Stop Motion Tutorial: Animating a Walk
Вставка
- Опубліковано 20 лют 2014
- A real-life walk is a complex orchestration of balance, momentum, and circular patterns of movement that can be tricky to reproduce convincingly in animation. But perhaps this tutorial can get you started. I cover supplies needed, suggested hardware and software, animation principles, and step-by-step (pun intended) animation instructions.
In this tutorial I talk about using a camcorder. Times have changed. A phone with a stop motion app like Stop Motion Studio will work fine.
Please see my other tutorials on how to make a puppet, as well as other stop motion subjects.
Shopping:
Clay (Van Aken, Sculpy), armature wire, cotton batting to build up puppet: Arts/craft store or amazon.com
Armature kit: stopmotionstore.com
Puppet clothes (Barbie/Ken clothes: Toy store, ebay, amazon.com
Surface gauges: ZORO tools, ebay
Tie-down hardware, epoxy putty: Hardware store
Animation Clips:
Uncredited walks are sample assignments I did for classes I taught, or my own projects. Sources for other clips are noted. - Фільми й анімація
Nice tutorial! I really like your tutorials because they're short but still teach you a lot.
Great vid! I like the other walk cycle vids but i like this one the best. It's simple, includes mistakes and solutions and examples for different types of characters. Thnx!
This was so helpful! You turned my animations from what is on my channel now to something amazing, I did the bouncing ball and the walking test and they look so real, Thank you for putting these tutorials up, I would never become good if you didn't put them up.
I cannot lie; your tutorials (and watching too many old Christmas specials XD) has REALLY gotten me into stop motion! And I'm so glad I watched this too because I never realized that the clay wasn't baked because of how consistently smooth it's kept!
i know Im randomly asking but does any of you know a method to get back into an instagram account??
I was stupid forgot the login password. I appreciate any tricks you can offer me
@Flynn Andres thanks so much for your reply. I found the site thru google and I'm trying it out now.
I see it takes quite some time so I will get back to you later with my results.
Omg this is so hapeful and amazing, you're so cool. Thank you.
Very interesting! I love the tutorial, very helpful! Nice work!😎👍
Thanks !
I am a stop-motion film maker and your tutorial is very helpful for me ;)
great animated stop motion tutorial thanks for your guidance :)
Perfect tutorial for walk!!!!
Another great tutorial
Thanks for the walking advice snd tips.
2019😁.I am from your future.i liked your video.😍
@Gacha nya H I am from ur future October 2020
@Gacha nya H hi im from the future december 2020
@Gacha nya H ikr
2030 anyone?
I'm from 2021
This tutorial really helped me. I though that you might like to see my walking tests that I did after I watched this.
Thanks - well done!
Thank you for this video. Ive watched plenty of videos and no one states the objects and tools that are needed to actually create the animation movements. I finally can start with some basic ideas I have so I can practice. :)
Nesha J Thanks! Glad it is helpful!
This was fantastically helpful! :-D Incredible depth and detail, helped me out a huge amount with my animation and will also allow me to do much more in future animations :-) Muy good :-D Thank-you!
Your welcome! I hope to make more tutorials when my schedule frees up some time.
Thank you so much! This was really helpful!
Nice tutorial. I might use it one day
Great guide!
This is cool, i like it)))
Good stuff !!
Nice I like it
this video helped me a lot
Hi Micheal thanks so much for the help with armature tutorials etc , i know you have described it but could you make a video going into detail like about how you would animate this with a proper set and how to fill up the holes??? Would put alot more confidence in me by watching how someone does it ....thanks
Tks for the tips
Thank you so much
Thanks!
do i need to use tie downs on my clay figure because i dont want to mess up my stage but i want him to walk smoothly.
Michael, what are you using for shoes?
When doing any animation in stop motion, how do you figure out the timing and the spacing for each frame?
Is there a simple way to plan out the movement of each limb in joint that you intend to move?
