How to Setup to Make a Stop Motion Animation (For Beginners)

This tutorial will help you do stop motion, You don't need any fancy equipment to start with stop motion! This tutorial is perfect for people who want to learn how to make stop motion!

So, Shall We Let!!

A Sony Handycam, A Tripod (optional),

And a dazzle USB capture card (Any capture card should work)

Plug your capture card to your PC, Drivers may be needed in order to make the capture card work.

We will be using a RCA cable to connect the camera, in my case the cable comes with Yellow White & Red,

So connect the yellow RCA cable to the Video jack both on the capture card and the camera,

The RCA jack color may depend on the camera's model.

Important tip: If you have a tripod make sure to mount your camera and adjust until the view looks fine.

Make sure the camera is set on "CAMERA" (you can find the switch on the side of the camera for me) and set the switch with the red record button in the middle set to "STANDBY" (located in the front for me)

Stop motion professionals usually use Dragon frame,

but the only issue is that it's not free.

I recommend Monkey Jam beacuse it's really easy to use and has no watermark.

Click on File and select New XPS with folder, or CTRL+ALT+N.

You should see a new window, now select the folder where you would like

your project to be in, in my case it's the documents folder,

Enter your project's name on the top. And make sure layers it set to "1",

Now you should see an option that says FPS aka "Frames per second"

by default it's at 24 FPS, The bigger the number, faster your animation will be,

the lower it is, the slower it is,

I recommend 12 FPS, it's not too fast or too slow, Click "OK". A new folder should be created with the name of your project,

That's where the images will be saved.

And also XPS file with the project name will be created.

Click on the camera icon,

And you should see a new window,

Click on "Cameras" And select the corresponding option

for your capture card, in my case it's the Dazzle DVC100 Video.

Now click on Size,

Find the largest resolution supported by your capture card.

In my case it's 720 by 576.

Tip: To view everything click on the maximize button.

As you can see the image is a bit blurry,

To fix that set the Focus to manual and

move the wheel until it looks right to you.

Monkey jam has an option to change the exposure,

Which does work, but it only works correctly with USB webcams etc.

if i would change the exposure higher, the black bars on the image would become whiter,

That's beacuse it does not change the exposure directly on the camera,

To change it directly, press on the "EXPOSURE" button.

a white slider should appear on the screen,

Change the exposure with the select wheel and set to your liking.

Now here comes the best part, Animate!

For demonstration i will be using a donkey kong figurine.

Press the capture button under the viewport,

then move the object a bit.

Make sure not to move it to far if else your animation may look choppy.

Also make sure to avoid any light changes,shadows, etc.

If your scene is too dark you can also use a vertical light.

Click on the TV icon and wait until it's done rendering,

Then click on the play button to play your animation

If you want to save it as a video format click on the film icon (beside the TV icon).

And that's all!

Enjoy making animations!