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Stop Motion Café App on iPhone 6 Review

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Continuing with our Smart Phone Stop Motion series, today we look at Stop Motion Café on the iPhone 6, which is available for FREE from the App store, and works on iPhone and iPad.

Getting straight into it, this is a relatively simple app that lacks a lot of the bells and whistles of some of the other apps we have been looking at for this series… That doesn’t mean it isn’t worth a look though. There are no themed titles, no libraries of music to add, no sound fx and no frame-by-frame editing to add drawing, or change the colours, contrast etc and lastly there are no filters to add to your final video. It also lacks a focus and exposure lock, which would be very handy.

Using this on an iPhone 6 seems to be a little problematic, as it doesn’t seem to be optimised to work on the slightly larger iPhone 6 screen and seems it would be more suited on an iPhone 4 or 5. This only really causes a problem in the image capture section, where it cuts the bottom menu in half, but seeing as the controls in that menu aren’t that important it doesn’t make a huge difference.

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The animation features of the app are pretty good, including access to the flash, onion skinning (or ghosting as they seem to refer to it) as well as a frame counter, HD on/off and the ability to switch between iPhone cameras, allowing you to use the front or back camera as you need. It supports and can save multiple projects, which you can go back and do some basic editing on after you have finished shooting.

The editing, as I said, is simple… You have the ability to save out separate frames to the camera roll, as well as duplicate frames or delete them to get rid of any nasty mistakes you may have made. The video can be set at speed of between 1fps – 30fps, and once you are finished you can “Elaborate” your movie, which renders the animation and saves it to your camera roll in 720p HD.

Despite its lack of features, and the slightly childish look to the app, the image quality is better than some of the apps we have been testing and it is very simple to use, making it great for people who are just starting out in Stop Motion. There are better apps out there for the iPhone and iPad, but if you are looking for a quick, easy and simple Stop Motion app, then Stop Motion Café might just be for you.

Check out the test video below to see what we did with Stop Motion Café!

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Lego Star Wars, The Clone Awakens…

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Like many many people, our household is full of Star Wars fans, with myself being a fan since I was a kid all those many years ago… When they announced that they were making The Force Awakens, we watched all the trailers eagerly and kept up with all of the fan theories that were speculated on way before the films actual release… One of our favourite fan theories was that Kylo Ren was collecting Darth Vader’s possessions in an attempt to clone him. We wondered exactly how that would work, so we decided to do an animation in Lego to show just how that might go, with some comedic effect!

The whole film, as usual is filmed in Stop Motion Studio on an iPad2, using an iPhone 4S as a remote camera. This was also one of our first attempts at using green screen techniques, which I am quite pleased with, although I know that with a bit more patience and practice we can get that looking better… Lego plastic is a very reflective material, so overspill from the green screen onto the characters and set’s was very difficult to overcome, and this is something we need to think about in future green screen work.

All of the green screening and editing was done on an iMac in Final Cut Express, and sound FX, music and dialogue were added in Garageband. The music was a collection of loops and jingles that come in the Apple Jam Packs which I strung together, and actually work quite well I think… At least it stops Disney and John Williams from trying to sue me for using the official Star Wars theme…

Some of the cool lighting was with LED’s purchased from Firestartoys.com and they are the same lights we used on the stage set in The Devil Made Me by Paul Miro. The light set actually comes from a company in Holland called www.brickled.nl and they provide some great stuff from light bricks through to street lamps, all of which are Lego compatible.

One of my favourite scene in this animation was Kylo Ren exiting the shuttle… It is a brief scene, but to get a good distance shot and figures that matched the smaller size spaceship we built, I decided to use micro figures from the Lego Star Wars Battle Of Hoth board game… Kylo Ren was actually Darth Vader, but with his back to you its hard to notice and the Stormtroopers were just Snowtroopers from the game… Over all I think the scene worked really well, even if those little figures don’t really animate well…

We hope you enjoy our latest offering and would love to hear some of your comments either here or on YouTube…

Keep animating,

Ian Husbands

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Lego Bob’s Holiday Adventure!

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So this year we took a family break for a few nights at Pontin’s in Brean Sands, Somerset and we decided that it wouldn’t be a proper family break without at least one Lego minifigure joining us… So we made Bob, and his sole purpose was to help us record our holiday in a series of photos! It was a lot of fun to do, and the whole family got involved, making sure that Bob was included in our activities whilst away and looking after his every need! He came out on a trip to Wookey Hole Caves, played board games with us, joined us at meal times and even got himself a tan on the beach…

Below is a quick photo slideshow of Bob’s holiday… Enjoy!

 

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Featured Animator Sergio Marques Dias

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SergioMarquesDiasName: Sergio Marques Dias
Location: Differdange, Luxembourg

Q1) How long have you been animating?
1 year

Q2) How did you start making stop-frame animations?
First stop motion I did, was the video invite to my wedding. We posed, took a picture, took another picture and so on…

Q3) Why have you chosen Lego® and other brick products as your main medium to work in?
I’ve always loved Lego, and I had a few in the basement, so I decided to give it a try. I love animating with Lego because you can touch on sensitive topics, but with humor.

Q4) What is your setup like? Which camera and software do you use to make your movies?
I use a Nikon D7100, my first DSLR, with the basic lens 18-105mm. I use mostly Adobe Premiere.

Q5) On average, how many hours does it take to create your animations?
Ooohhhhh… Well depends on the animation. The brickfilm “The Engineer” took me 3 weeks, it was my first try at brickfilming. “The Parking Spot” took me 2 weeks. The problem is that everytime I do an animation video, I try to incorporate new movements or techniques that I never used.

Q6) Do you have a favourite mini-figure to animate, and what makes them so special?
Hahaha! My Mini-Me and my wife’s Mini-Her. He is, and will be in every of my future Brickfilms. Why it’s so special? Because they were a gift of my best friend for my wedding, and they sat on top of my wedding cake.

Q7) What can we look forward to in the near future from you?
Trick question. I don’t know, I go day-by-day, and when I have an idea, I write it down and hope to have time to realize it.

Q8) Where can people go for more information or to view your animations?
On my Youtube chanel → https://www.youtube.com/user/SergioMarquesDias and on my twitter account → https://twitter.com/SergioDiasLUX

Q9) What one piece of advice do you have for people wanting to start in stop-frame animating?
Don’t start right away, read a book or two about stop-motion for beginners. And afterwards, go for it. Don’t isten to people telling you it’s hard. Take critics well, most of them can take your animations to another level. You don’t have the material? Of course you have. Take your smartphone, a lamp, a figurine, and start taking pictures. Don’t let anyone tell you, you can’t do it.

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