Turn Your Illustrations into Real Life Objects with a Magic of Stop Motion

1. Class intro: turn your illustrations into real life objects with the magic of stop motion. Hi, my name is Maria. And today I will show you how to do you just of motion like this one roll. But unless it's a magic show 2. Equipment: Let's start with equipment for this project. You only some camera equipment. I used iPhone, a cell fistic a basket, and I will show you why in a minute you have a phone holder like this one, it would be even better, But you can totally go by without drawing supplies. I used a watercolor album, watercolors, watercolor brushes and a theme liner for this kind of printed. Any traditional drawing medium will do, however, for more national fuel. Unless your final object is monochrome, I would suggest using a medium that offer scholar acrylic paint, pencils, markers, watercolor colored inks, etcetera, video editing program to put together your stuff motion video. I will show you how to make a project in both I movie and Windows movie maker, an object that you will draw something to draw from and that can be used at the latest stage off the stop motion. In my case, treat clams. You can use any object you like leaves, flowers, fruits, objects from your table. Sky's the limit, but given mind a few things since you are not only drawing but also taking pictures of the process and most likely, all by yourself, I would recommend choosing an object that is relatively easy and faster dropped because taking pictures distracts you from drawing. So if you choose something complex, it may affect the quality of your final drawing. Secondly, the item has to be small enough so you can covered with your hands. Finally, she was an item that is not very high. Okay, let me playing this point a bit more. During the shooting stage, we will be fixing the focus of your camera to keep the pictures consistent. Fixing the focus means that the focus will be on a particular level. In this case, it's a level off watercolor paper here on the picture. On the left, you can see the level off the plum and the level of the paper. They are relatively close to each other. So if we focus, let's say on paper the plant will still be in focus to, However, if our object is too high, like on the picture on the right here, the bottle. If we fix our focus on the paper, the top of the bottle will be out of focus here. Free images. It was trading how it will look like if I focused on the top of the bottle. The drawing becomes less sharp and more blurry. And that's because it's out of focus if we focus on the drawing. Instead, the top of the bottle becomes blurry. Even if he is iPhone, and it does have a large area. Focus. You will still encounter this problem if the difference between the object and the paper level is too big, like here on the DSLR. This problem, maybe even more. If you're using appointments on the first image, the plum and drawing are completely blurred, so choose an object that will be relatively close to your people level to keep your focus sharp throughout the ship. Additional props, large piece of white paper to use as a diffuser and the blank art canvas to use as a reflector and some background. I use Kraft paper from some packaging. I took a lot about this props in my class and still life photography, so be sure to check it out, optional a further editing program to enhance or corrective pictures. I use light room and photo shopped for this 3. Idea & Planning: idea and planning. The idea for this project was very simple. I draw something, and then, as if by magic, it comes to life. I also wanted to make as if it didn't work out the 1st 2 attempts covering plums a few times before they finally transform. My mistake was that I didn't plan the ending and came up with the disappearing plants at the editing stage. So I had to utilize my father shop skills to create additional shots. And yes, I will show you how I did it. But it is so much more time effective to just take some time, plan ahead and make all the necessary shots. Do your in the shooting stage rather than manipulating the pictures later in editing from the personal experience, I can say the planning. Your stop motion is important and will save you a lot of time. Here are the two things that can happen if you don't plan, you protect the head first. You can't find yourself halfway through capturing your images and realized that you want an extra prop somewhere on your picture. You can just add it as the scene, apart from the drawing in our hands has to remain the same. To add the effect off believability. You can, of course, come up with a little step. Look, why the size I'm appeared out of nowhere, but that obviously will require some planning in itself. Do you may find yourself completing the process, uploading your images to your computer, only to discover that you missed some essential shots. I will talk about this later on. And since it's not only photography but also a drawing project, you will have to start all over. This happened to me while making this crossed twice over. This kind of mistakes make a simple plan of your project sketch the essential shots you need to capture and the storyline here is mine. Keep it close to set up so that you can refer to any time and it doesn't have to be perfect . You just have to understand that 4. Setup: set up, right? So this is my set up. I'm all about dear. Why? And using tools around me, you can see all the tools I have talked about, like two pieces of white office paper to