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Stop motion with a webcam

Set up a tiny studio, capture a clay or LEGO animation with Stopmotion's onion skin, and turn it into a video with sound.

beginnerstop motionwebcamschool

Your studio in 10 minutes#

Need Tip
A webcam any USB webcam; test it first in VLC (Media → Open Capture Device)
Something to hold it still a tripod, a clamp, or tape it to a pile of books. It must not move at all.
Light close the curtains, use two desk lamps. Daylight changes and makes the film flicker.
A stage a table against a wall; a sheet of paper as background
Characters plasticine, LEGO, paper cut-outs, toys

Capture#

  1. Start StopMotion Animation → Stopmotion.
  2. Settings → Preferences → Video Import: select your camera (/dev/video0 for the first webcam).
  3. Click the camera button: the live picture appears.
  4. Set onion skin to show the last 1–2 frames (the slider in the camera bar).
  5. Place your character. Take the first frame.
  6. Move the character a very small step (a few millimetres), check against the onion skin, take the next frame.
  7. Repeat. 12 frames = 1 second of film at 12 fps.
Stopmotion.
Stopmotion.

Planning

A 10-second scene at 12 fps needs 120 photos. Plan the movement first; count the steps. Moving characters slowly at the start and end of a motion (small steps) and faster in the middle (bigger steps) makes it look natural.

Check and fix#

Press Play. Delete bad frames (a hand in the picture!) by selecting them and pressing Delete. Use the frame rate setting to change the speed.

Export#

File → Export → Video, or export the frames as images and make a video with FFmpeg:

ffmpeg -framerate 12 -i frame_%04d.jpg -c:v libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p -crf 18 my-film.mp4

Add music and titles in Kdenlive.

No webcam?#

Use a phone camera on a small stand. Take the photos, copy them to Animux (USB cable or a card reader), and import them in Stopmotion with Edit → Add frames (or drag them in), or put them straight into Kdenlive as an image sequence.