iKITMovie Blog

Cartoon Animation software is a generic term which can be used to include stop motion software. We think of cartoons as “Tom and Jerry” in the broadcast media or as comic strips in the printed media. But the term “Cartoon” can extend to all visual media that depicts caricatures of life. Cartoons have their roots in printed media going back over 150 years. A magazine called Punch appeared in England in 1841 and is reputed to have given us the beginnings of cartoons in modern life. It was a humorous satire on society and politics at the time. It ran until 2002. It had an international reputation for a witty and irreverent take on the world.

Even in early cinema stop motion and cel animation were used to create cartoons. They proved very popular with audiences. The original black and white drawings of Mickey Mouse are treated as works of art by historians of cinematography. A cel from the 1928 “Mickey Mouse – Steamboat Willie” with sound! is shown below. The Disney empire grew from these humble beginnings.

Mickey Mouse - Early Cel Animation

Stop motion ran in parallel to the printed media from the early 19th century. With the advent of home personal computers, everyone could now use animation software to create cartoon strips or cartoon animations in any form. Cartoon animation software can be used to create cel animations or stop motion animation with sound, music and voice overs all from the humble PC or Mac at home. Video sharing sites are full of excellent examples of homemade animations with cartoon animation software. All ages can get involved with the very easy to use cartoon software from WapitaMedia to advanced 3D animation software from Daz studio to our own stop motion “cartoon animation software” called iKITMovie.

I have been asked many many times by those new to stop motion for advice on what web camera to buy when starting out with animation. We have reviewed a number of web cameras on our site in the last year and in general we have been happy to recommend Logitech® and Microsoft®.  So as a gift to new customers we are giving away Logitech C200 webcams with our flagship software iKITMovie 1.6.  The Logitech C200 is very new to the market and signals a real coming of age for affordable webcams. For stop motion it is most comfortable at 640×480 at 30FPS (image refresh that is ,not the capture frame rate). It can capture images up to 1.3 MP with software enhancement. What is best about Logitech cameras however are the drivers. They give excellent control of brightness, contrast, White balance etc, all essential to getting the best quality possible with the lens supplied. There is manual zoom on this model which works very well for close up work.

So if you are looking for a complete kit for stop motion it is a very good package indeed.

Stop Motion Gordon Ramsay

Cuppa Coffee studios the company behind the stop motion series, Glenn Martin DDS, Life’s a Zoo, Rick And Steve, Celebrity Deathmatch and a number of other very amusing series has struck a deal with foul mouthed celebrity Gordon Ramsay to create a series called “At Your Service”. Adam Shaheen ,executive producer and president of Cuppa Coffee believes Gordon Ramsay’s larger than life personality will be a recipe for success when combined with stop motion animation and it’s classical characterization. They are in the process of finding writers for the proposed show at the moment. The show will be touted to distributors and channels at Mipcoms International TV Sales expo in October. While exact details are not available yet, the show is likely to be 30 minutes per episode and will focus on the wilder side of Ramsay’s outrageous outburst on his shows such as “Hells Kitchen”. It will be interesting to see what characters they bring in to the series to put up against Ramsays outrageous tongue.

Toronto based Cuppa Coffee animation studios houses 42 shooting stages and employs over 200 artists. In house facilities include prop and sets wardrobe, animation and post-production. They produce roughly 145,000 seconds of animation per year.

Cuppa Coffee Studios

They have won over 150 international animation awards.

So whether you are a fan of Gordon Ramsay or not Cuppa will no doubt come up with another very funny stop motion series. We hope they don’t take too long to get it up and running on our TV screens.

We’ve had a very damp and cloudy summer in Ireland this year. But we’re having a rare sunny spell this week, so my son had some fun with a neighbours car. We used his car by way of explanation. He had never heard of stop motion before. So we told him that my son could push his car using stop motion. He laughed but agreed to play along. He wasn’t sure what the hell we were doing as we asked him to repeatedly move and re-park his car. I think he thought we were lining it up for a good shot. When we replayed the stop motion, he laughed heartily. He now knows what stop motion is and finally understands what iKITMovie can do.  Take a look at the result below. But remember to ask permission if you want to try something like this yourself if you are not driving yet that is..!

We really need to give more examples of replacement stop motion on our site. The recent examples we gave to some of our customers got a very positive response. Replacement Stop motion is a technique where each frame (or sequence of frames) uses a different object in place of the previous object. It was originally used in professional work by the very famous animator “George Pal”. One of his most famous stop motion sequences was in the 1962 “The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm” He used a a new hand-carved wooden puppet for each frame of film. It is said that they had over 1,000 puppets for one 4 minute sequence.  The example we give on our site is a little more modest that 1,000 hand carved puppets, nonetheless the result for those new to stop motion is very satisfying. With just 5 small pieces of clay moulded in to specific shapes a very impressive stop motion sequence can be achieved.

For new animators abstract shapes work best. It is a far more skilled job to have to create dozens of characters with small differences between each one. The human eye (your audience) is far more likely to amused by abstract shape shifting objects rather than picking holes in characters that are not quite the same between sequences. The other real advantage of using replacement techniques when starting out is that you get to know and become expert at “onionskinning”.  This is the most powerful yet easy to use feature for any animator to use.

So refer to our site homepage for the first example we give.