diffuse the light from the window and some extra items like a basket that I used to hold myself fistic. My iPhone is parallel to the working space so that all pictures taken would be from direct Klay above and note at an angle. This is how the whole iPhone Day, why Holder looks like I put a vase inside the basket to hold the sophisticate and also used a heavy decorative box cover on top to make the whole construction more stable. I used White Blank our Congress as my reflector. The bounds slide back from the window at my set up. Oh yeah, and I also use the plant in the pot to fix my reflector and not unlike, ideally, to make the whole stop motion irritable and more consistent looking. An artificial source of light is preferred by artificial light. I mean the constant source of life that will be the same throw to shoot best of all professional life not the life from the ceiling lamps in the room. That one will most likely have a Yellowtail. I talk about light in my classes on still like photography, too, so you can check them if you need more information on life. I prefer natural rights for most of my pictures, and I used it here. However, a word of caution. Natural light can change any minute a second. If the days cloudy and the sun is shining one minute and covered with close the next year, images will be exposed differently, which will affect the consistency. I can try to fix this to some extent in editing. In lateral, however, making pictures totally match may be quite time consuming and heart. So if you do prefer shooting with natural light or don't have artificial right equipment, I would suggest to wait for a light that is relatively stable. For example, a very bright day with no clouds or an overcast day when skies covered with even layer of clouds. Here are two pictures. The one on the left. I was taking a the very beginning of the shoot and the one on the right at the very in, both our unedited and you can see that because the light changed pictures do look different . How many hands you can use. So obviously, if you want the host of motion to feature both of your hands, you might need an extra help from someone that someone will have to take pictures for you. I was doing this project by myself. So the majority of shots featured just one hand. The one that I drove with. Well, with the second I take pictures. However, in the end, I used still hands and for that I use a timer. You can, of course, make the whole project with a free sec timer, but that will take some time. 5. Drawing Lineart: All right, let's move on to the actual process. First of all, I place my real life object, plums all into the paper and fix the focus on them as well as adjusting exposure. Now, I arrange my plums in such a way that I will be able to cover them with my hands at the later stage and do like pencil marks on where the plants should be drawn. Because I'm shooting a video as well US Stop motion. I also made a quick schematic sketches off plums so that my line are drawing will go faster . You can see faint pencil lines on the paper here. Now I'm going to draw the simple Leinart with a liner. Nothing fancy. But if you want to use the mix off pen and watercolor like me, make sure your pen the liner is water broke so that watercolor will not ruin your Leinart. Okay, I decided to erase the pencil sketch a bit to make it barely visible. Now I start to draw a line up. Remember? I talked about essential shots. Well, the first would be the shot off the blank paper with you hand in it and pressed to paper at the point where you will start to draw. This is your starting point shot because it's not a video, but the pictures for reviewer to see the progress of drawing and ultimately imagining the process. There's got to be a point, yeah, where the drawing stars and the point B where it finishes to be logical and real. If, say, I made my first short when part of the line was already drawn, it would look strange. So as you start to draw in the little sections, taking a short after each section is complete for this project. The work. You don't have to be an expert in drawing. I mean, look at my Leinart. It's really, really simple. Once again, I start to draw stem. I take a shot at the starting point from where I will draw the line and then draw the first section. Now I proceed to making that's and I don't take a picture off every that I make because it will make the stop motion too long. So I just make a few, take a picture, then make a few more and take another one. I proceed in the same matter for the two out of thumbs noticed that I drove from my left to right so that each time I complete one drawing When I start another one, I do not cover the 1st 1 with my drawing him Draw in the direction of your drawing hand. If you're right handed, draw from left to right. If you're left handed, draw from right to left. Another thing to consider is where the capture button on your camera will be vacated. As I drove with my right hand, I use my left to press the capture, but okay, time to erase their remaining pencil sketch. If you made any. I also decided to make a couple of extra shots with a liner. Just add a bit of different action tapping on the paper. Finally, I make a short over liner without hands. This is our second essential short sort of a milestone. All the previous shots were showing the progress, and this one shows the result. Now I also want to show the result with both my hands. For this, I set the timer to three second delay and place both my hands around the liner. The focus remains the same because it's fixed. I do a couple more just to have something to choose from during the editing stage. Don't forget to switch back to normal shooting when you start to watercolor. 