Creating Stop Motion Animation Video

Importing Images into a new video sequence on Premier Pro.

I quickly realized that although it would be helpful to learn new techniques using Premiere Pro for stop-motion animation, I was struggling to figure out the processes. As a result, I decided to go back to using Photoshop and continue making my video using the Timeline tool, which I have used in previous projects. I believe that refining the skills I already have would be more beneficial and time-saving.

Importing images as layers.

I reduced the size of the image resolution, as the images were too big. 350 pixels to 100. This made the whole file much smaller and easier to work with. Next time, I should adjust these settings in my camera before shooting to save some process time.

Create Video Timeline

The first image was off centre, so I transformed it to fit and cut the canvas size down to remove unnecessary background. Then, I straightened the image using the straight edge tool by drawing a line.

Make Frames from Layers - Select all frames - Duration 0.2 seconds (Too slow, preferred 0.1 seconds.)

I grouped the images together to make it easier to add adjustment layers. I then adjusted the levels.

Create new background copy layer of first image. Isolate image and use patch tool to remove unwanted features in the background.

Healing Brush tool to fix smaller details.

I preferred the corner where the walls met on the left side, as there was no gap to detract from the attention of the banana. I tried to select and duplicate this side to mirror and blend into the other side.

Using a soft Eraser brush to remove the parts of the new layer that didn't fit. Merging these layers together.

I wanted the background to be less wonky, so I played with cutting out the left background, layering, resizing and repositioning with the transform tool. I edited with the same techniques as before to blend.

Once happy with the background, I drew a layer mask to select the new background to be applied to the images. Because the lighting was slightly different in a lot of the images, this needed to be adjusted manually for each image.

I used the transform tool and a clipped brightness adjustment layer which I then merged down. I did this for every layer.

This was the most time-consuming part of the process, but I knew it would work, so I didn't mind putting in the time. Once I got into a flow, I quite enjoyed the process.

Once happy, I exported the video as an mp4 and a GIF.