From flip book to digital movie?

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/jpgvideo.html

If you do it post it (upload to youtube)! I used to love doing flip book animations, and may actually give it a try myself.

I was wondering if Windows Movie Maker (you may have it bundled with Windows, but it's free here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/updates/moviemaker2.mspx ) could do it and it looks like it can, so you may not need to install any software.

You can import the pictures and then go to Tools > Options > Advanced and set the "Picture Duration" to 0.125 seconds and Transition Duration to 0.25 seconds.

Wow! Thanks, Robert!

This might be a long work in process but he's really proud of it and I'm really proud of it so I think it will be worth the effort.

It's pretty crude but I think it's really cool how he got it right about things entering the frame and how they progress throught the frame and size consistency from frame to frame -- some of the things I thought he would find really tricky.

Hey Boomer...

Picasa 3 and you can upload direct to youtube.

Its free to download and you can "create movie presentation" from any photos / slides ... pretty much anything - you can add text etc with the text tool direct onto the photos, descriptions etc.

I use Windows MovieMaker, and Windows DVDMaker as well as Picasa - MovieMaker is easy to use and has lots of transitions and animations - and is good for adding music too. Picasa 3 is not so good with adding music - very bitty.

(the birthday youtubes I've uploaded recently are done with MovieMaker)

http://picasa.google.com/

Picasa is great as a free tool for photo's. Great effects.

Nice. What I used to do with flip books is draw some basic lines fairly hard, leaving an impression on the next page. Then I used the impression as a guide and moved the lines a bit each page.

The animations I found the most easy and fun were:

Stick figure diver. You can make him walk the diving board with trepidation, then jump up, hit the board (and bend it cartoonishly by doing a lot of frames before it springs back) and then do flips in the air and such. That was my first animation.

Hang glider. You can basically draw it like a paper airplane, and have it do lots of neat tricks. This was my second animation and it taught me to use size to make it look like it was coming nearer or going further away.

Car driving down a street. I drew a fairly detailed car from the front, and then drew sidewalks and buildings on either side and animated them going past. Then I added details like people going by, people throwing stuff at the car, jumping from buildings onto the car (hey, they were ninjas and it made a cool chase scene) and such. This was the first time I made a lot of different things move separately, and I animated them in one at a time.

The limitations of the flip books always frustrated me, and I had always wanted to try a medium that let me do more details and let it run for longer (the little notepads I used never let it go longer than half a minute or so) so I'm glad you asked this, it made me look into it and I may start toying with animation again.

I quickly shot a short sequence just so you could see.

Here is a preview of Scene 2:

Thanks Izzie!

I'm not completely unfamiliar with Picasa so that might be a good choice for me. It's pretty simple if I remember correctly.

I recently stumbled across some stop animation Lego videos on YouTube that got me interested in trying some of this out. Cool stuff.

Yep.... Picasa is real simple. I have Vista... there are a couple of hiccups sometimes and I have to reinstall it... but I think it's more to do with Vista than Picasa. However, Picasa does NOT like *.MOV files at all. (movies taken with a digital camera) - it tries to upload them into Picasa.... and then spits the dummy and crashes. However, as you are looking to make movies I don't think you'll have any .MOV files on your drive, so no worries.

It really is a nice bit of software to play with and it literally takes seconds to make a movie..... import photos (automatic), third icon and push the button... movie made, upload direct onto youtube if you wish to. Verra simple.

Windows MovieMaker has loads more features - and is also a great tool - love it. Windows DVD Maker is better quality. All very very easy to use - if I can.... you defintely can.... in fact.... MO could make his own movies with a bit of help and put the pics in order, maybe add some text to them in Picasa - his words... etc..... my little fella LOVES to play around with Picasa and making the movies - he's 11.

Oh.... one thing..... with Picasa - ensure you tick the box to keep original files and always BACK UP. Picasa changes them in "Your Pictures"..... but you can retain the original files if you choose to.

Good luck.... reckon MO would get a kick out of making movies. Let us know how you get on.

Very nice!

I like how the shark is looking up at the swimmer. That's tricky.