Stopmotion – Lightbox

In my last stopmotion post, I mentioned lighting issues and setting up a light box. I got the idea and instructions from the “Build Your Own Mini Studio” article on the Stop Motion Pro website, but my results weren’t quite as good as the article:

I’m using the digital camera I mentioned in my first stopmotion post, so the images are much sharper than the testing films so far.

The light diffused and reflected reasonably well. I probably need a different light; stronger and possibly less yellow than the “warm glow” spiral globe I’m experimenting with now. Further research should lead to better lightbox prototypes/techniques and higher-quality films. I could possibly do without a lightbox, and instead improve the ambient lighting.

In other news, the brainstorming machine called Katie came up with a brilliant idea for the final film: do something from the Discworld books. As some of you may know, I’m a big fan of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books, so doing something based on Discworld should help me maintain motivation, dedication and focus to create a good film. I may end up doing a short section from one of the books, or a summary of a book.

Next experiments:

• More lightbox research/prototyping/alternatives work.
• Other ideas from the previous post.
• Research a better camera, ideally a Canon/Nikon that apparently works well with Stop Motion Pro.