Clay is an awesome medium for stop motion characters since you can change the characters in small ways as the action progresses. Filming a claymation video is easy to do from home or the classroom. In this post, I’ll describe best practices for planning, capturing, and editing a claymation video.
What is Claymation?
Claymation (short for “clay animation” or another name for plasticine animation) is a type of stop motion animation where each moving piece is made from malleable clay. The animation is created by shooting a photo of the scene, repositioning the characters slightly, and repeating the process. The pictures are then played in rapid succession to give the impression of smooth motion. It’s a fun, easy way to bring your imagination to life.
For this tutorial, I created a kitten working on a claymation, but the possibilities are endless!
Tutorial: How to make your own claymation
Step 1: Planning and Set up
Shooting a claymation is fun but time consuming, so it’s important to have everything planned out ahead of time to make the process as smooth as possible. Being properly prepared for you project is vital to its success, so have fun and take your time with it
Supplies
- Modeling clay or plasticine (available at most art stores and online for $5-$10, I used this one)
- Smart-phone with camera
- Computer for editing
- Household supplies for set up
- Tape
Storyboard
A storyboard is a sequence of drawings that outlines your scene. Your storyboard should successfully convey all the information you might need during shooting. Keep in mind that because you’re not working with sound, your story will be told through action.. Your storyboard will give you an idea of what the pictures should look like, what and how action will occur, and the amount of time the action will take. You can time how long it takes you to do an action (walking across a room, for example) as a reference.
Draw on scrap paper, in your journal, or even on a whiteboard. Don’t worry about making it look pretty, it’s just for you.
Here is the simple storyboard I created:
My claymation is short and sweet so I only needed two panels to plan, but you can use as many panels as you think you need.
Characters
You can create your characters based on what you draw in your storyboard, or create your characters and then draw out their action. Because your characters are clay (as opposed to human actors), they can be as crazy as you want. Don’t be afraid to experiment!
Some tips for working with modeling clay:
- Clay can be hard, so play with it in your hands to warm and soften it
- Mix the colors you have to get the colors you want in the same way you would mix paint (use more of a light color and less of a dark color to prevent the dark from overwhelming the light)
- Make sure your character can support itself (my advice is to keep characters small and stocky so their body can support their heads but if you’re looking to create a more advanced character consider using wires to create an armature that you can build around)
Set Design
Think about what the world your character lives in looks like. You can build a background from construction paper, household objects, collaged magazines, a printed photo, or a solid color sheet of paper like I did (simple, but for a claymation studio set it does the trick!) Think about how your characters will move through the set to help decide what you want to include. Three-dimensional elements that your character can interact with can take your claymation to the next level. My kitten has a desk with a set, camera, and computer to create her claymation.
Lighting
While natural sunlight is generally awesome for pictures, not so for claymation. Nature is unpredictable and the sun could move behind a cloud or be obscured by a large bird at any time! The best place to shoot is in a room with steady lighting. To make sure you aren’t casting any shadows on your scene, avoid standing between your set and the light. Get creative and use lamps or flashlights you have available to create different moods (read more about lighting here.) If you are worried about your light moving, tape it down!
Camera
You don’t need a fancy camera to create your own claymation, any smartphone camera will do. Make sure it is fully charged and that it won’t to go to sleep on you (you can adjust your lock/sleep preferences in settings).
To keep the camera as fixed as possible, create a tripod. I used an ice cream container (any paper or plastic cup will do) with triangles cut out that I filled with rocks to weigh it down and keep it from moving.
Cheap tripods are available online (such as this one) that come with a remote so you can take pictures without ever touching your phone (even better for stability!). Your setup should look something like this:
Use tape generously to fix things in place so a moving light or shaky camera doesn’t distract from your action!
Step 2: Shooting
You’ve done your planning. You’ve built your characters and set up your scene, lighting, and camera. You have your vision in your mind’s eye and have drawn it out in your storyboard. Now make it happen!
Position your character, remove hands from scene, snap the photo, and repeat! To make the process go faster, ask a friend to shoot the pictures while you focus on adjusting the character’s position.
If an action is very fast, it will take fewer frames for the action to occur, so you want the movement to be more extreme between each picture. If an action is slow, the opposite is true: you want smaller movements between pictures. You can move parts of your background as well if that makes sense in your scene (for example, a flag blowing in the wind.) Luckily, you have it all planned out in your storyboard!
Step 3: Editing
Finally, you get to see all your hard work come together! Transfer your pictures from your phone to the computer and put them in a “Claymation” folder. They should be labeled in the order you took them so make sure to keep them in that order. If they are not labeled properly, sort them by date modified and rename them numerically (0001, 0002, 0003, etc.)
To edit your photos into a seamless animation, upload your files to Kapwing Video Montage Maker. You can watch the video preview to get an idea of what your claymation will look like.
- Ordering: Rearrange the photos to make sure they’re in the right order. If you want to repeat or slow an action, you can upload duplicates of those specific frames, and you can delete frames to make the action move faster.
- Tempo: For a seamless stop motion video, choose the shortest Image Duration (0.2s) so that the frames transition quickly.
- Size: Choose the frame size you want (I went with 1:1 for Instagram, but there are options for YouTube and 9:16 as well).
When your video preview looks right, click Create to process the video!
After your claymation video finishes processing, you can download the MP4 or share the link with your family and friends! Kapwing also has tools for adding filters, text, music, or sound effects, if you want to make your claymation more exciting.
Thanks for reading! I hope this post helps other creators make awesome claymation videos. Looking forward to seeing your creations!