The changing of the seasons is always an exciting time of the year, as we watch our surroundings change right before our eyes. From bright green trees and lush gardens to fiery red and orange leaves scattering the ground to snow covering everything in sight, the transformations, though slow, are beautiful to observe and experience. The gradual transformations can also be somewhat frustrating at times (would summer please get here already?!) – so watching a year of seasons change in this minute-long iStopMotion animation is a breath of fresh air. See a year of seasons transform in this stop motion short film – and remember, the warm weather is just around the corner!

We introduced you to the Supercols back in March with their heart-warming animation, “The Best Christmas Gift,” and now the pair is back for their Biggest Adventure yet: their wedding! The new iStopMotion animation, created by Colin with the help of his fiancé Li Yi (hence, the name the Supercols), puts the animator’s artistic chops on display, as he skillfully illustrates a hot air balloon, which is then inflated and launched into the air.

The balloon is floating through a timeline of the couple’s many exciting adventures when Colin jumps out of a photo in the mountains and into the balloon’s basket. Mid-tree pose Li Yi, of course, follows suit, abandoning her yoga practice to join Colin for their next great adventure. The animation, made using Boinx Software’s iStopMotion, was created for Colin and Li Yi’s upcoming wedding, so we’d like to propose a toast: here’s to a lifetime of happiness and many more fantastic iStopMotion animations to come!

A true love story told in a matter of frames and just a few minutes tells the story of the kind of love that lasts a lifetime. Colin and his fiancé Li Yi illustrate, or should I say, animate, this perfectly in their stop motion film, “The Best Christmas Gift.” Okay, we know the holidays are over, but at Boinx, we believe there’s never a bad time to spread Christmas cheer – and when we stumbled upon an iStopMotion animation as lovely as this one, we knew we couldn’t wait for next December to share it with the world.

When the film starts out, Colin is just a figure in a newspaper clipping on a kitchen counter. He pops out, and after a quick smell check, begins his adventure in which he discovers the girl of his dreams, Li Yi, in a cookbook, quietly stirring a bowl of fruit juice. Quickly, he does a costume change into a fancy shirt and tie and introduces himself. It’s like a scene out of Toy Story when the owner of the house walks in and Colin and Li Yi fall down as if they’re inanimate objects - because well, they kind of are.

Relocated to the other side of the room by its owner, Colin must make his way through the kitchen obstacles to get to the cookbook and Li Yi. In the end, he discovers that it’s not his fancy shirt or muscles (did we mention he throws on a set of muscles? You’ll have to watch the film to see that!) that make her love him – it’s who he is inside.

“The inspiration to create the story came when we saw how stressed people got when trying to find a present for loved ones. I was thinking of what the best Christmas gift could be and, when you boil it down, all a person wants is to be happy – and I don't think there is anything that makes a person happier than to be loved for who they really are, or rather, in spite of who they really are,” says Colin. “I wanted to show it in its most basic form. A newspaper cutout of a black and white character falls for a girl in a glossy cookbook. With not much material 'things' to offer, will he be good enough for her? That's when you realize it's not the material things that matter.”

After just about two months of posing for photos, taking pictures, setting the scenes and editing, Colin and Li Yi’s film was finished. “Shooting with iStopMotion was great as we could use a DSLR camera,” Colin said. “We used the Nikon D3100 which was great because I could control the aperture to get a good depth of field. The onion skinning really helped as well – to match each movement as smoothly as possible. Although we could have removed some of the imperfections, we decided to leave them in. We felt the imperfections of the film would give it a more human touch and add much more character.” We think it couldn't be better. And remember, it’s always in season to share nice messages (and nice iStopMotion animations) with the ones you love!

Check out how Colin and Li Yi made "The Best Christmas Gift"!

Boinx Software Chronicles regular and iStopMotion buff Jeff Scher recently teamed with LA band American Royalty to create the music video for their latest EP, Matchstick. The band, which bills itself as “an unlikely yet glowingly functional blend of dark garage rock and poignant electronica,” lightens the mood for this track with upbeat piano chords and a music video to match – vibrant colors and fun shapes (plus some other fantastic images) ensue.

Scher, a painter and experimental filmmaker, made the film using iStopMotion, shooting a series of images he painted on inch-wide canvases live under camera. In the video, Scher somehow expertly paints the music, creating the visual version of Matchstick, giving the viewer a bout of synesthesia. Watch and be amazed at how the music comes alive right in front of you – images speed up and slow down in perfect pace with the tempo, colors match perfectly with the tone and feel of the music. During the bridge, American Royalty breaks into electronica chaos, and Scher doesn’t miss a beat, throwing in a mishmash of lines, dots, people, trees and geometric shapes. Scher’s contemporary yet psychedelic images were drawn and/or painted with crayons and watercolors, and with iStopMotion, transform into the perfect visual translation of Matchstick.

More articles on Jeff Scher from the Boinx blog:
Jeff Scher Creates 'Spring City' with iStopMotion
'Best of Times' by Jeff Scher
'You Might Remember This'

Inspired by Ico, an action-adventure game for PlayStation®, and the work of Lotte Reiniger, who mastered and pioneered the art of silhouette filmmaking, Alley Brahniuk designed, directed and animated The Story of Ico. A stop motion film made using black paper cutouts and a light box, Brahniuk’s animation was created using Boinx Software’s iStopMotion.

