Make a Stop Motion in a Glass Multi-plane.

1. Introduction: There is something magical about stop motion animation, bringing life to any idea or objects with a sequence of photos which results in a video, is a process I'm really passionate about. Hi, I 'm Luciana Resende a visual artist and an animator based in Australia. Since I started to make stop motion back in 2020, I've been trying different techniques, animating with paper, clay, felting, products and animating myself as well. In this class, I will teach you how to animate in a glass multi plane How to set up the lights to get a best result avoiding lighting reflection. We are going to animate with a cellphone using the stop motion studio app. And I'm going to show you my process Animating with paper and clay as well. This class is suitable for everybody who likes stop motion and people who have some skills in this kind of animation and are interested in learning about a technique in which it is possible to get a depth of field in a iflat lay composition in your stop motion animation. By the end of this class you'll be able to set up your own glass multi- plane and making an animation with any material of your choice. I'm really excited You are joining me in this class. Let's get started. 2. Your Class Project: Let's talk about your class project. Think about an idea which works in a looping, it means that the animation will start and finish in the same way. So it's really interesting when we are going to make animation for social media, for example, it catches the attention of people. Set up your glass multi plane, your lights, choose a material that you are familiar with. And make your animation between five, 10 seconds. So you will need to take between 60 to 120 photos. But don't worry so much about make it simple and the most important. have fun also, upload your project. Yeah, I'm really interesting. and It will be amazing to see what you are doing. 3. Setting up a glass multi plane: When we think about glass multi plane, sometimes it sounds a little bit expensive because of the materials. Using. rectangular glass plaques from picture or poster frames is a great option as it can be more affordable. Depending on its size. And it's not hard to find it to buy as well. This one is a glass plaque in an A5 size. So always take care with the edges of the plaques, a masking tape is good to use to cover it as well. When you set up your glass multi plane, you can use the things you have at home as books, clay containers, even mugs. But anything you choose to use, it's important to have the same size, To have everything like the layers of the plane in the same level. Also use this in the edge so it will not to be in your animation, and also the more distance you have between the plaques. Between the layers. So You will have more depth of field in your animation. And the same as the more layers put in your glass multi plane more depth of field as well you will have. 4. The tripods: When we animate in a glass multi plane, we use the camera in a flat angle. So there is some tripods that we can use to get this angle. This one is not exactly a tripod but it is a phone holder suspension arm. So it comes with this part, and then this you put on the table, And you can adjust if you like it more close or a bit far so Yeah, it's easy so it's not so difficult to find this one online. But usually I don't use this when I make my animations. Because I animate with a camera, a Canon RP So Yeah, I think it is more for mobile phones. I have tried this for the camera, but it's not so safe so Yeah, my advice is if you have a camera, get a tripod for that, if you have your cellphone, it's okay. You can use this one or another one My another tripod that is what I'm using now to record this class is a Manfrotto so this kind of tripod is very good for this kind of animation because also with the Manfrotto you get a flat lay angle as well. When I started to make animations, I used this one. So I used it to get a flat lay angle with this like setting up this in this way. My cell phone in that time was a bit smaller than this. So it was possible to put in this area and use some headband or something to get it more safe and more stable so Another thing that yeah, it is an option for if you don't have a tripod There is no way you get this or, if you prefer, don't buy a tripod, also this is for fruit. I started to make my animations with this in that time I didn't have a tripod or anything and I would like to to make animations. So Yeah, this is good as well. You just put Your cell phone. Between this area on the top which the camera exactly like it is. It works as well for flat lay but the only thing that we will talk about when I'm going to talk about the lighting reflection, showing how to avoid, is that for this one maybe you'll get a bit of reflection. Yeah. But it's totally possible to animate. with this if you have one of these at home for example. 