Skip to main content

SMG's 100th Post/Boinx iStopMotion 3.1 review!

We got here fairly quickly, and by here I mean 100 posts.  First, I would like to thank you, the fans of Stop Motion for supporting SMG and animation in general.

Now, It's time for my review of Boinx's iStopMotion 3.1, what I like about it, what I didn't and straight up giving you a fresh baked stopmo video straight from Stop Motion Geek!
 The first thing I did when I acquired this software was to get use to it. Now, I found it very-easy to get acquainted with, and use.
4 1/2 stars overall. 

When you first open up iStopMotion, it will ask you to name your project, then, once you click save,

 you get the front page that is easy enough to navigate.

Now, what I liked about it:
I liked that you could view the material you just shot.  Also, I loved that you could export it right into iMovie or Final Cut X.  There was also a predesignated set of background/foreground effects, that would be really cool in the right video.  I also loved that you could color-correct your image (which is the thing I did to make my video look cinematic).


What I disliked:
I'm sorry to have to say that I disliked ANYTHING.  The first and only thing I disliked was that after I had shot four seconds of footage, when I tried to view it, that it would mess-up, making me unable to watch my complete video.

The conclusion:
This is definitely software to look into.  Now, a video that I accomplished in a matter of two days with iStopMotion...



"Rat Trap" a Stop Motion short from SMG on Vimeo.
For more info about Boinx iStopMotion 3.1 go here http://www.boinx.com/istopmotion/mac/.
The final color-corrected shot...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Out of a Forest, The Maker & Fred!

The first wonderful film we have today is, Out of a Forest .   Out of a Forest caught my eye because of were they shot the film, it appears and is evident that it was shot a night in an actual forest! - The video is about five
Post a Comment
Read full article »

Interview with Samuel Lewis - Animator, Character Designer, and Sculptor on Stop Motion Short Film, "Lost & Found"

Knotjira, a clumsy dinosaur made of wool, as seen in Lost & Found . Photo courtesy of Andrew Goldsmith. “If I had to pick a starting point for my career as a stop motion animator I would have to say it was my obsession as a six year old with a book called ‘Playing with Plasticine’ by Barbara Reid,” Samuel Lewis – a London-based stop motion and 2D animator and director, whose most recent labor of love can be seen in his contribution to the Australian stop motion short film, Lost & Found – tells Stop Motion Geek. Upon reflection, Lewis explains that his love for the medium of stop motion began very early in life, and has merely managed to burn ever brighter in his fervor to master the craft. “I would spend countless hours fixated on sculpting tiny snails, fruit bowls and dinosaurs to the point where I would stay inside on family holidays sculpting a surfer in a beach scene rather than going to the actual beach that was only a short walk away,” Lewis recalls wistfully. “...
Post a Comment
Read full article »

Interview with Bradley Slabe, Co-Director of Stop Motion Love Story, "Lost & Found" (Part 1/2 of Interview with "Lost & Found" Directors)

Knotjira (foreground) and Knitsune (background) in Lost & Found . Photo courtesy of Andrew Goldsmith. The true essence of art – a reflection of life itself – is very much akin to the Japanese aesthetic of “wabi-sabi”: it’s imperfect, impermanent, and, at times, profoundly...incomplete. It is both at once a fundamental truth, and, curiously, more often than not, a thing incredibly hard to acknowledge, to make peace with. Yet perhaps our resistance is justifiable, for once we admit that the world is full of unknowns – unknowns that aren’t ideal, that aren’t perfect – we are just as soon confronted with the actualization of a deep, intrinsic, and very human fear: the fear of a future full of...unknowns that aren’t ideal, that aren’t perfect. Yet it’s the confrontal of that fear that is the most terrifying reality of all, for the moment we make peace with it we have just as soon have acknowledged that our paths in life aren’t in our own hands, or something we can contro...
Post a Comment
Read full article »

Interview with Mark Smith, Director and Writer of Stop Motion Short Film, "Two Balloons"

A still from Two Balloons featuring the character of Elba. Photo courtesy of Mark Smith. As I sit, listening to Peter Broderick’s moving composition for piano  More Of A Composition , I close my eyes and envisage an enormous funnel cloud skimming across the crystalline face of an ocean – the skies are murky and unusually dark, lightning crackles, spider-webbing across the darkened skies before then vanishing, and still, after its gone, an electricity continues to hum in the air and I simply  know  that it’s going to soon strike again. And as the scene presents itself to me, I suddenly feel something similar to what director Mark C. Smith felt when he saw the same image as he sailed to a small island called Grenada along with his wife in a timeworn sailboat. For him, in that moment inspiration struck, and the idea suddenly came to him for his heartfelt stop motion film,  Two Balloons . For me, I open my eyes and feel as I did the instant  Two Balloons  ...
Post a Comment
Read full article »

Interview with Chris Randall, Creative Director and Co-Founder of Second Home Studios

Chris Randall in the Mills & Reeve Innovation 50 list. Source: https://twitter.com/SecondHomeChris/status/904681346060230656 “I came to animation mainly from a point-of-view of blind curiosity,” Chris Randall—the creative director and co-founder of Second Home Studios, a Birmingham, United Kingdom-based, award-winning animation studio—tells Stop Motion Geek. “I’d always loved the medium but never took it seriously, or saw myself with a part to play in it. It wasn’t until after Uni that I realised I basically like tinkering and trying out new things, whilst at the same time telling stories. So, animation is a perfect fit for me.” First founded in 2004, Second Home Studios has garnered multiple BAFTA and Royal Television Society awards and nominations for many of the films in their diverse repertoire of artistic and commissioned projects, encompassing all styles of animation—from stop motion to CGI to 2D—as well as puppetry and mixed-media. In their fourteen-and-counting years...
Post a Comment
Read full article »

