by Our neighbors to the north have a long and colorful history of strong public funding of the arts, and NFB StopMo Studio from the National Film Board of Canada demonstrates that a government agency can indeed create something of true value for the creative minds of the world. It’s perhaps the single most usable, slick, and capable stop-motion creator we’ve seen on iPad, and it’s a truly unbeatable value for aspiring movie makers.
StopMo Studio is very obviously designed by animators, as the interface makes the process of grabbing consecutive still images effortless. An onscreen grid helps with aligning elements, and the implementation of the “onion-skinning” feature is clever, with a slider fading between the last captured frame and the current live one coming in via either iPad camera. While we wish we could visually overlay more than a pair of frames at a time, it’s a minor quibble for anyone but the most seasoned cel animation fanatic. The time-lapse feature is perfectly suited for creating stuttering video clips, with fixed choices ranging from multiple frames a second to snapping a single shot every 24 hours. We like the fact that you can do such long intervals, but it would have also been nice to include the ability to precisely specify a custom time period.
Besides capturing images from either camera, you can also import images, as well as create frames of solid color, add text cards, or even use a very decent set of painting tools to draw on top of captured or imported frames. And the inclusion of a basic layering ability lets you keep your graphics separate from the main background image. The lack of a graphics text tool means you can’t easily create word balloons—another minor omission we’d love to see addressed in a future update.
Beyond the one video “track,” NFB StopMo Studio also features four audio tracks for adding music and recorded sound effects, plus a separate FX track for inserting audio effects from a built-in library. Final animations can be saved as video files to your gallery, and then you can freely share your mini masterpieces as desired.
The bottom line. While some minor tweaks and additions would sweeten the pot, NFB StopMo Studio is the iPad cel animation tool to beat, with a wide array of abilities and total ease of use.
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