Nice
The Gumby slide suddenly makes a lot of logistical sense.
This video is really good. Have you ever considered making a series of short videos.
To make a stop motion puppet animate you need to take pictures of them and then moving them forward, left, right or backwards.
Hi Michael,
No telling on how many times I've watched your videos. I'm working on my first stop motion ever. my question is, how do you transition between wide, medium and closeup shots within a scene. Not sure if I should shoot all of the wide and later do closeups, or use 2 cameras or neither. Any pointers? Thank You for your videos, they have helped me so much!
You decide each time if it is easier to move the camera and continue to the very next shot, or leave the camera and reposition the puppet for a different shot. If you just need to move the tripod closer or further, it is probably easier to shoot linearly. But if it's just a matter of changing the pose and facial expression, it is common to shoot all the closeups at one time. I don't think it's advisable to shoot with two cameras since the action is often cheated to favor the camera.
Thank you Michael. Slowly working on my pre-production. I'll do my best to account for my shots.
thank u
I've seen lots of videos about animating a walk but this is the best :) How do you mask the holes in the set floor from the bolts in the feet? Do you do it in Photoshop or do you fill them as you shoot on the set? Hope you'll be making more tutorials soon
Glad the tutorial is helpful. Holes in the stage can be photoshopped out, and may be the only way to make them completely disappear if the camera is looking down on the stage floor. Another way is to cover the hole with a piece of tape that is painted the same color as the stage. This is often good enough if the camera is angled too low to see details on the stage floor.
Michael Parks Thanks for the reply Michael. I've just downloaded Stop motion pro Eclipse and there's a rig replacement tool that I guess would do the same as photoshop but save swapping programs all the time. Also seen you can use magnets! There's a lot to learn with this game! lol
ur a genius
Nice video, very helpfull. Is there any obvious way to balance the caracters without fixing them to the floor, im using toys but they are a bit to big and gravity works hard on them, it gets a very funny effect in the final result but i would love to make the walkings and unbalanced positions smoother. Thank you very much.
My two-part tutorial on toy animation gets into this. Basically, since most toys are lighter than clay or stop motion puppets, it usually works to have a wire extend from the character and provides the additional support and balance. Angle the wire and the camera so that the camera can't see it, or remove the visible support using After Effects.
You can also download stopmotion in the appstore!
Very nice !
Could you tell me what software you use ?
i wanna know how to create set animation, can you learn us?
or is there a way i can make my clayman walk with out ruining my set with holes.
If the puppet us going to balance on one foot, something has so hold the foot in place. Some use very strong magnets. Or add supports from the side and erase them in photoshop. Or always have both feet on the ground and go with a foot-dragging look.
Michael Parks hmm okay I'll try all of these and decide which one works Thank You so much.
Michael Parks Mr.Micheal Parks, can you please make a video on how to animate hair, like make it blow in wind or like someone's shaking their head and their hair moves.
oof! Complicated! i might use a crane cover in green paper attached to the back of my character instead of the pin in the ground, cause i can't pin my ground
Could you use sticky tack for sticking the characters down?
That might work with a small toy, but I think anything taller than four inches and/or made of clay would would be too heavy and pull it up.
I love your tutorial videos! Really helpful. I have a question, what if the Playmobil toy don't have separate legs, how can they walk more naturally? Look forward your suggestions :) thank you!
I think the best you could do is to twist the whole body to move the legs forward, with the head twisting the opposite way so the character is always looking forward. It's not going to look particularly natural, but it would be how a living toy like that would get around.
Very helpful thank you
I was wondering, what if I don’t want a bunch of holes in my set? Can I hide them?
I use bits of masking tape painted the same color as the set. Then between shots, the wholes can be filled in with wood patching material and repainted. It's the method used at studios like Stoopid Buddy.
Michael ,I know you from the Incredibles and I was wondering if we can make a stop motion animated Horror,comedy called Blood Moon
Are you drilling holes for every time you do a foot fall or do you have a board that’s already set up with a bunch of holes?
