Stop Motion Videos for Kids

My son is in this cool class at school where he gets to do extra projects that he loves and last night he put together a Stop Motion Video to present in class today. It was so much fun, and easy enough that I could help him with so I decided to share. This would be a GREAT summer activity!

What you need:

• Camera (either a web cam or a camera with a tripod)
• Computer
• Monkey Jam (free dowloand)
• Paper/legos/clay to photograph

It's pretty basic, you take pictures of your cool stuff and only move them slightly between shots. Once you have all your images you may need to convert them to a smaller size like we had to. I used this handy program (FastStone Photo Resizer) that was able to resize and change the brightness/etc that was super easy to install and use.

After the images are ready you open Monkey Jam and follow these steps:

• Click "File" then "New Xps" (A window pops up and you click "OK")
• Click the "10" icon at the top to add 2x as many frames as you have images (each time you click it adds 10 frames)
• Import your images by clicking "File" then "Import" then "Images"
• A window will pop up and on the left you select your images then press the "Add Files" and you choose to "Copy" those.
• Now your images should be listed in the box on the right.
• Click "Import" when it's loaded them, make sure all your images appear in the right order
• Click the TV icon to see a preview of your film
• If it's going too fast or too slow adjust the frames per second by clicking "Settings" then "FPS" and then selecting a preset number or your own custom one
• Click the TV icon again to check
• Once it's going the speed you want, click the FILM strip icon to export it to .avi (which is a video format) 
• A window will pop up where you tell it where to save and make up the name 
• Click "Save Movie" and it will do its' work and you're done
• Enjoy the show!

My first attempts were not working, then with some testing I realized the problem was my image files were too large. Once I converted them with FastStone (link above) I didn't have any problems.

Ben was able to load it easily on a flash drive and off to school he went :)