Stop-motion is the art of animating inanimate objects to create the illusion of movement. The process is done by taking a a series of photographs of the objects and moving them slightly between each one. When the pictures are played in sequence as a movie, the illusion is complete. Common stop-motion mediums are clay, paper and toys. But virtually anything can be used.
Walk Cycle
A good place to start or to challenge yourself in any form of stop-motion is to create a walk cycle. All you need to do is animate your character walking across the screen. It is a simple exercise, but one that is useful to be experienced with. Use people, animals and videos as references and focus on making the movement as realistic, fluid and believable as possible. As you get more experience, create walk cycles that express the persona of the character. Perhaps they lumber with large heavy footsteps, sneak nervously while always checking behind their shoulder, or walk with perfect posture and a sense of urgency. Life-like clay "puppets" are usually constructed with a wire skeleton, "armature," at their core, so practice with a wire skeleton alone.
Paper Puppets
Cut paper has the advantage of being simpler to work with than other mediums because you only need to worry about working in two-dimensions. You can create a figure for animation by drawing it on paper and cutting it apart at the moving joints.
Inspiration from What's Around You
Look around your house for any objects that might make good subjects for stop-motion. Anything can come to life and interact with anything else and be the makings of a story, whether it be the groceries on the table or the stapler on your desk.
Transformation
Stop-motion, especially with clay, is a medium that lends itself well to creating dynamic transformations that would be impossible to achieve in live action. The effect is achieved by photographing the transformation in such small stages that it appears to transition naturally.
Sand and other Semi-Fluid Mediums
Drawing an image in sand, photographing it and changing the image slightly before photographing it again offers a different approach to making two-dimensional stop-motion.
Pixilization
Animating people using stop-motion techniques is a process known as pixilization. It can be used to create the illusion of supernatural feats. For instance, you can make a person appear to hover in the air by taking multiple pictures of her jumping with her legs tucked in or you can make a person appear to slide across the floor by photographing the person standing still in different places.
Think Outside the Box
Mix two or more mediums in the same stop-motion film. Create backgrounds that are two-dimensional while animating with three-dimensional figures. Stop-motion has a virtually unlimited number of possibilities to explore.
