Create a stop-motion cartoon

There is something almost magical about stop-motion animation. From Bagpuss to Wallace and Gromit, the way stop-motion animators create the illusion of movement and life from inanimate objects fascinates many.

But creating stop-motion animations doesn’t require any expensive equipment. Indeed, it’s easy to create your own Chicken Run-style ‘claymations’ at home. Almost any camera will do and the software needed to animate photos is available free online. Beyond that, all you need is modelling clay, imagination and patience.

So whether you want to create a personal project or just keep the kids occupied, read on to find out how to make your own stop-motion masterpiece. The images in this article are from Computeractive's own ‘monster’ video, which can be viewed by clicking here.

What you will need
First, you will need a camera. Almost any camera will work: a normal digital camera, a laptop webcam or even a camera built into a mobile phone.

In all cases, though, be sure to check that the device has plenty of available storage space, because once the process of capturing the animation has begun, moving the camera to switch memory cards or transfer photos to free up space could ruin hours of effort.

It’s worth ensuring that the camera’s battery is fully charged, too, for the same reason.

Obviously, you will need something to film. Characters crafted from Plasticine are ideal because they can be easily manipulated, or you could use toys or articulated action figures – but this is where the imagination comes in.

More practically, software is needed to edit the photographs once they have been transferred to the PC. Most digital cameras and webcams come with software of some description, but if you don’t already have an image-editing application, download a free program such as Irfanview or Gimp.

Finally, you will need a program that is able to turn still photographs into animations. There are many different programs capable of doing this and, at a pinch, you could even use the Windows Movie Maker program included with most versions of Windows.

Here, though, we will use Virtualdub. This is an easy-to-use video-editing program that affords fine control over animations. Virtualdub can be downloaded free from the Sourceforge website.

Virtualdub doesn’t need installing as such: once the program files are extracted from the compressed ZIP file (just right-click the file and choose Extract All), it can be launched right away by double-clicking the file named Virtualdub.exe.