6. Painting Watercolour: and we're off to watercolor. I keep an extra paper on the side to try colors as I go. Another little advice here. Lighter and brighter illustrations tend to the better on pictures. Here are the comparison off two drawings I made one for the first time. I did this project on the left and another one when I read it. It taken into account all mistakes, the one on the right. The plants on the right look better because they're more visible. Hence its easier to recognize that there are indeed plums. So if you're really life object allows, don't go to sicken colors. We'll let the drawings glow. So should I make while drawing watercolor is how I color the water. I want my actions to be gradual, and as I went my brush and start mixing colors, the water in the glass will change, and I want this process to be logical rather than one short. It's clear water, and next one, it's already OpenTable, right? So moving on to the furred essential shot, the brush almost on the paper, but no calorie. This is our starting point for the section I decided to go with wedding where technique. And instead of applying car shirts, I cover the whole plum with just water. It's slightly tinted as I called my water before, but it doesn't colors the drawing that much. I also leave some people untouched for the highlights on the left. Finally, I start at color and painted over the plum, taking pictures as I go to make drawing more interesting. I had some extra collars like orange and yellow, also adding more purple on the right, and I repeat the process with two other times because I drove from my left to write. I minimize the risk of accidentally smudging they already my drawings, and also it's much more interesting to look at the process and one finished drawing than just at the hand that covers the finished drawing. If I was making my process from right to left, make sure you don't still any watercolor on your paper before you actually start to drop. My set up isn't perfect. I should have put my glass right where my drawing hand years instead off over the paper. But somehow I managed to go through the whole process without messing it up. So think about logistics make sure the props do not interfere with the drawing process. If they do either removed or rearrange them in the variant, I make sure to capture an image with all free finished clumps without my hands. This is the fourth essential shot. 7. Real Plums: making magic in the previous section. I didn't do this. Show the result with hand picture. So I do it now as well as pictures showing the process off covering the plums. Noticed that I don't go straight to cover the drawings and full I take an extra shot showing the process. And then I see this right? So this is my iPhone five with 16 gigabytes memory, and I ran out of it completely. So be sure to check your phone all camera memory before starting the project so that you won't be interrupted your in the process. I was lucky enough that I finished drawing stage when this happened. After I cleaned up some space. I continue. I make a few extra shots off hiding and showing the drawing. As before, they have some options to choose from. At the editing stage, I check if the watercolor is dry so that I can turn the page because I need a clean page to put the real plans on. But before turning the page, I want to make pencil marks all the next page where the plants should be placed and I'm turning the page. I arranged the plums is a good idea to have a reference image of your finished drawing. For example, you can send your final short off the drawing to your computer and look at it while arranging your objects. Now, very important. Your next essential Chuck. Just free plants without your hands. You can do it now, just when you arrange the plants all when you're done taking, covering and revealing shots. But you have to make it. It's another short off the result and has to be shown without hands or any activity in the shot to draw attention. So I make a few shots and check the focus, and it seems to be okay. I set the timer to free Segway and start making shots with covering partially covering and revealing the real times. Same as before. I make wide a few extras just in case. Additional tip. Make sure your flash on the camera is switched off. Most likely it will overexpose the paper. Hear how you can preview your future stop motion before uploading anything to your computer . Just go quickly through the pictures you just made on your phone. Finally, I want to make my plumps move a little bit at then, so I take a few shots, rotating plums slightly in two different directions, and with them 8. Editing in Lightroom: Lytro editing. This step is optional if you go to your life right and everything else is exactly the way you want it to be. I was using natural light which changed your in the shoot. I also want to make a few enhancement to the rial plants as they look to dark on the pictures. I have already deleted some duplicates and testicles I made during the shoot. So here are the short that I will use for stop motion. As I scroll down, I noticed how light have changed and you can see that it changed significantly while I was drawing it caused darker. For example, if I compare this image to the one I made in the beginning, you will see the difference. There is also a