I have to admit to also not reading the manual when I should or not following the instructions accompanying a self assembly piece of furniture. So when I get questions which are answered on our site either in the FAQ or the video tutorials from users of the iKITMovie software I have to give a little smile to myself. I never mind answering these questions because they are firstly easy to answer and secondly our customers are always glad of the assistance. Also it’s great to get feedback and know that our software is being used by creative individuals of all ages around the world.

One common theme that runs through the majority of the hand full of  support calls is to do with image resolution. Especially when users are capturing their still images with a digital still camera. Most digital still cameras capture images at their maximum image resolution by default. So I have come across users who have captured their stop motion images at 3648 x 2736 and then loaded them into iKITMovie and wondered why it runs slowly. We step them through how to reduce them in size but it could have saved them time if they had viewed the Getting started video tutorial online.  Even if they had viewed the tutorial it is common to find that most people do not know how to check the size or resolution of the capture images once they have copied them to their PC.

It’s not generally known that it is very easy indeed to check the resolution of the images. By simply floating the mouse cursor over the thumbnail of the image on their PC the screen resolution is shown ( as seen in the image below )

Screen Resolution

Depending on the power and memory available on their PC we recommend at least 640×480 image resolution. 800×600 or HD 960×720 can also be used if they have say 3gb of RAM. We are considering creating a filter on import to automatically change the resolution size for users. They would be prompted if the image size is too large and suggested that they reduce the size to a predefined choice.
More later..bye for now. ,Diarmuid

We have just completed development and testing of our new installer for all versions of iKITMovie Stop Motion software. Up to this we had been using straightforward setup executables for the three versions of iKITMovie. But this caused some issues for those using Vista. With the new MSI (Microsoft Installer) format, users of any windows operating system can install without having to use the “setup as administrator” option.  Also the new format will allow us to give check for updates functionality to customers in future releases. Users will still need to have the administrator password, but this is normal for installing any software.

Also Cecil ( our mascot ) gets more exposure in the setup. He sure likes the limelight.

Cecil in the Limelight Again!

The MSI version of the Trial copy of our stop motion software also now allows trial users to test the export of their movie made in iKITMovie. This will allow the testing of export and upload to Youtube and so forth. There is a watermark on export to indicate it is a trial version but this will be removed on purchase of a full license.

In these recessionary times it’s good to know you can still get good results on a shoestring when it comes to building your own set for your stop motion movie. All you need is a few desktop lamps and a cardboard box! That’s it! Below you can see a simple setup used by my nephew James for his contribution to our stop motion movie gallery. A simple box lined in this case with black paper.

Simple Stop Motion Set

The backdrop James used is a photo of a digger in a quarry which suited his animation down to the ground. No need for Chromakey really with stop motion animation at this level. It complicates things unnecessarily and takes the emphasis away from the stop motion animation itself.

The reason for the cardboard box is to build up the sides around your character to avoid any shadows and reduce the influence of unwanted light such as windows and so forth. This is really important as each snapshot should have the same amount of light as the next. Otherwise you will get a flickering effect when the animation is played back. Thus spoiling the movie. Also the box is very useful for attaching your backdrop painting/ drawing or photo.

As for your lighting you can cut a hole and cover it with greaseproof paper with you lamp shining through. This softens the light in order to avoid hard shadows. Closing the blinds on your windows during the day is normally not enough to ensure a constant lightstream. As the sun goes behind a cloud you may not notice the difference in your set but it will be there on the photo.

Sunlight will vary from frame to frame

So make the small effort to visit your local store and get some boxes and good luck animating.

Diarmuid -

Following a number of requests by existing trial download users of stop motion software iKITMovie I would like to tell everyone that we will release a new free trial download on the 1st of September 2009.

Cecil

This new version of our stop motion software, version 1.6, will now include export functionality. This will allow trial users to export their movies in MP4 or WMV format. The exported movie will have a watermark however but this will be removed from the snapshots taken if a license is purchased. So you will not lose any projects you have created in the trial version.

This extended trial is to allow everyone to better experience this innovative stop motion software. As usual the first sound of every category in the sound fx library will also be accessible. You can also add your own sounds in MP3 or Wav format. Voice over can  be added and exported in this new trial.

Note that there is a limit of 300 frames in the trial version. This will allow you to test you stop motion skills, while checking  your webcamera and digital still image imports.

The new trial download is now smaller in size. Thanks to the msi format the install will run simply by double clicking on the file once downloaded.

We are planning a number of new and exciting features in future releases of iKITMovie Stop Motion software so stay tuned and come back and visit again.

Also if you have any questions we now have a handy contact us form. We will respond within 24 hours max.

I was reading an article I came across today in InsideNova about a little boy getting quite a lot of recognitiion for his stop motion endeavours. It sure is great to see a child’s creativity being critically acclaimed. C. Pond Brothers IV is his name but he goes by “dweezildna”. His stop motion demonstration

StopMotion At Art Fair

took centre stage in the home arts building at the 60th Annual Prince William County Fair. It seems like he is truely hooked on stop motion, just look at all the movies he has made already and he is only 10 years old. Check out his YouTube channel and dont forget to subscribe http://www.youtube.com/dweezildna. Wonder how he came up with that name?

It says he attends Bennett elementary school. I must try and get in touch with them, they might like to get involved in our “Getting Schools Animating Initiative”. You’d never know ! Prince William County Schools had a very impressive Summer Art Enrichment Program this Summer. Maybe given the success of one of their students making stop motion movies they might consider including stop motion animation in their 2010 Program. Who Knows? I’ll give them a call….