I'm drilling a whole for each step, usually drilling them before animating. Sometimes I reuse a set of wholes if they work with another scene.
Hi Michael,Your videos are so helpful! Im a bit confused about the description for the distance of each move. When you say; An inch per move using twos, half an inch per frame-one inch per move.- but it says shooting two frames per move underneath. sorry if you have the time, could you explain this again? Do you move it half an inch-then take two frames? Is it something to do with speeding it up x2 on the program? Matt :)
- I think it might be the bit where you said "one inch per move", that has thrown me. Your channels awesome man im so glad Iv come across your content!
Film is usually shot at 24 frames per second, and so stop motion is often shot at 24 frames per second. But you have the choice of shooting one frame per move (shooting in 1's), which would be 24 moves per second, or shooting two frames per move (shooting in 2's), which would be 12 moves per second. Some apps don't give you a choice, so this may not even be an issue for you. But if you can choose, shooting in 1's is smoother, while shooting in 2's is faster. "One inch per move" is talking about the speed the character is moving and how far it should move for each frame shot. If your character is moving forward one foot per second, and you're shooting 12 moves per second, that would work out to one inch per move (up to you to translate that into metric if needed). In other words, stop motion involves lots of math.
@@MichaelParks Thankyou for your time Michael thats very kind of you
if you have to keep drillin your set for where ever your character is going to walk, won't that make a mess of your set? it would have loads of holes.
ShaurntheSheep It is necessary to patch the holes as you go. During animation you can cover the hole with a piece of tape that is painted the same color as the stage. Between shots the holes can be filled in with wood patching material.
+Michael Parks what program do you use
Could even shoot clean plate of set before you start drilling and use that to fix holes in post?
how do u use the hand wipes
I mean that I clean my hands frequently. For clay animation, I scrape the clay off my fingers with a washcloth. If the clay starts to get dirty, especially on the character's face, I will scrape off the dirty clay and replace it with clean. If the head is moving enough, the change isn't all that noticeable, or at least it's not as bad as leaving the dirt.
I have one question, Michael. Let's say you were to use LEGO for a walk cycle. My LEGO figure won't have any studs to walk on. Could you use wax to be keep the LEGO figure in place?
A minifig is probably light enough to be held up with a little glob of wax on the foot. I use Bard's Tacky Wax, which I think would work. The trick would be to keep it concealed behind the foot, and cleaning it up as he walks along.
@@MichaelParks Thanks man
could you do a tutorial on sets for claymation?
This has been requested a few times, so next time I build a set I'll make a tutorial about it. But I don't know when that will be.
Hey Michael how would you animate a run?
That gets tricky since both feet are off the ground for one or more frames per stride. I'd study a breakdown of a run in something like Richard William's Animators' Survival Kit and then work out how to accomplish the poses. The puppet can be suspended by wires, or with wire or a support system to be cleaned out of the frames in Photoshop. Sounds like a good subject for a tutorial.
which editor do u use?
Michael Parks how do you diguise the holes in the ground when walking? Is there a method for that?
I put a piece of tape over the exposed holes that is painted the same color as the ground. Between scenes, I fill the hole in with spackle or other filler and paint it. It's a lot of work, but strong tie-downs are needed to hold the character up, and it's the way I've seen it done at every stop motion studio I've worked at.
@@MichaelParks thank you
hi mich i'm trying to make my puppet walk but my puppet i use is like a gi joe figure and i'm not using tie downs how do is still make it look smooth
It's especially challenging to walk a toy without tie downs, but one way to try is to attached armature wire to the toy that extends out an inch or two and then drops to the ground, which functions as a support (like a third leg) that can hide behind the toy's body and possibly the leg. I attached by putting a small patch of duct tape on the toy's back and hot gluing the wire to the tape. This is so you don't glue the wire directly to the plastic.