noticeable change in temperature between my finished drawing and actual plants. This one is particularly important. As for stop motion to look natural, the difference has to be minimal at best at the transformation station, So I will drink too much them by adjusting some city. Finally, I would also brighten up the actual plans too much them better to the drawing. I start with exposure. I scroll back to see Where did the exporter started to change? I think this picture as a starting point and I have exposure to about here. I copied it. It's because the change in exposure is gradual. I will have to increase exposure more in the later pictures because adjusting every single image is way too time consuming. I select a few images and synchronize the exporter setting. Then I decide on the next day, much way I can increase exposure even more. This one I place settings and add more exposure. Ivan Press copy. And as before, synchronized the settings to the following images, I proceed in the same way, increasing exposure in some images and synchronize and settings for the ones that follows. Let me just speed up the process from here as well as increasing exposure. I think I will also brighten up the shadows and a little bit too. I will bring exposure down just a little bit here because my hands are not covering the setting. Hence, there was more life and exposure Bet as in my hands of back and picture. So I think I'm done with general exposure adjustments. I go for the pictures again and it looks better now I have to deal with temperature and general mismatch Between the pictures, I select the one I will be working on first and the one that I need as a reference. Second, there is a quick developed section in the library top here on the right. It does not allow much find union, but you can get close enough and that's all I need. My exposure is already edited, so I start with increasing the temperature. I also uptick into the right, making it more it not to tackle the softness problem. I at the contrast highlights increase shadows and finally add some clarity. Now I took the pictures once again. Although it's not perfect, it does look much better than before. Here is the before now. It just could be the sittings I have and face them on the following images. I don't place the exposure, however, because I have already walked in and before my last meeting will be more targeted. I want to make real plans. Marce illustrations. For this, I will use a radio filter toe located here. I drug a circle to cover the plump in the work on its sittings. I increase exposure quite a bit and shadows and reduce temperature, making the plum more blue. No, I just duplicate the already made filter and put it over the next month, adjusting his size and settings like would using, wrecked in and saturation as this one looks just too bright and colorful. Then I could be the first plan filter and placed it on the list on Here Is the before. Instead of repeating the process for the rest of the pictures, I copied the settings on Lee choosing the radio filter and process version and placed them on other pictures. I do it one by one because, like here to plums are covered, so I have to remove filter on the left and adjust the size of the filter on the right. I carry on until old. Some pictures have radio fielder adjustment. Well, I'm pretty happy with the overall result, and it can export me images from like from. If you haven't used any editing in your pictures, you might do the overall editing to the whole video in instagram. Personally, I quite like the Ludwig filter. It works especially well with warm images, although I would advise you not years in this field, in 800% 9. Mistake Correction in Photoshop: this section is very, very optional. But since I promised to show you how I dealt with the mistake I made during the shoot, he reddest Well, it's not really mistake percent more of a result of the lack of planning. After the shoot was done and I uploaded my picture. Still, I troll. I realized that I wanted the ending off the project to have the plans disappear one by one like this. For that, I should have made free extra shots with two palms, one plum and the blank page which I didn't make. And by the time I realized that I cleaned up my table, so shooting an extra wasn't an option. Hence I decided to make those in Photoshopped. I took this image as a base. I will be mostly using the patch toe and for it to work. I need enough sample area to work with by sample area. I mean blank watercolor paper not occupied by anything like the area below the pumps. So I start with making more blank paper by removing the stem here. I use clone toe to separate stem from the plum. Now I can use Becks toe to remove this time completely. Okay, so now I have more something array below, and I can use Patch told to do this. This looks pretty bad. So I repeat the process, removing the edges until the paper looks reasonably good. As you can see, I do quite a lot of alterations until I achieve the results I think is okay. Don't forget about details. See the shadow here. If the plan is removed, there should be no shadow. So I have to remove it as well. I use clone toe and a Pashtun to remove it. Once again, I repeat the clone and Pashto until I get the results I need. And then one Bluhm is gone to let you go. I said this one s a copy and proceed to the next one using same strategy. I will speed up the process because it takes some time to do it. So, off course, it can be done better. And the result can be much more