Make a Simple Claymation With a Webcam and Windows Movie Maker

Making a claymation isn't just for professionals. You can easily do it with a webcam, some clay and Windows Movie Maker. You'll be surprised at how cool this looks!

Steps

  1. Grab a chunk of clay (non-drying is best) and make a character. The most basic kind of character is the "clayman". The clayman is a simple human shape (head, arms, a chest, legs) with few if any details. The picture above features a slug.
  2. Set up your camera on the table/your set you built, and make sure it doesn't move. Be sure to hold the camera down, and get the best focus on your picture.
  3. Light the table/your set and position the clayman so that the camera picks it up well. Different lights do different things with the color of the video.
  4. Start taking pictures, You can move the camera to different places in the set to when you do this it is a new folder on the desktop.
  5. Open Windows Movie Maker.
  6. Click Add Videos and Photos on the top left side of Windows Movie Maker.
  7. The clips should shrink once you drag them to be shorter. This makes the slideshow go by faster, making a movie.
  8. Hit play. Make sure everything works properly.
  9. Click the Save Movie icon on the top right side and choose your preferred setting.
  10. Enjoy your movie as many times you want.



Tips

  • Setting up 0.125 seconds makes the claymation 8 frames a second. To make a smoother claymation, increase the number of frames per second (read the warnings). Try 10 frames/second or 0.1 if you need a smoother animation.
  • Focus your webcam so that the animation is crisper.
  • In Claymation motion pictures, they take 24 frames (or photos) for every one second of film.
  • If you have problems getting your clay figures to not flop over, then make them a simple skeleton out of wire, it'll give them structure.
  • It may take a lot of tries to make the movie clip size to 1/4th of a second. It usually doesn't work the first time, but follow the steps mentioned above. An alternative to this is to set the default picture duration to 1/4 sec before you incorporate your photos into the movie. Do this (XP version) from the Tools > Options > Advanced tab and set Picture Duration to .250 sec.
  • Adding grayscale might not work the way mentioned. If it doesn't then you need take the finished movie file, put it back into Windows Movie Maker, put it into the time line and then add the grayscale effect.
  • A mini tripod works very well if there is a place in the bottom of the webcam that you can screw it into.
  • Try to move the claymen in tiny increments, taking exactly three pictures each time.
  • The clay men shouldn't be very big; about two inches is good.
  • If your lighting looks bad because it is in color then make it grayscale in Windows Movie Maker by selecting all pictures, right-clicking on 'video effects', scrolling to 'grayscale' and clicking 'add'.

Warnings

  • Do not set the frame rate too high or you might end up doing more work than you should. Keep in mind the less the frame rate, the choppier the video. The more the frame rate, the more frames you have to shoot.
  • Some file sizes may be too large for the computer. Make sure you can hold it all on your computer, if not just make little movies and save them to a CD-RW.

Things You'll Need

  • Clay
  • A camera or webcam
  • Windows Movie Maker
  • Windows Media Player
  • A small cardboard set (optional)
  • Lighting
  • Tripod (optional)
  • Computer (Windows)

Related Articles

  • Animate-Clay
  • Create-a-Figurine-for-Clay-Animation
  • Create-a-Claymation-Armature
  • Use Webcam on Windows Movie Maker
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