s recommended website, I was able to get the image sequence. I did a quick test with it and the image sequence looks like it will work great, especially how all the images are in one layer and lasting a frame or so.
Thanks for the help! (Ill still continue to study up on the techniques of stop motion)
-Aaron“Wherever you go, there you are”
-
i did a frame animation for a show i did, this particular episode was an homage to the 66 batman series, and i did it all with ink and paper and a scanner. i then took the scans and colored them in illustrator, saved them all as numbered photoshop files, and imported them as an image sequence.
https://channel102.net/view.php?epid=235
the effects and technicolor process were added in after effects.
i didnt use premiere
-
Great job on the drawing and image sequence! Ill have to try out the image sequencing more on a project.
-Aaron-
“Wherever you go, there you are” -
[Dave LaRonde] “A frame or SO? You mean it isn’t precise? You can fix that if necessary in AE’s Interpret Footage settings. There’s no need to settle for “almost” or “kind of”.”
Haha, yes I figured there were probably ways of adjusting this. My “frame or so” estimation was just a loose guess, since I didnt really look at how long the individual images lasted. Really all I did was import 20 or so pictures from an ice storm we had last year as an image sequence and did a RAM preview, saw it did what I was looking for and was satisfied.
Thank you for the tip on how to adjust footage settings!-Aaron-
“Wherever you go, there you are” -
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up