Stop Motion Handbook Now Available on iBooks!
by Cara - Thursday, August 18, 2011 - Permalink
Stop motion animation expert Craig Lauridsen has been diligently working on creating a Stop Motion Handbook to guide users through this fun and fascinating art form - and it's finally here! The Stop Motion Handbook - featuring none other than our very own iStopMotion - is now available for the iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with iBooks and on computers with iTunes. The handbook leads readers through simple and robust processes that will help both beginner and amateur animators make good decisions when creating stop motion animation movies. A great guide for teachers, parents or kids who want to produce their own stop motion movies, the handbook covers a broad range of key concepts and tools necessary for creating a fantastic animation! From developing your story, to recording audio, making props and backgrounds, creating characters, editing your movie, and more, the Stop Motion Handbook is your complete guide to producing your very own stop motion animations with Mac software like GarageBand, iMovie, and of course, iStopMotion.
Grab the Stop Motion Handbook today on iBooks (http://bit.ly/qX4LDN) and you'll be animating in no time!
Charrette
by Cara - Wednesday, August 03, 2011 - Permalink
The word charrette refers to an intense period of time during which a group of designers or architects draft a solution to a design problem. Many architecture students use this word when they talk about the time spent with little to no sleep finishing a project by the deadline. Thought to originate from the ´Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris in the 19th century, the word charrette is from the French word for "cart" or "chariot."
Entitled Charrette, this iStopMotion movie was created by DiEgo Herguera Acosta during the one month Elephant in the Room workshop in Arteleku, Donosita, Basque Country. The workshop was taught by Maureen Selwood from CalArts. Everything in the movie is drawn with pencil and ink, then scanned. iStopMotion Pro was used to test the timing, while Adobe After Effects was used to create the final look.
Thought Out Creates Promo Ad with iStopMotion!
by Cara - Tuesday, August 02, 2011 - Permalink
iStopMotion can be used for so many different things outside the realm of your typical stop motion animations. I was thrilled to see that it was being used by a company to create an advertisement for a brand new product! Thought Out is a motivated company that strives to create great products in the USA and believes that innovation never ends. The company makes accessories to meet any growing technological need. Thought Out products, while not limited to the design cues of Apple products, reflect the innovation, beauty, and allure they convey in much the same way. Thought Out has been involved in the world of podcasting and WEB 2.0 (new media) since 2004, and is citied as one of the first advertisers to sponsor a show when podcasting was in its infancy.
Using iStopMotion Express, Thought Out created a video advertisement for their new Stabile PRO Pivoting iPad Stand. "Once we learned the product and did some tests, it only took us 45 minutes and 162 shots to complete the video," says Mike Talmadge of Thought Out. iStopMotion was a perfect choice for the ad, as its frame-by-frame functionality strongly showcased the wide pivoting motion range of the new product. The ad is about 22 seconds long with 5 progression loops showing the Stabile PRO Pivoting iPad Stand in motion.
I always love seeing the new and unique ways our customers are utilizing our products - and this is a great one! If you are using any of our products in a way you think is interesting and off the beaten path, send it on over to us at pr@boinx.com and we just might feature it on the blog! For now, happy creating!!
The Making of a Sandwich - iStopMotion Style
by Cara - Tuesday, July 26, 2011 - Permalink
This clever iStopMotion movie from HappyShiver Productions depicts the making of quite a yummy looking sandwich, if I may say so myself. Watch as all parts and pieces, from the lettuce, to the final bun, come together - and quickly disappear - in this creative iStopMotion film. I think I'll go make myself a sandwich now....
Lion Status Update: iStopMotion 2.8.1
by Cara - Thursday, July 21, 2011 - Permalink
An update to iStopMotion is required for DSLR's to work with the new OS X Lion. A hbeta is currently available that partly restores the DSLR support. If you purchased iStopMotion on the Mac App Store and want to try out the beta, use the built-in assistant to request a demo license. Until the update is ready, we recommend using Mac OS X 10.6.7 and iStopMotion 2.8.1 if you want to use a DSLR camera.
All other aspects of iStopMotion works just fine with the new OS X Lion. Buy now at the Mac App Store!
Doctor Who: Playtime for Cybermen
by Cara - Wednesday, July 06, 2011 - Permalink
A new YouTube channel features animations of "The Yorkshire Cybermen," shot with iStopMotion Pro. The videos were shot completely "in camera" so that any effect the viewer sees is the real thing... no CGI at all! The animator used a Sony HVR-Z1 and a Matrox MX02le to capture the footage, and iStopMotion Pro for animation. "I like the rough and ready feel of these, and am quite happy with the bits of blue tack to be seen and the poor lighting - it makes it all feel more real," says the animator. And for those of you who might be interested, the figures (Yorkshire Cybermen) are from Character Buildings new range of Doctor Who figures.
