I've loved Mumford and sons for the longest time, so i thought making an animation for a music video to a song of theirs would be the perfect thing for me to do.
Sadly, i never did finish the whole song, i only got through a few seconds, but i had a lot of fun when i was doing it,
and although it was quite a bit of work, it turned out pretty neat!

Step 1: Materials

You will need;
-Paper-what ever kind you like-
-scissors.
-Camera
-writing utensils(optional)
-And i'm using stop motion pro, and adobe premiere which makes it a lot easier, though is not necessary.

Step 2: Step One; Come Up With an Idea.

So, obviously you're going to need some kind of idea to animate with,
That's what this step is all about. I suggest coming up with a story board, or some kind of write up on what you plan to do.
Here's a rough sketch of mine, for example;

Step 3: Step Two; Paper Cut Outs.

So, now that you have your animation all planned out, you're going to need your paper cut outs.
You could do them by hand, trace them, use a stencil, print them off, ect ect.
I drew my lamp post and all the titles by hand, and then cut them out.
I cut my bottom layer of snow with no drawn line before hand,
and for my snow, I took a plain white paper, and hole punched the entire thing. I just used one size of hole punch, but
you could use many different sizes if you wanted too.

Step 4: Step Three; Backgrounds

So, you have your plan, and all your cut outs, you need your background.
You could draw-or cut out-your background,
which i originally planned to do, but the paper background was too small, and didn't look how i wanted
under the camera.
So i unded up using a large peice of green paper, and putting in my background using stop motion pro-which i'll explain in a litle-

Step 5: Step Four; Getting Into Stop Motion Pro

You have your plan, your paper cutouts, your background,
now it's time to start filming your animation.
I used stop motion pro 7 for this, though you could use a normal digital camera,
and upload them later.
The camera i was using was a microsoft life cam, supported by a tripod.
When you open stop motion pro, click 'new production'.
After that it will get you to name your production and shot, put in whatever name you like!
Then, a box will appear, on it a scroll down menu, saying 'size'. I suggest, going 1280 by 720,
and the frames-which you can change later-i would pick between 2-10.
Click 'ok', and then we can really begin.

Step 6: Step Five; Green Screen

Ok, so you have your camera set up, you're in stop motion pro,
now the rest is pretty simple,
but before i get into that, Iet me explain the green paper.
So, it works as a green screen basically, using stop motion pro, Chroma key-which can be found under tools-
i uploaded a picture from my documents, and using the eyedropper, chose the background green to change the color of.
If your background comes out glichy, don't worry, when you export it, it can be tooken out.
I used it for a guideline of what it would look like, and put in the actual background in premeire.

Step 7: Step Six; Frame by Frame

So, you have your background set up,
Now it's time to take the pictures for your animation, which is actually not that hard.
On the litle control pannel on the bottom of stop motion pro, on the right hand side, there is a large button.
When you click that, it'll take however many pictures you set it to earlier.
Each picture will be a frame in your animation.
Set up your scene, if you like, put the chroma key in,
and click that button! With each new picture,
you can make the object of interest move bit by bit. In mine, its the title and the snow thats moving.
The less you move it, the smoother its going to look when finished.

Step 8: Step Seven;exporting From Stop Motion Pro.

So, you've taken all your frames for your animation, and now you're ready to export it,
wheather it be completely finished now, or just being exported, to be inported into premiere, or another
video editing software.
Go to file, export,
and there you can decide if you wish to use the chroma key in your animation or not.
I found that with stop motion pro, the chroma key was a good guideline, but too glichy to keep in my animation,
so i exported it as the green screen, and took it to premiere to work on.

Step 9: Step Eight;Editing Your Animation.

There's a large variety of things you can do on premiere,
though mine didn't need a lot, especially because its only the very beginnning.
Using the Chroma key in Premiere, which is On the bottom left, a box with different sub folders.
Click 'Video Effects' then 'Keying' and finally 'Chroma key.'
Click and drag chroma key onto your original video.
Not the picture or video in the background.
when you click on your original video, up above the timeline, should be a box labeled 'effect controls'
using that, select the eye dropper next to 'color'
and click the green screen in your video.
after that, you may need to play with the blend to get your background into your video.
I suggest not going past '50.0% on blend, or the rest of your video begins to fade away as well!
you can put in the same background you were using in stop motion pro.
You may have to go through, cut clips, and play around with the settings of each,
but it'll look good in the end.
You can also add sounds, effects, ect. ect.
After you're finished all your editing, go to file, then export.
I put mine on YouTube, so i chose to export it for a YouTube format, which you may, or may not want to do.