5. Setting up the lights: One of the big challenges when we make this kind of animation, is about the light. Depending how you set up this, you can have a light reflection in your animation. So Yeah, this is the way that I'm going to show you that works for me in my animations. And also, I'm going to show you using the soft box and the desk lamps. That was the lamps that I had when I started to make stop motions back in 2020. Yeah, I set up each one in each side of the, of the glass multi plane. You can put some books or something to keep it more high, but take care about how high you will set up your light. If you do this for example, it can cause a lighting reflection in your animation. I'm going to take some more books here just to keep the light in this area. Sometimes you'll notice that there is so much light in your animation. There is a way to make it soft and it is with baking, and cooking paper, just a little bit. You can just, just cover a little bit your light and you can cover this as well if both are so hard, so strong. For the soft box. This is the way that I set up. So I only set up one soft box in this area. And another one in the opposite side of my camera, so my camera is always in this area. It's always better to avoid the reflection, to have the lights in the same level of the glass. Multi plane, but sometimes it works as well. If you use the soft box in a 45 angle like this, it's always a trial. It's always something that you will see when you animate. If there is a light reflection in your glass, in the glass plaques, so yeah always it's something that you can adjust, and you set up first in one way. And after that you see in the camera, if there is any reflection so you just , yeah adjust it just a little. Not so high but, but the same way that the another soft box. 6. Avoiding the lighting reflection: Stop motion. We don't use natural light as it can cause a light variation in the animation. When we are going to an image, it's really important to shoot off any light which are not the ones we are going to use. We need to have the place if we are to Dario into the court chains. If you have some or put black cloth in the windows, it can be helpful as well. Yeah, it's a big challenge to avoid the light reflection, especially in this of set up in a glass multiplaning. Using a black cloth in the tripod is something I do to help is to avoid the light reflection comes from its metal. I also use a black lof around my min to avoid having any reflection from its logo in the glass flax. If I'm using mobile phone, I can use a piece of black paper to cover the metal around the mobile phone. Something that can be really helpful as well is to use a black cloth to cover the soft box if there is no way to get your place 100% as possible and you can see any reflection in the glass flakes black cloth to minimize this can help to avoid the light reflection. 7. Stop Motion Studio App: Stop Motion Studio app is free and it's available for IOS and Android. There is a paid version which comes with soundtracks and sound effects also, It's available for desktop as well. When you open the app, you will see your folders, the videos you made, if you have some. We have the manual where there is so useful. video tutorials from which you can learn a lot. also the settings with tips and some configurations , I didn't I didn't use it so much. So Let's open a new movie. Here is where the magic happens. We have the configurations tool here as well, in which is possible you adjust the speed of the frames, we are going to animate in 12 frames per second, which is the minimum for your vision understands You are watching a video and not a sequence of photos. So there is other tool here as well. You can select to fade in or fade out your animation. Define the aspect ratio and you can add a foreground, also add a filter and choose the quality of your video. I use the full HD quality. And then you can choose how watch your stop motion in the App. I like the loop playback. It's great when you need to see if the loop is working on animation. So back to the screen. If you tap in the question mark, it will show you what is which tool as well. So Let's go to capture, here there's some configurations we need to do before we start to animate We have the camera rear, front or wide, so You can choose one of these options. We have the mode tool as well Auto, auto locked, program or manual. And this is what interest us. We use always the manual mode, otherwise the app will adjust every time the focus and the exposure. So you can see when you choose the manual, it opens many other options. We have the white balance which changes the color of the animation for example. The incandescent, Sunrise Fluorescent. Daylight, overcast and Cloud as well. Usually I choose the locked one for my animations. Also you have here the focus We have the shooter as well. We also have here the Iso, it will also bring more light or less for your animation. We have the zoom, which in stop motion animation a Zoom in , for example, is made frame by frame , So just adjust a little bit. Take one photo, adjust a little bit more, take another photo adjust a little bit more another photo so just a little bit frame by frame, to have a smooth zoom. Remember what I said, about we animate in 12 frames per second. Let's adjust this again. So Yeah, and also when we adjust, for the example a zoom out, we do the same, just go back a little bit. Take one photo , go back a little bit more. Take another photo, go back a little bit more other photo. It's something I didn't explain yet. It's really important as well when we do our stop motion animations. Is important to avoid touching every time in the camera Because it can result in your animation shaking a little bit. So there is something here. We can adjust the capture mode. It's better to adjust a timer, but there is two differences about here. When we are in the capture mode, we can choose photo, timer, clip, time lapse, or multi. I choose time lapse . The difference about the time lapse and the timer It's because the timer will wait, for example, 5 seconds and it'll take the photo and that's it. The time lapse, it'll take one photo every 5 seconds or 10 seconds. So Yeah. Let's take the time lapse. Usually when I need to movie so many things in my animation, I prefer toput like 20 seconds because I have more time move the things. Or