Important Hints!

- Do not make claymations near a reflective object! A TV, mirror, or anything else in which you can see a reflection of a moving object (includes yourself) can mess up your video. Avoid them at all costs!

- Regularly save your work! Claymations are large files. Windows Movie Maker has a tendency to freeze in the middle your work.

- All Claymation flies are not to be moved! If you move a file while you are working on a Claymation, it will lose the file path and the file will be unusable. You cannot even rename a folder containing Claymation pictures.

- Make a script! You might have your video all planned out and take all the pictures and everything, and forget what you were going to say. Just take a couple minutes and write it down!

- Never force a clay person to do something he doesn't want to do! That’s just not right, man.

- Be careful with the camera! Even a small move will change your camera view. You might think you have moved it back to where it was, but you probably haven't!

Making the Claymation

1. Make a clay person.

2. Select a location for the claymation (assuming you already have an idea).

3. Position your camera.

4. Put the clay person in place.

5. Take a picture.

6. Move the clay man a tiny bit. Remember that the smaller the movements you make, the smoother the movie will be.

7. Take another picture. (You have now made a tiny Claymation!)

8. Repeat steps 6 and 7 until your finished with the Claymation.

9. Plug your digital camera into a computer, you're halfway done!

How To (continued)

1. Using the program that came with your camera, upload all the pictures and save them. We suggest making a new folder called "Claymations" or something clever like that.

2. Open Windows Movie Maker, or whatever movie making program you own. Windows Movie maker is usually located in Start > Programs > Accessories.

3. There should be a taskbar on the left side of the program. Under "Import", Select import pictures. Find where your pictures were located and select all of them (Crtl+A). Click "Ok" to import them.

4. In Movie Maker, at the top, go to Tools > Options. Click the "Advanced" tab and find where it says, "Picture duration". This will decide how long each picture comes up for. Beginners should use .250. Smith and Stein use .125. Click "ok", select all the pictures on the screen (Crtl+ A) and drag them into the "Timeline" at the bottom. (Note: This puts all the pictures up for the selected time. If you want one picture longer, you can click it in the timeline and drag it to make it stay up longer".

5.  Time to add a title, credits, and transitions if you wish. All these features will be on the toolbar on the left side of Movie Maker. We'll let you play around on your own with this part.

6. Add voice! Slightly above the timeline should be a microphone icon. Click it.

7. This will open narrate. Click "Start" to start the narration. We suggest using full volume on the volume bar because they are sometimes hard to hear. Notice it shows your movie playing on the right so you know where you are in the movie. Save it when you are done, it will automatically add it to the movie.

8. Last but not least go to the top left and click File> Create Movie File. Follow the instructions and you are done!

9.You can send the file to your friends via email or messenger, or you can host it on Putfile and just give them the link to the video.

We hope this was helpful!