clean. But since I used my actual as my camera and stop motion will show pictures at high speed, I don't mind this extra shots being in perfect. It's all about how much time you want to invest in every part of the project. I prefer to compromise a little bit here and there. I don't try to make it perfect once again, just believable enough. So I saved this one as well. See how much to work so much better on the final plum. That's because there is a lot of blank page to use as a something area, and I didn't take only the plan as before, but the plant and its shadow. That's why there are almost no edges. After using the patch to all this time, our final plum is removed as well, and I can save the blank page and here our disappearing plants done. 10. iMovie: the final part of the project is putting it all together. In this video, I will show you how to make stop motion in a movie. Personally, I prefer working in Final Cut pro as it allows more options. But I movie is much more common. So if you want to do this in final control, the process will be very similar as Final Cut Pro is pretty much the more professional version of my movie. However, remember to set the aspect ratio in the beginning when you're creating new project because , unlike movie final Cut Pro actually allows that. And if you have any questions, you got in Final Pro just right to me in the discussion board and I will help you out, I start creating the new project here and choose movie. I poured my images here, and while they're still selected, I drugged them to the project section. Right now, I check timelines off each picture here in the information. My default duration is already set to 0.1, which is enough for our purposes. If you're duration is different, it may be one second or more just Ilott all images in the project area That's a number you need and really important. Don't forget to press enter so that the change will be applied toe all images. Let's see what will happen. I press space bar and preview my stop motion taking Not so where I should maybe changed federation. It looks OK, but after I look at the results, I know that I have to change the duration of some images to make them stand out. For example, here the hands are hiding and revealing the plums too fast and we don't really appreciate the process. So I want to extend those shows to make them more visible. I will start with this image here. The essential showed If you recall to show the results a bit longer, I change the duration toe zero 0.2 for these free consecutive shots. Don't forget to press enter for change to be applied. And I said the duration off the hands shown result toe 0.3. I leave the process off covering untouched. But once the drawing is fully covered, I once again want to make it last a little longer. So I changed the duration to 0.4 and I also do the same to the next time I skipped the next one as more of a process stage and said zero point forward to this one. I continue changing duration off some pictures as ago, but the principle remains the same. Everything you want to draw more attention has to have slightly longer duration. I don't have any specific rules with this. And while working, you may require a few revisions once you re wash the stop motion and take notes of where duration should be changed. So I will just speed up the process. Finally, I reversed the result again to see if more adjustments I needed. I'm quite happy how it turned out. I like this version much better. As the duration of some parts changed, our attention is more drawn to the actually change between the drawing in real plums. I play this for you without music on purpose because, well, for me it's pretty boring without it. So next thing you will do is to add music. Music sets everything together For this project. I actually found a perfect please in the I move, It sounds effects. I have chosen travel thing from jingles Turner, the duration is 30 seconds is almost perfect. March to the duration of stop motion. 28 seconds. I just drove the music file into the project section and adjustment. Remember, our stop motion was around 28 seconds. Well, I dropped this part of the music to make it shorter. You can see the duration dump changes in the gray little books. I stopped at 28.6 and dragged to the start again. My goal is to have the plans to disappear at the final course. So this is what I'm checking Now I can see that music still stops before the pieces ended. So I go back to front and got the pace a little bit more. In the about section I will live links to classes that show where to get through music. If there I move, the library is not sufficient. Dragon back to front and see how the ending works this time. And this time I'm a little bit short. So I dropped the music to align with the ending. I tripped a few more times and go back to front to extend the music piece to fit the host of motion. Now we can review the stop motion with music and once your head with the results, you can export it to your computer as a file. I just said quality too high as implying to post it on instagram, and the best pro rest option is just too heavy. And I also said, compressed to better quality and press next. Okay, so one month into the when you open your movie, you will notice to black vertical lines on each side. And that's because I couldn't set the aspect ratio in I'm only So I will use another program to deal with this 100. It's a free program, and you can download it, and I will leave the link in the about section. Once you open the program, it will ask for you to upload the video. So it was my video and press open to change and asked the pressure. You have to go to picture settings here, and you can change to any size unique. My settings for standard I from picture are 40 and 40 by 10 80. You can also see here it shows that current size is 1920 by its and 80. I leave the rest of the settings intact because, frankly, I have no idea what they are now. I just have to press, start and wait for the program to work its magic. I checked the result and yep, it's good to go. I cannot transfer toe iPhone and post it on Instagram. 