Interview with Niki Lindroth von Bahr, Director, Writer, and Animator of Stop Motion Short Film "Bath House"

In art as in life, when in the thick of something – a chain of, at times, loosely connected actions and consequences – it can be easy to miss “the point.” It’s often only in retrospect – the moment when one can contemplate, assessing and reassessing an event, whether mundane or abnormal – when one can discover meaning and a “point” to events in life as in art. When in the thick of something, things often feel commonplace, moments of actual weight sporadic, chaotic, and adrift, lost in the moment. Niki Lindroth von Bahr’s  Bath House  – a 15-minutes-long short film – perfectly captures these feelings of disorder and inconsequential consequence in the midst of the mundane and seemingly aimless. This mood is further accentuated in the film by a disquieting lack of a soundtrack, using dialogue only sparingly which perfectly accompanies Bahr’s incredibly lifelike puppets and animation, together harmonizing and bringing to life moments and an atmosphere that are rarely (if...
Post a Comment
Read full article »

Interview with Filmmaker Hans Weise – Part of the Team Behind National Geographic's "A Fearsome Fleet: Secrets of the Vikings"

A frame from A Fearsome Fleet: Secrets of the Vikings featuring the shipbuilder hero, Harald. Source: Vimeo. More often than not, manmade beauty, art in general, and stories themselves make very little practical sense. For art, like beauty, is subjective. More often than not, if we are truly honest with ourselves, our art, our stories will not stand the test of time. Thus, art, stories, and beauty do not provide one to leave very much of a legacy – at least an infallible one – through using it as a means. Often, manmade beauty, stories, and those daring choices we make in putting pen to paper, brush to canvas, camera to subject, more often than not can only be justified for the sake of beauty, the sake of telling a story, the sake of art, whatever “the sake” of something actually means. It seems paradoxical, though perhaps it is not: Perhaps, innately, we as humans need stories, need art, need beauty. Not for any utility they propose, but simply so that they can be, quite ...
Post a Comment
Read full article »

Interview with Matt Bollinger, Painter and Animator Behind Stop Motion/Painting Hybrid Short Film "Between the Days," a Beautiful Portrait of Routine, Unfulfillment, and Despair in Middle America

"Before Work" finished painting featured in  Between the Days . Photo courtesy of Matt Bollinger.  Often – far too often – we forget the true weight of our actions, our everyday decisions, ranging from those big to small. And, in forgetting, we forget ourselves – who we truly are, where we have been, what we have done, how we have gotten here, to this very place in this very moment. For we are nothing if not the sum total of all our decisions, our actions…even the most minute, even those – perhaps especially those – made in the thrumming humdrum of the everyday: the act of rising from our bed and reaching over to flick off the alarm resting on our bedside table, lighting a cigarette, collecting yesterday’s trash before moving on to more, equally menial tasks. Moments spent alone, in ostensible comfort – the comfort provided us by 21st century accoutrements so many of us have grown to take for granted. Whether we are aware of it or not, each of our actions leave a ma...
Post a Comment
Read full article »

Interview with Joseph Wallace, Director and Animator of Psychedelic, Cut-out Stop Motion Music Video for Canadian Artist Parker Bossley's "Chemicals"

Parker Bossley as seen in Chemicals . Photo courtesy of Joseph Wallace. “I think the thing I’ve always found wonderful about cut out animation is that it’s one of the most immediate forms of animation,” muses British stop motion animation director Joseph Wallace – currently based in Bristol, UK, where, in January of this year, he founded the stop motion studio Hangar Puppet Animation Studio – in discussion of the medium he employed in his most recent film – the surreal, psychedelic music video for Canadian artist Parker Bossley’s debut single, Chemicals , which has already won a Vimeo Staff Pick. Perhaps more than anything else – perfectly suiting the film’s subject matter –the style and medium allow to film to transcend to time itself, just as Wallace implies, undoubtedly allowing the film to become just that – immediate. Almost so much so one gets the feeling they’re clawing at air in search for a handle on reality as they fall…along with Bossley – also the film’s protagoni...
Post a Comment
Read full article »

Behind the Scenes of "Robocop 2" at Tippett Studios and how "Jurassic Park" Changed Special Effects Forever

A depressingly large percentage of Hollywood movies boast a gratuitous amount of potential and possibility and yet, for one reason or another, often fall far, far too short to live up to the films they seem to have the potential of being. Although it’s a shame that many of these films have a stupendous level of production value and talent but are often often overlooked, as production value and talent are seen as secondary and supplementary to a quality story – the special effects work done on such second-rate films sadly go unrecognized the most often. An immutable fact stands strong – mediocre films, no matter the level of talent and amount of time poured into producing their special effects, are seen and remembered as nothing but wasted potential…or worse. Yet few box office bombs have had special practical effects work as groundbreaking, especially in the stop motion realm, and yet unfortunately remains unrecognized in every respect than the 1990 film Robocop 2 , both an irrefutabl...
Post a Comment
Read full article »