Michael Parks. Thank you for getting back to me ill try your method and see how it works. By the way what do you use to make your full body characters I just want to know what to get next time I go shopping
Check out my tutorial Making an Armature, and show more of the description to get a full shopping list.
Very helpful.
Night Factor films qqqqqqq
Night Factor films agreed
May i ask, what type of clay did you use as a medium here?
The blue guy is Van Aken Plasticine. The head of the main guy is Sculpy.
We’re did you get animation figures, I see them in your videos and you have a lot,
I make them, usually using the process in my tutorials about making puppets, though I also have some ball-and-socket armatures.
great now I can make it walk better
Confusing but I'll make it work
I`d like to know how u keep your clay always clean mine is always getting dirty Fast!
I use hand wipes a lot.
2022😁 I am from your future. I like your video, and we are having a global pandemic...
you say you move your puppet's body about an inch per move while the foot goes twice as fast.
Does that mean the foot goes 2 inches for each frame?
It averages out to two inches per frame, though it eases in and out at the beginning and end. Though note that I'm using a really tall puppet here. Like about twelve inches. If your puppet is shorter that may be more like half an inch per frame on the body and one inch per frame on the foot moves.
my current armature is 9 1/2 inches high
It is going to be a female character and, based on the distance for each foot stride and the amount of frames I want to use (12 frames per second), I calculated I may have move my character's hips 1/4" per frame and the foot 7/16" per frame.
The trouble I am having though is my foot is failing to reach the new contact position on frame 13 and I keep having the move the foot a farther distance from the previous position for it to do that and I keep resulting in a snap or huge pop in the knee between frames
I sometimes also end up with the hips way off center.
Could ease-in and out be a way to eliminate the issue?
If so, would I need to start off each movement a few 16ths of an inch shorter than my calculated distance?
The hips for instance...as I had mentioned before, I calculated that I may need to move them about 1/4" per frame. Would it be best, for frame 1 in the first contact position to start off in 1/8" for frame one and then work up to 1/4" for the next two frames for the DOWN position?
@@thewatcher2928 I run into these issues frequently as well, particularly having the foot failing to reach the contact point on the desired frame. One thing that helps is to have the walk poses sketched out so you can plan ahead of time where the foot should be for each frame. Beyond that, it's really just about practicing and learning from experience. I've heard stop motion described as "intuitive mathematics", which sounds like a contradiction in terms, but at times we do need to make calculations as we go.
muito bom
How do you give them a limp?
Or running
Kick 'em in the knee. Hard. Okay, that was uncalled for. You'd have the step with the bad foot take a few frames longer than the other, and have the body drop sharper as the weight goes onto the bad foot so it seems like the character is trying to avoid putting weight on that foot any longer than necessary. Also have less of a weight shift going over that bad foot.
Running call for a whole other tutorial, since a bunch of other principles are in play. There is less weight shifting, and several frames per step where neither foot is contacting the ground.
Michael Parks thank you so much 😊
That dude is going to give me nightmares
I make stop motion too
very scary!
When doing any animation in stop motion, how do you figure out the timing and the spacing for each frame?
Do you measure the distance of each and every joint the you intend to move from paint A to point B?
Is there a simple way to plan out the movement of each limb in joint that you intend to move?
You work out the timing for the move with a stop watch, counting the frames in video reference, and after a while you learn to figure a lot of moves out intuitively. I've heard of stop motion as being intuitive mathematics. For each frame of the move, there's the basic principle of ease-in and ease-out, where the first move is slow, then they speed up, then slow down again as the move comes to a stop. While animating, you "flip" through the frames, comparing your current frame's move to the ones you've shot to see if you've moved it the right amount. It's learned with practice, which is why it's best to start with simple movement.
animating a walk is easy but still confusing for me
Looks like PBS P Head
In Spanish sub. .. please :-(
Hey I no
Right
if answered yes,come to my house by going to my google plus account and get an interview
XDDD ur crazy man
Nice