Stop Motion Animation with Lego Movie Maker

I have downloaded an app on my iPad called Lego Movie Maker and I gave it a go today in my continuing experiments in animating lego characters.
Link to the app here.

It was really easy to set up, just give your project a name and you were away. What I liked about it especially is the fact that it gives you an "onion skin" of the last shot you did, so you can position your next movement more accurately.

Here is a really quick test that I did of the character walking, so I could get the hang of using the app.




You can take shots really easily by touching anywhere on the screen and when you are finished, it can save out to the camera roll of the iPad so it is available for upload and sharing.

Here is my second attempt today, with "help" from Eric and Malcolm who couldn't resist offering advice!!




These are silent first experiments. The app allows you to add sound effects that are preloaded or you can record your own sounds, so this will be my next direction.

Stop Motion Test 1

After going to see the Lego movie, I have been inspired to have a go at stop motion animation again. I have not had a serious play with this since I was at University, and I made a plasticine movie with an old super 8 cine camera. Then, I had to wait for the movie to come back from processing in the post for me to see what it looked like. Next, I had to feed it up onto the cine projector that I had picked up from a second hand camera shop in Sunderland.
Today, this test took such a short time from making to viewing, it was great. I went shopping for some Lego yesterday and had great fun this morning making up the little set that I bought. For the test, I decided just to try and make the character walk.
I set up a small digital camera up on a little tripod and I was away straight away.
My first thought was to move each leg one at a time to make him walk. This proved a no go as the balance of the Lego man would not allow it ( note to self - get some blue tac!! ), so for this test I just shuffled him from side to side.
The bit that proved frustrating was using iMovie 10. It was easy enough to set the project to have no "Ken Burns" on each photograph, but I could not find where to set the time for each one. I ended up doing each photo individually, which was not too bad today as there wasn't many photos in this short test, but for the future, I must find out how to do this in bulk.