11. Windows Movie Maker: right. So Windows movie Maker is a free program available to Windows users. It's quite simple and intuitive, and I'm going to show you how to make a stop motion here. Once you open your program, you will see this at videos and photos, but press it and locator images. They will battle that straight to your project. Terry here on the right. Now I need to set the duration off each image. I go to edit that, and there is a duration drop down menu here. As you can see currently, the setting is seven seconds, which is way too are so I select all images and while they're all selected, said duration to 0.1 2nd Great. So the duration of the stop ocean changed about 23 seconds, which is perfect because anything and the one minute can perfectly fit in the is the room. Now I go to the first image to review how the stop motion looks so far, when the duration of all images is the same, I press play and look if anything should be changed. I like the drawing part. The places OK, however, the part where I cover and uncover drawings and then plums seems a little bit too fast. You don't give the sense of the result and surprised because the pictures just go too quick . I'm talking about this part, so I will deal with this by changing degeneration off some images to make them more visible to the viewer. I start with this show is the essential short if you remember, and there are free of those. So I select all three of them and said duration to 0.2. Next image shows the sort of results. So I changed its duration as well to zero point free. I skipped next to images as their moreover, process images this picture, However, the one withdrawing fully card has to be more visible. So I said duration to 0.4. I continue in the same manner. I'll just speed up the process because it takes some time to go through images. But the principle is the same. Everything you want to draw more attention to has to have slightly longer duration. This may be a trial and error process, but once you understand the logic, it's actually quite simple. Once I'm done with time adjustments, I wish the result again and it looks great. Now we can add some music. Oh, I forgot to show you how you can change the aspect ratio if you need to. Let's go to the project up. Most likely the default with the widescreen meaning You will have to black vertical lines on both sides of your images. So we just have to select standard aspect for issue here. Okay, Our video is done and we can add some music for this project. I actually found the perfect is in the eye. Movie sounds effect. I have chosen trouble thing, and I decided to use it here a swell. So allocate the Emperor free file and upload it to the project. The music is uploaded straight to the project area. The length off this composition is 30 seconds, and it it's almost perfectly to the duration off the stop motion. I want my disappearing plants to disappear at the final, of course of the music. So I go to the back and see how it works now. Currently, the music stops at the final image and before the actual composition is done, so want to start my composition a little bit earlier so that ending will feel better. I go here and change the start point to 0.4, see how that he's moved to the front. Now let's check the engine again. In the about section, I will leave links to classes that show where to get free music for your personal projects . Well, it was better. I took it again, and I'm pretty happy with the results. So let's see how the theme so much better with music, right? Once you're happy with the results, you can export it to your computer. I choose the recommended version because choosing the high quality will make the video file too big and I'm planning to posted on Instagram and we're dead. 12. Don't Want to Draw?: so Hey, what if I don't want to draw? Can I still do it? Yeah, you can. You can still do it the easy way. You can turn one item into another, using your hands like here. I wanted to show a change from somewhere toe ordered by changing roses into mushrooms, taking pictures all the progress and substituting roses with mushrooms as ago So you can do the project this way. 13. Conclusion and project: as a bonus, I made a pretty of checklist off potential thinks the watch out for while making a project you can download from the about section to keep you inspired. I also made a list of beautiful water. Call skill share classes. You can also find them in the about section for your class project and Children do to make a short political stuff motion like the one I showed in the class. You can start your project by taking a picture off the real life object you want to work with and showing your drawing tools and add to the project as you make more progress. If you enjoyed this class, please leave a thumbs up. And if you have any questions, you can always boast them on the discussion board. Thank you for taking this class and I will see in the next one.