1.Inconsistent Lighting – unless you’re purposefully trying to capture the changes in the sun as part of your stop-motion, you can not always rely on natural light to create stop-motions. If a cloud rolls through and darkens things, you will be able to easily tell which frames were affected. Continuous lighting sources and high quality strobes are definitely the best solutions. With lower-end strobes, you may get a slight change in power output between flashes, so invest in a higher quality option that will help to keep your lighting consistent.
2.Changes in Focus – Always set focus and switch your camera to Manual focus before starting a new stop-motion. If you leave it on auto, you’ll notice the frames jumping to different focus points, or not even being able to focus at all when your subject moves out of frame.
3.Camera Movement – It’s virtually impossible to freehand a stop-motion so you will need a tripod or c-stand to keep the camera nice and steady. You’ll also want to make sure there is absolutely NO need to touch the camera once it’s set up. That means that you need to make sure your battery is charged and your card has room and then tether to a computer or use a remote shutter so that you avoid having to actually touch it!
4.Jump in Action – Since a stop-motion is made up of a series of individual frames, the more you have, the more realistic the motion seems. If you’re jumping objects from top to bottom, without a progression of movement in between, it will look choppy and be hard to follow.
5.Unwanted Reflections– always wear black or dark colors while animating to avoid your own outfit causing unwanted reflections!
6.Objects Accidentally Moving– use sticky tack to secure stationary or round objects to your background. The last thing you want is to start over because your subject shifted a bit.
This is just 8/179 photos we captured to make the stop-motion that we posted on the feed today!