wait, let's select 10 seconds. So go back to the example, we are doing, zone out, so Take one photo It will take the 10 seconds to take another one. Also it will beep when it is near to take the photo. Yeah, take another photo When we adjust another function here for example the zoom out, it will stop the time lapse for example, but it's normal. Don't worry about this. So Let's wait just a little bit, let's go back there. And the last one for our zoom out, And as it is in the time lapse, it will take a new photo every 10 seconds. That is the time that we selected, and in the animation as well In the stop motion animation, we need to move the things, just slowly, just a little bit, also in this area I will pause ta little bit So we can adjust here, we have some tools here. This will allow you to have a grid. You can put the things better in your scene when you set up the scene for your animation. So Yeah, you can see how it's going, like if It's the right position Yeah, I think it's a great tool the grid, and also we can adjust something here to see the onion skin that in it's possible to see the last frame and the previous frame, the actual one. It makes easy when we are animating , for example. Each more distance we have between the frames. more fast an object will move in our animation. So just a little bit. Another photo Just a little bit more. And there is something here that is this tool this one. So in this You can play your animation and see how it's going. But it only shows just a little bit. Just the last frames. To see everything from the beginning, you need to do the play in this area, so it will show you the animation. how it's going since the beginning, since the first frame. Other thing here as well, we have, when we touch in one frame, for example here the first one, it will open another window. So You will have, insert camera, pause, audio, edit, erase, select, cut, copy, page, reverse and delete as well. Something important in the animations is the pause. So usually in the first frame, I put between six or nine frames with the pause, it will helps a lot in the timing of the animation. Here I had a zoom in, So I can put a pause here as well. In the final of zoom in, I can put nine frames, for example. Or if you want like 1 second of pause, select 12 frames. Usually nine is good enough, but it depends on the animation. I saw something really strange here. This one, it was doing a zoom out. And this I just go back to do the zoom in, So I can just delete this. I can do another pause here, maybe three frames. Just a little short one and I can play again. Let's see again how it's doing. But I'm doing so much touching in the camera. When we're animating It's not so good You touch every time. So if you need to see how it's going. Do they play in the capture area just to see the last frames It's enough to see how it's going. But if you need to see everything since the beginning. Go there, just carefully go back there to see how it's going. 8. Animating with paper: I start with the pre production of everything I'm going to use in my animation, making the characters and other things I'm going to use in the scene, I prefer to use 210gsm paper in my animations. So with the glass multi plane and the lights set up, I leave one of the glass layers empty to be possible to move the character or anything else without touching in something. I don't need to move. Also, I use a ruler to manipulate the paper. I don't touch with my hands between the layers as it can touch the glass plaques shaking the animation. In the glass plaque which is on the top, I can touch my paper character, but carefully. Having all the things you are going to use in the animation organised Beside the glass multi plane is really good as well. And it can make you have a better workflow during the animation shooting. It can take so many hours to animate, depending how complex is the animation, as the glass multi plane allow us to have many things to move at the same time. So patience is really important in this kind of stop motion. 9. Animating with clay: When it is about clay. There are some kinds that is better to work in Stop motion. Plasticine is an oil based clay which is the best because it will not dry in so many hours usually we spend animating. I like to animate with clay in the glass multi plane Also, because as we are animating a flat lay , we don't need to use rigs to keep a character standing. for example, and because we are animating in a glass plaque The background will not be dirty with the oil of the clay. I use less layers, so usually one or two and the clay I always set up on the top, as I need to touch this in each frame modeling the clay to have the moves I need. Also something helpful is the possibility to set up the glass multi plane in the half of the other ones or set up the character in the same level of the table. And then set up the glass multi plane. So in this way, we are using the glass plaques as a support more than a set up where we are going to use to animate. 10. Conclusion: Congratulations for completing this class. Thank you for embarking on this journey with me where we have learned how to make the glass multi plane, how to set up the lights and also how to use the stop motion studio app, also you saw a little bit of my process to animate with paper and clay as well. I hope you take from this class the skill of animate in a glass multi plane And now keep practicing. So post your project in the projects gallery. I will love to see what animations you will make. So follow me on the skillshare or on social media as well. And leave a review, your feedback is really appreciated. And Yeah, thanks again.