Cheese Soufflé from Phantom Moose Films on Vimeo.

You can also watch it on YouTube.

Now you’ve watched it, and I’m sure that some of you want to try some stop-motion of your own. Read on for some tips.

What software do I need?

We used FrameThief (which hasn’t been updated since 2006) for Cheese Soufflé, but in the past I used iStopMotion for smaller projects. Both are Macintosh only, so if you are on a Windows machine, you may want to comment on this post with what you use. If you expect to line up your animation to some dialogue or music, you’ll need to make sure that your software will display the audio waveforms for you to match with your animation.

So I should have my audio beforehand?

Yes. You should have all audio pre-recorded and edited before you start shooting the animation.

What camera should I use?

If your software supports still cameras and you have one, use it. Still cameras shoot frames at much higher resolution than video cameras, so your resulting video will be better quality.

How do I animate?

Ah, we’ve gotten to the hard and fun part! Here are some of the basics:

• Move your objects/characters in very small increments. The smaller the increments, the smoother the final animation.
• Use a tripod to ensure that the camera does not move. If you become very serious about animation, you will probably start perform animated camera moves. For now, though, don’t move the camera, as this is very difficult to pull off without practice. This does not mean that you cannot cut to different angles.
• Set up your scene in an area that will not be disturbed, and get as far away from the scene as you can before you take the picture.

The world of stop-motion animation is quite broad. For inspiration, watch claymation movies like Chicken Run and the Wallace and Gromit shorts and movie (my favorite is the short The Wrong Trousers). Just keep practicing and making movies.