Watch all of "The Yorkshire Cybermen" animations here!
May 22 Through the Eyes of iStopMotion
by Cara - Thursday, June 23, 2011 - Permalink
This unique iStopMotion movie was created by Frank Doheyn, as a tribute to the maker's of 'Dag op Dag' (or 'Day to Day'), a national TV program in Belgium dedicated to the history of the world on one specific date. Frank chose to portray the history and events of May 22 over the years through stop motion animation. To create this elaborate animation, Frank used non permanent whiteboard marker, tissues, Q-tips, and hours and hours of patience. The audio effects were also created by Frank, using GarageBand and iMovie. He used a HUE webcam to make the 1,992 images that were needed for the project. The background music is from a 1968 Arthur Brown song.
Watch here as Frank takes viewers through history on May 22 - from the fall of Constantinople, to the 1960 earthquake in Chile, to top model Naomi Campbell's birth in 1970. To view more iStopMotion examples click here!
iStopMotion Clicks Ahead to Version 2.8
by Cara - Wednesday, June 22, 2011 - Permalink
iStopMotion version 2.8 is here! Headlining the list of new features and improvements is iStopMotion's new ability to apply filters to imported images. This means that if you have existing time-lapse sequences you'd like to work with in iStopMotion, now you can! In version 2.8, all filters, such as the popular Tilt Shift effects, can now be applied to previously-recorded time-lapse footage shot with stand-alone DSLR cameras directly upon import. Just drag and drop the images from your camera onto an iStopMotion document and the Tilt Shift effect will be applied to all images, while a time-lapse movie is created at the same time.
Our engineers also went under-the-hood in version 2.8 to restore Canon DSLR camera functionality that was lost with the Mac OS X 10.6.5 system update, as well as make major improvements to color management. Rounding out the upgrades in version 2.8 is the software's localization of the Russian language.
Sometimes, a customer reports what seems to be a minor bug and it looks like a totally trivial thing. Then we dive in and discover a much better way to do things, which leads to dramatic improvements," comments Oliver Breidenbach. "With iStopMotion 2.8, this happened when a small color matching problem was reported. Now, the color is handled much better throughout all areas of the program, leading to better animation results."
Learn about all the new features and updates to iStopMotion 2.8 here!
'You Might Remember This'
by Cara - Tuesday, June 21, 2011 - Permalink
Painter and experimental filmmaker, and avid user of iStopMotion, Jeff Scher created this unique and personal animation for Father's Day, featuring his son Buster from ages 6 to 10. 'You Might Remember This' portrays Buster's childhood through drawings, animated with iStopMotion. In describing the animation, Scher is sure to explain that although it portrays childhood, the perspective of the short film is parental.
"The silce of childhood depicted here makes it feel like we're creeping up on the middle of our journey together. The bubble of babyhood has burst and there have been great leaps in physical prowess, but the shell of adulthood has not yet hardened and the children remain vulnerable," he writes. "As parents, we remain indispensable, but the intoxicating and scary scent of future independence is in the air. School is at the center of most days, and the balance between social and academic development and the need to just be a kid swings back and forth constantly. Being a parent has similar conflicts: while I'm insisting he do his homework, I'm wishing we were fishing, too. But we've both signed on to be (or become) functional citizens, and the homework gets done."
"Buster might actually remember some of the moments depicted in this film; some he might remember because of this film," says Scher. "I will remember them all, having now engraved them in memory with crayon, paint and pencil." Watch the full animation here. Visit Scher's New York Times Blog to watch more of his short animations made with iStopMotion!
Stop Motion Animation Ident - BBC1
by Cara - Monday, June 20, 2011 - Permalink
YouTuber "Jackamaddox" recently sent over a unique stop motion animation video that he and his peers put together for a college project. The assignment required that Jack and his peers create an ident - or television identification symbol - for the well-known British channel BBC One. The ident needed to be a short video tailored to BBC One's target audience, which the students defined as largely family orientated, that would remind the audience what channel they were watching. In this short ident project, Jack and his partners took the concept of snowmen for the holiday season and ran with it. "Previous idents for BBC One involved objects coming together to form a circle of the 'One' in BBC One - this is how we developed our idea of snowmen coming together to form the 'One,'" says Jack.
Jack used a Canon XM2 Camcorder and a Mac computer to create the iStopMotion animation. It took hundreds of snowman, thousands of frames, and a couple weeks of clicking to create the BBC One ident. Here's the finished product!