Day of the Tentacle.

 I've been playing with the stop motion editor again...

Having made one claymation video, months ago, I was initially just messing about to re-familiarise myself with the controls of it. The photograpy took around half an hour. Then I ended up getting quite involved in adding titles and redoing the sound and so on.

​More on how I did it, after the vid:

What Did I use?

This was done entirely on an iPhone using various apps., with Blu Tac and a pencil as the "actors".

The wonderful Stop Motion Studio app allows for taking a series of pictures that it will automatically splice into a movie. It also then allows you to record sound afterwards, so there I was dragging a pencil around my phone while grunting, so many times to try to get it timed just right.

After I'd recorded it, I had a couple of issues getting the sound to synchronise properly and ended up downloading the Splice app to re-record the sound.
Then I realised this app could only overlay sound, not erase an existing soundtrack so downloaded Video Mute to clear the way for Splice to do its thing.

I made the title screens using Canva, and inserted them into the video using iMovie.

Lessons.

I learnt, as I did this, about the importance of focus lock for starters. You can see the focus in my video keeps changing as I didn't think to take the auto-focus off.

I also learnt how darned important it is to make sure my fingers are out of frame at all times (say hello to my index finger making a cameo pretty much bang on the 5 second mark! I didn't realise it had snuck in there until much later when it would have been nigh on impossible to redo that frame without making things worse),

I also learnt I must be much more careful when standing up, so I don't knock the table I am working on! You'll notice that as the tentacle grabs the pencil, everything shifts a little as I stood up to get a glass of water around then, and smacked my knee off the table leg. Ouch!
​
It all means the next one will be better! 😀

UPDATE: Here's a guide to how I suspended a ball in mid-air for my next stop-motion video: Click to see!

Next?

Shortly after completing this video, I watched "Euphoria"; a stop motion video by Guldies, and then found this accompanying how-to video so I have some ideas for next time, such as using Photoshop to erase props holding items in the air so they can fly or bounce. ​