Move, Stop, Click

Create your very own stop motion video!

There are a lot of art forms which we at Esplora Interactive Science Centre use to communicate science. One of them is short animations! Animations are a simple yet effective and engaging way to tell a story and to communicate a scientific concept or research.

But what is stop motion?

Stop motion is a film-making technique which lets you give ‘life’ to objects that usually cannot move on their own. It usually works by placing an object in front of the camera and snapping a photo. Then the object is moved slightly, and another photo is taken. This is repeated until all the movements that you want your object to make are photographed. These photos are then placed one after the other to create a video.

Get your tools & materials ready!

• Characters and props to animate
• A background such as 2 foam sheets or carboard paper, or even a tabletop
• A smart phone or a tablet that you can use to take photos
• A form of tripod or a DIY stand to keep the camera in the same place
• A freely downloadable Stop Motion App
• Take it a step further by setting up a good source of light using lamps

Try it out!

Step 1 – The Topic

Choose something science related that you love. It could either be a topic, a story, an experiment, a process…anything that fascinates you or which you’re interested in.

• If you are interested in the human body, you might choose to focus on the digestive system, and film an animation which shows what happens to food after you swallow it.
• If you’re interested in space, you might want to create a logo type animation with moving letters and space related animated objects. Or animate planets moving around the sun!
• Or if you love dinosaurs, why not create a stop motion animation which shows a dinosaur breaking out of an egg?

The possibilities are endless!

Step 2 – The Plan

Once you’ve decided what you’d like to animate, create a story and write it down.

This will help you plan which characters and props you need to use and how best to tell your story. If you plan on filming different scenes, then you also need to plan your transitions well.

Step 3 – Create a storyboard

A storyboard is a set of drawings or sketches which visually represents your plan for the stop motion film. It’s a great tool to use to plan out how many photos you need to take.

Step 4 – Create your props & background

• Find your characters and props! If you don’t have the characters or props that you need, why not make them using things such as play dough or cardboard? You can even just draw your characters on a piece of paper and then cut them out.
• For your background, you can either use a table, a wall, or pieces of large cardboards, foam boards, or chart papers to create a background of your choice.
• You can even draw on your background or print a background of your choice. But remember that if you want to film different scenes, for example a scene at the beach and a scene in the forest, you’ll need different backgrounds. And you need to create a transition for the two scenes.
• For your first try, we would suggest keeping it simple by using a handful of props and one type of background until you get used to transitioning and figuring out how many photos you need to take for the animated object to move as flawlessly as possible.

If you’re interested in making your own characters using Clay, check out Clay animation or Claymation. It’s one of many forms of stop-motion animation. The below are some Claymation movies!

• Coraline (PG—recommended for 9+)
• The Nightmare Before Christmas (PG– recommended for 10+)
• Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride (PG– recommended for 10+)

Age recommendations by https://www.commonsensemedia.org/

Step 5 – Download a Stop Motion App

Download a free stop motion app on your device. We used Stop Motion Studio by Cateater and we used it on an Android Phone. There is an IoS version available as well.

Step 6- Set the Scene

It’s now time to set the scene.

• Prepare your background. If you’re using charts or foam boards, make sure they are leaning against a stable structure.
• Bring all your props and characters in one place where you can easily reach them.
• Bring your storyboard to follow.
• Set up your camera/phone/tablet on a tripod or DIY stand.
• For lighting, we suggest choosing a space where you do not have a lot of changes in light to avoid shadows. Or you can set up some lamps for the light in different photos to be consistent.

Step 7- Lights, Camera, Action!

To animate objects you will need to place the object in front of your background, snap a photo, move it a little bit, snap another photo, and keep on doing this until you finish your story or what you planned to film.

Share your stop motion video with us on social media by tagging us on social media @esploramalta #esploramalta #getcuriousgetinspired

Take it a step further!

Why not add some music to your video? We edited our Esplora logo video using Windows Video Editor to add some music and special effects.

Show us what you’ve made! Take a photo of at least 4 of your favourite activities from Esplora’s Science Advent Calendar. Trust us, you’ll need them later!