Earlier this month I attended an animated outreach workshop, organised by Scottish Archives. We spent the morning learning the techniques and then created our own storyboards and characters to animate the Scottish legend, ‘The Story of the Corphin Mermaid ‘.

http://www.scottisharchives.org.uk/news/announcements/mermaidsmuggles

I’ve used the same stop motion techniques to animate ‘The Monarch of the Glen’ 1851 by Sir Edward Landseer, you can see this illustration on display in our Special Collections and Archives exhibition, ‘Walking Through Time with Victoria’s Animals’.

Stop Motion is an animation technique that makes any object you choose appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments and photographed in individual frames, when all put together it plays as a movie. This Monarch of the Glen movie has 84 individual frames/photographs for just 16 seconds of film.

It’s a lot of fun making movies, give it a go over Christmas all you need is a smartphone and the free App STOP MOTION STUDIO.  There is also a manual to help you find your way.

My top tip – make sure the smartphone camera doesn’t move, I used a selfie stick held in place with gaffer tape!

Anne Foulkes