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If you’re in need of a stop motion animation software, you should consider Claymation Studio
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Claymation Studio is a movie-capture and editing suite for creating stop motion animation. While it does not come with any clay, it’s possible to create stop-motion animations with many objects such as dolls, action figures, and stuffed animals. With a bit of creativity, even common household objects can star in their own movie.
Hardware
The biggest disadvantage of this set up is the dog-shaped camera that comes with it. The camera is a bit flimsy, and if dropped by a rambunctious child, even once, it may break. The size and shape of it is a bit unwieldy, making it sometimes hard to find just the right position for the shot you want. The quality of the picture through the camera isn’t great, and it may or may not install properly. The software is supposed to be able to work with any camera, but many users have had issues getting their particular camera to place nice.
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Software
The software is easy, straightforward and fun to use, especially for children. Taking pictures of the figures and arranging them into a film is simple, and there are plenty of effects available. The chroma key allows you to change the background of any shot. The onion skin feature shows each shot as a transparency, letting users see the entire shot at a glance. This makes smoothing out jerky animation easy, but still time-consuming. When the movie is done, this program has a one-click sharing option for posting to Facebook or YouTube.
System Resources
The final projects can take up a lot of space on your computer, especially if you film in HD. The program saves all of the individual frames, of which there can be hundreds for even a short film. In addition to that, there’s the space the film itself takes plus any audio tracks you may record. Make sure that you have plenty of free hard drive space for this before you start. If you’re planning on making a lot of movies, an external hard drive or thumb drive dedicated to this may be a good idea. Aside from that, the software runs fairly smoothly, and isn’t too prone to crashing.
Final Film
The look and feel of the final film is highly dependent on how much labor is put into it. Children with short attention spans may be disappointed by jerky animation if they haven’t taken the time to make the kinds of incremental movements that smooth Claymation requires. This may be somewhat negated by the novelty of watching toys “come alive”. While the effects are fairly easy to add, it does take some work to make them look nice. Time and patience when dealing with this part of the process is key, but it does offer good results if you put the effort in.
For the most part, Claymation Studio is intended for children, and more advanced animators will probably want to look elsewhere. However, if you have a kid interested in telling stories who has the patience to deal with the slow process of Claymation, this easy- to-use program is the perfect gift.
