Stopmotion Explosion Complete Animation Kit {A Review}
Ellawyn was super excited to receive the Stop Motion Animation Kit from Stopmotion Explosion.
About the Kit
The kit comes with everything you need to get started animating your own stop motion movie. Included in the kit is a 1080p HD camera with internal microphone. It can be manually focused and has a clip to secure it. A software CD that contains the audio and video animation programs is included. Fun extras like sound effects and a storyboard template can also be found on it. (These can also be downloaded from the website.) The comprehensive book, Stopmotion Explosion Animate Anything and Make Movies, covers just about everything you need to know to make a movie. In addition, we also received the Quick-Start Guide, which is great if you want to just jump right in and get started.
Getting Started
Ellawyn devoured the Quick-Start guide because she was so excited to begin. When she finished it she started brainstorming for movie ideas. Sometimes she would start one idea and then decide that she wanted to do something else. Or that what she had in mind was too involved for her skill level. Regardless, it allowed her to tap into her creativity and become familiar with the process. Even if it didn’t always result in a finished product she learned from it.
As she began and started becoming more familiar with the video and audio programs, she delved more into the Animate Anything and Make Movies book to improve and fine tune her creations. This book gave a lot of useful tips for how to create a really good stop motion video. It covers everything. From the basics of creating the story, building sets, cameras, lighting, composition and animation. In addition, it also covers adding effects such as flight and war, the technical components of adding sound, editing, files and formatting and frame conversion. Lastly, it teaches how to share your animation.
She learned it takes a lot of time and effort to create even a short video. This gave her a new appreciation for the stop motion movies she enjoys.
Difficulty Level
At 11, Ellawyn was outside of the recommended age of 13+. This meant that she did need some help on the set up and technical aspects. Occasionally, her older sister would step in to help and she needed her dad to walk her through adding sound to the video. Both books were laid out in a way that those helping could step in and just read the necessary section to get her moving forward again. For this reason I think that if she was just a little older, she would have been fine to figure it out on her own.
The Animation
Her initial plan was to use Lego’s. However, after an initial attempt and getting some inspiration from the candy section at our local store, decided to write a story about Monster Peeps.
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| Brainstorming with her brother. |
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| Her brother got recruited to help with the set. |
She wrote a theme song to go with her movie titled, “Monster Peep Origins.” It gives the set up for what she wants her movie to be about.
She had a lot of fun making her video and learning different things she could do. I know as she continues on her skill level and the quality of what she produces will also improve. The Stopmotion site has many tools and videos that will be useful to her in honing her skills and creating better movies. She looks forward to utilizing them.
To check out more stop motion videos from other Crew reviewers, click below.
