We already published several posts with animation tips over the past few months but these were all more focused on the animation software itself and on how to make the most of its features. Today’s animation tips will be about the stage itself as this is an important part of the whole process. Unless you have a proper film studio set up somewhere in your house, you may find these tips quite helpful as they may considerably improve the final result.

When starting with stop frame animation, try to keep the background simple. You can make an animation on a table in your room, just using the wall as a background, or you can use blue paper for the sky and green for the grass to create a simple set up for your first animation.

You can use your photos, drawings, create background using paper, textiles, or simply download images from the Internet. We have put together a gallery of backgrounds and you can download them for free from your account section on our website and print them off, or print them from your HUE Animation Studio CD. Printing backdrops on A3 card gives more room for action to take place.

The set should not move so make sure everything is safely secured using Blu-tack or something that won’t damage furniture! You can stick the background to a photo frame for it to hold properly.

Next time we will talk about lighting so come back again if you want to learn how to avoid the flickering in your animated movies.