You can start making stop motion animation with very little:
All you need is a camera (webcam, or your cellphone) and a program that can put your frames on a timeline.
A proper stop motion animation software can do incredible things, such as control a robot camera-arm for track shots and use an electronic grease pencil to help you plan the character's movements.
But you can make beautiful things with any digital camera, and any animation software or editing or compositing program, as long as it allows you to import an image sequence.
List of Free Stop Motion Animation Software
Software As stop-motion animation is little more than still images pieced together in a sequence, you can create a movie with any video application you like. And, for Mac users, that generally. Stop motion (or Stop-frame Animation) is a 2D or 3D animation technique to make any object appear to move on its own. The 3D or 2D object in question be it a ball, an apple or a clay character or a flat image or paper cutout is moved by small increments between individual photographs or frames, giving the illusion of movement when the sequence of photographs or frames are played back to the.
MonkeyJam
Simple and very friendly. Hook it up to your webcam and you're good to go.
Originally a 2d animation software, it now has a built in Stop motion feature.
- Totally free
- PC only
Documentation does not list Windows 7, but it works fine on mine.
Mac: the developer states that 'Some users have reported success using MonkeyJam on OSX running Virtual PC and may work on Linux running WINE.'
Aniboom Widget - animate online
MicroSmotion page on Aniboom
Hook up your webcam - and Animate!
This widget below will capture your images, turn them into a small gif animation, and allow you to mail your creation to your friends :-)
List of Full Featured Stop Motion Programs
Stop Motion Pro
The software that 'Wallace and Gromit' were filmed with.
Enthusiast and Professional versions.
- Free trial period
- PC only
- Can run on a Mac that runs Windows
Dragon Stop Motion
'Coraline' was made with this software.
- 30 days Free trial version
- Mac (listed first!) and PC compatible
AnimatorHD - (formerly AnimatorDV)
Stop motion and timelapse software, used for the Oscar winning 'Peter And The Wolf'
- Free demo version, limited to 1 minute and watermarked
- For PC and Mac with Boot Camp or Fusion
A Totally Free Version:
AnimatorDV Simple+ Free for Any Use
Windows Movie Maker Stop Motion
Best Free Stop Motion Software For Mac
ikitmovie
Free Stop Motion Software For Mac
- Free trial, will run 10 times and other limitations
- PC only
What is Pixilation? Learn about this cool form of Stop motion animation
Cut Out Animation History: From Paper to Pixels