No. 179, Stop Motion as Pencil Test Software

Poor Pencil Take a look at Photographs

For a very long time I’ve been sad concerning the high quality of my pencil take a look at movies. As a substitute of being in easy-to-view black on white they’ve been a disappointing gray on gray.

That is the sort of greyed-out picture I’ve been getting in my pencil assessments.

I’ve decided that this isn’t the fault of my software program, the now “legacy” Toki Line Take a look at, however of the cameras I’ve been utilizing. For the digicam to hook up with my Mac, it has to have a USB plug, and the 2 cameras I’ve been utilizing haven’t any adjustment controls; the one method I’ve been capable of work with the distinction, brightness and different settings is thru the Toki Line Take a look at management sliders, which have been insufficient.

I’ve tried immediately hooking up my Iphone cam however the software program (and the Mac) don’t acknowledge the telephone cam as a digicam supply.

In my final posting to this weblog, No. 178, I talked about downloading the app Cease Movement for making stop-motion animation. I puzzled: may this work for my pencil assessments as nicely? I used to be inspired to notice that any films made in Cease Movement may very well be imported on to You Tube or to Instagram.

I then bought my very own tripod (an affordable one designed for making selfies) and located that I may take away from it the telephone clamp, which sported a common digicam screw mount that’s used for mounting most cameras onto any tripod or different stabilizing assist. Since my vertical digicam stand makes use of that very same mounting system, it was simple to now mount my Iphone in place.

The Iphone as pencil take a look at digicam.

Taking pictures a body.

Now the picture is sharp and in excessive contrast–success! The frames per second are variable, and in addition are the variety of frames per click on. There’s an incremental zoom characteristic, too.

The one factor I do not know do is to point out a number of layers. That could be finished by taking pictures the assessments over a backlighted board, just like the animation drawing disk itself. However for easy assessments of timing, this appears to be an excellent answer.

Here’s a pattern take a look at with this method. There’s a little glitch on the finish the place the digicam received bumped, however you may readily see the development in high quality.