• iKITMovie
• Stop Motion Pro
• Animator DV
• StopMotionMaker ( under review currently )
• StopMotionStation 1.3 ( under review currently )
• MonkeyJam ( under review currently )

StoryBoarding Software for Stop Motion Animation

Atomic Learning’s Story Board Pro

Browse the listing above and read the review of the stop motion and related animation software to choose the best stop motion animation software to create the best claymation brickfilm movies possible!

I came across this interesting interview with Justin Segal on youtube. I like the snippets of animation I have seen of his so I have transcribed what he had to say here for your interest. You should check out AnimationMentor online also by the way.

My name is Justin Segal and I am an animator. I’ve wanted to be an animator almost since I can remember. I was probably five. I saw King Kong and some Harry Haussen movies and I just started to eat them for breakfast; I saw everything I could get my hands on and sometimes saw them over and over again. With friends, I would do little sculptures and we once set out to learn how to make armatures. So, I was thinking stop motion.

Justin Segal Animation

As it turned out, it was a longer journey than I thought. I went to film school and assumed I would be doing stop motion from that point on, and instead I had other opportunities. I went to Disney as an Imagineer designing theme parks. It took me a while before I said, “You know, it’s really important to chase your dream.” And I never let go of that original dream, which is why I came to Animation Mentor.

The process of creating a character is a really fun one and an interesting one – it’s different every time. You obviously start off with an idea and hopefully go off and really do some reference and think about…they encourage you to think about backstories for your character…things that aren’t even in the shot. What did he do before this? What does this horseshoe? What happens after? Just as you would do in a real world situation where your shot is part of a longer sequence and you really have to be thinking about the story of this character.

So, you want to do that and usually that triggers quite a few things. The process leads to sketching, which is always the beginning where everything starts. Everything you do gets thrown out for all your fellow students to look at, comment on, and give ideas back. There isn’t a single character that I didn’t try three or four different ways just in sketches to say, “Is this guy in prison? Is he a butcher? Is he a guy in a restaurant?” and really try to think about who this guy is. Then you get to the point where you’ve chosen somebody, hopefully, you get the photo and uptake the rig and say, “How do I turn this into that person?”

Animation Mentor is awesome in that it’s real world. The school is fantastic about breaking down those skills from the very, very smallest of skills that you have to start with and then slowly, like a snowball that gets larger as it rolls, adding on with each assignment exactly what you need to move forward and build on. It’s not separate skills; it’s always cumulative.

I think the way that the school is set up is perfect in terms of real world. The grading is tough. The deadlines are even tougher. But, the rewards are great. For people who are committed, they get a chance to check what they’re really going for and check their commitment to it and everybody is in it together, including the mentors with the students to get you there.

Animation Mentor has changed me in ways I can’t even begin to predict yet. It’s been, not just a test that I passed, but it’s opened my eyes to things that I had no idea about. It’s exciting and it changed me and I hope that this is what I do for the rest of my life.