So you want to make aliens tapdance? On your iPad? You got it…
Stop-motion animation is a fun, creative process, and Boinx’s iStopMotion has been helping Mac users do it for years. Now there’s an iPad 2 version of iStopMotion, too, with some clever-sounding tricks that are specific to the iOS version.
iStopMotion for the iPad isn’t like the desktop software. As you might expect, this is really more for having fun than critical, precision production work. Having said that, it’s surprisingly good and by far the best iOS stop-motion app we’ve seen. Either camera – front or back – in an iPad 2 can be used, and shots can be captured one tap at a time or in timelapse mode. The timing between automatic shots can be from three seconds to just under an hour.
Using the iPad as both controller and camera does present certain problems. It’s difficult to avoid jogging the view each time the screen is tapped, so it’s probably better used with the timelapse option.
However, there’s a very clever answer to this controller/camera issue: the free companion iStopCamera app lets you use an iPhone or iPod touch as the camera, freeing up the iPad for controller-only duties. With both devices on the same wifi network, you see the scene on each screen and control everything from the iPad. This means you can set the focus as well as exposure (only exposure is controllable with the iPad’s own cameras) and if you have an iPhone 4S, you get the benefit of its better optics. Use a Glyph grip or a lump of plasticine to keep your remote camera device steady while you wander around with the iPad in your hand.
The first-generation iPad isn’t officially supported – it has no camera, after all – but at least one customer reviewer reported getting it working on that model with his iPhone by using the iPhone configuration utility and pairing it with the iStopCamera app.
Capturing work in HD delivers the best results, but it does mean slightly longer processing for each shot. With an iPhone or iPod touch used as the camera, the transfer of each image is also a factor, and there’s a pause of four or five seconds between capture and being ready for the next shot. That’s not usually a problem, but it may slightly frustrate very fast workers. Frames can be deleted easily from anywhere in an animation, but we could only add new frames at the end of a sequence. Again, that’s not usually a problem, but it’s worth keeping in mind as you go.
The framerate defaults to 12fps, a good choice for quick work, and in-app playback can be set to run at half the actual set speed if you like. A simple ‘thirds’ grid can be turned on, and this shows on the iPad screen and, if you’re using a remote device as the camera, on that as well.
Your work is stored in the iStopMotion app, but this uncompressed data can start to eat up storage space pretty quickly; one second generally runs to 20 or 30MB.
You can save finished animations to the Camera Roll, send them by email or uploaded them directly to a YouTube account. You can add a soundtrack at this point. That’s a nice touch, but if you want any control of how sound and visuals work together, you’d be better off editing it in iMovie instead.
The iPad version of iStopMotion is a great way to play around with stop-motion and timelapse animation. It lacks some of the tricks of the desktop versions, but it’s pleasingly direct, really easy to use and lots of fun. And using an iPhone or iPod touch as a remote camera is a great idea.
Keith Martin
Price: £2.99
From: App Store
Info: Boinx
Pro: Easy stop-frame animation creation + Clever use of iPhone and iPod touch cameras
Con: Virtually no editing options + Can be awkward using the iPad as both camera and controller
