When I took my 9-year old daughter to see the Tim Burton exhibit in Toronto, she too developed a fascination for stop motion. Thanks to the National Film Board (NFB), all you need to create your own stop motion film is an iPad 2 (you need the camera) and PixStop, the NFB’s free stop-motion app.
The app is easy to use, Set-up your shot and hit the camera button and repeat, moving your elements slightly each time. My daughter picked up on it right away. If you take a picture you didn’t mean to take (hand in the way or element in the wrong spot), you can delete it easily. At any time you can view your film and add more images. You can keep adding images to the end of your film or if you want to add a few frames in the middle of your film (after viewing it you feel it’s jumpy), just select the frame you want to add images AFTER and go back into camera mode. You can also add music from your iTunes library (make sure you have permission to use the clip), add a title and synopsis to your film, and adjust the frames per second your film. When you’re happy your film you can post it to YouTube save it onto your camera roll. It’s that easy!
If you want to edit your film, move images around, add overlays, titling and more, you can bring the movie into iMovie. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to import right from the iPad’s camera roll like other movies. I ended up emailing it to the machine and making the edit.
The NFB’s PixStop iPad 2 app is a lot of fun and easy to use and the price of FREE makes it one of those must have apps. Let your creative juices flow.
Here’s my daughter’s Christmas message to you, created by her using her iPad2 and the PixStop app.
