Stop Motion Animation Using After Affects!

Stop Motion is a great and fun way to create animation. When broken down it can be very simple. With this tutorial you will learn how to create a simple short animation sequence. As well as how to work with filters, and time.
The video attached shows the final product of the tutorial, however it is very open to change and I encourage you to have fun with it and explore the possibilities!

Step 1: The Pictures

When dealing with Stop motion it all comes down to the stills, that one is using. You can create a stop motion animation using just about anything. However one very important thing you must always keep in mind is the look of the work. If you would like it to have a more choppy movement to it, then take less stills. Or if you would like a more fluid motion to the animation take as many pictures a possible.
Step one:
I have provided you with 33 pictures, so save all of them onto the desktop and create a folder to contain them. Make sure you save them in order

Step 2: Uploading Into After Effects

There are several ways that one can use After Effects to create a stop motion animation. Doing it this way is a lot simpler and saves a lot of time, especially when you have over a hundred images. As long as they are labeled correctly it works great!

Step two:
1)Open up After Effects
2)Make a new composition, only change the length of the animation to 5:00
3)Go to File> Import> File> and open up the folder that you have recently saved
4)Select the first image (0.1.jpg) Make sure that JPEG sequence and force alphabetical order are checked off, Click open
5)Drag the file down to the timeline
6)Play your animation!
Bellow is an AVI. of what the video should look like so far

Step 3: Speed of Animation

While You view the animation you have probably noticed that it is very quick. You can play with the speed of any animation in After Effects.
Step Three:
1) For the quickness factor go to Layer> Time> Time Stretch, change it to 400 and click OK
2) Play the animation through
3) You can play around with the speed of the animation to your liking. If you would like to make it even slower, you will have to add more time to your composition.
4)So go to Composition> Composition Settings and add more time in your Duration window. That way you can continue to "time stretch" the video.
The AVI. is a glimpse at how the speed effects the video.

Step 4: Working With Filters

Once you have dealt with the speed of your animation we can move onto filters. There are so many great filters one can work with in After Effects, the ones you pick depend on what kind of look you are wanting to achieve.

Step four:
1) I wanted to have a black and white old film look to mine. So I went to Noise& Grain and also Tint in the filters settings and played around with the levels on that. Once I found the look I wanted, I clicked on the stop watch while making sure the timeline srubber is at the beginning, or wherever you wanted the filter to kick in.
2) Feel free to explore with any filters!

Step 5: Exporting and Enjoying!!

Once you have achieved the look you wanted, and your happy with your animation you can export your video and have the video file for all to enjoy!

Step 5:
1) Go to File> Export> AVI. And OK
2) View your video!!

You can also View mine again
Great work!!

Comments

[randofo]

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[vishnusankaran]

Nice one. :) . But, I guess the JPEG sequence and force alphabetical order should be checked on. right?