Ico, originally a video game, is the story of a boy born with horns banished to an abandoned fortress, where he meets Yorda, daughter of the queen. In Brahniuk’s film, Ico kills the queen in order to save Yorda from her, and then sails away. At 10 frames per second, this film used 2,000 individual photos for a film just about five minutes in length.

For a 19-year-old, Charlie Collier is talented – and wise – beyond his years. “In my opinion, life itself is the most magnificent work of art perceivable by mankind. And to be able to not just experience, but capture even a fraction of this masterpiece is one of the greatest things about being human,” Charlie says on his website, Zapamation – pretty profound for a homeschooled kid who just graduated from high school. After only a few years of experience (and no formal training) in animation and filmmaking, Charlie has already been able to capture that beauty and translate it into something masterful – and something that has been featured on MTV Adria, a European division of the popular music channel.

Part of being an artist is being able to take even the most mundane of objects and “twist” them into something beautiful. So when Charlie began “messing around with twist ties” – something most people use to hold their veggie bags closed – at his local grocery store as a 10-year-old, he saw characters, and began wondering how he could bring his twist-tie figurines to life through animation. And so, Twist Ninja, his first ever stop motion film, was born.

“I was trying to figure out which software to use when I came across Boinx and did a free trial,” Charlie said. “It had everything I wanted in a software package. I’ve been using iStopMotion ever since. Twist Ninja was the first stop motion film I made. I realized how fun it was to animate things; it evolved into a bigger deal than I ever expected.”

So when popular Slovenian band Puppetz reached out to Charlie after seeing Twist Ninja (which was shown on the big screen at Taos Shortz Film Fest, I might add), and asked him to create a music video for their song Generacija Y (or Generation Y), it took him some time to realize just how big of a deal it actually was. Very humble, and maybe a bit green, Charlie was surprised at how much freedom he had in creating the video.

“They gave me almost total creative control over the project. There was a month of storyboarding, and Puppetz wanted the basic concept of the twist ties turning into the band, but whatever animation happened was totally up to me,” he said. “They wanted to let me express myself through the video. I was very surprised – I thought, ‘I’m just some kid from Texas, you guys are really trusting me?’ I was honored that they did.”

Not only was Charlie working with his first big client, but he had to deal with language and cultural barriers as well. “I could put the lyrics into Google translate, but it doesn’t really translate, so I spent a lot of time drilling the guys on not just the lyrics but also the social aspect of it. I didn’t understand their culture, I didn’t understand what’s funny to them or what the song truly meant from their point of view,” he said. “I’m a perfectionist like that – if the video didn’t really go with the message of the song, it would have really bothered me, so it was a challenge.”

What resulted from months of storyboarding, breaking down barriers, and meticulous shooting and editing was an expressive collaboration of handmade and digital art – a feat that was made easier through the use of Boinx’s iStopMotion. “I really like the built in chroma-keying and editing features. Other software just takes frames – with iStopMotion, I could get everything set up and just go right into cutting it all together. The user-friendliness and compatibility features were exactly what I needed.”

Though he’s not entirely sure where he will be in the next few years, he does have a few plans for the near future, including an invite back to the 2012 Taos Shortz Film Fest and another music video request. Charlie draws inspiration from film studies like Laika (creator of Coraline), and says his dream goal is to have that level of quality in animation. “What really inspires me is interesting and innovative concepts, using nonconventional methods of creating. You get out of it what you put into it – and if you put in a lot of passion, it shines through in your work.”

Steve Buckley and his two sons, Alex (13 yrs old) and Will (7 yrs old), are super fans of the Doctor Who program. To show their love of the wildly popular SciFi series, they started making stop motion movies using a still camera and Apple iMovie. However the films were limited to a very slow frame rate and the Buckley clan eventually switched to iStopMotion. “After an Internet search we found iStopMotion and we're all really impressed with it - the frame rate (how smooth the animation is) is superb, and iStopMotion has really improved the workflow for the boy's productions. The onion skinning feature which allows you to see the previous and current frame over each other is particularly good,“ said Steve. Part 1 of this 2-part posting features 'The Secret Within' stop motion movie made by Alex (Dalex7447 on YouTube). The episode was produced in just eight hours on the day the Buckley's purchased iStopMotion.

iStopMotion Helps Dr Who Fans Show Their Love – Part 2 - showcases the brilliant work of young Will Buckley. His father Steven posted the iStopMotion short along with his equally talented brother Alex’s work to showcase not only their talent for movie making, but, the capabilities of the iStopMotion application that let these two budding filmmakers unleash their creativity. Regardelss if you are a Doctor Who fan or not, you will certainly enjoy Will’s stop motion work. All character animation is done in iStopMotion with the files outputted to iMovie for sound, post production and credits.

Attention all teachers! Watch this cute video of students using iStopMotion to make a multiplication video, and see just how much the kids like to get involved when using stop motion animation in the classroom. Working with iStopMotion teaches students a variety of skills, from teamwork, to problem solving, critical thinking, and more. It's a new and innovative way to make learning fun and provide students with immediate satisfaction and a sense of achievement. From the arts, to the sciences, mathematics, and more, iStopMotion in the classroom is helping students tackle school subjects in a highly creative, hands-on and very cool way! Click here to learn about more ways to incorporate iStopMotion into your classroom!