iStopMotion for iPad review

iStopMotion for iPad
Boinx Software
£6.99

We don’t know about you, but we always feel like we’re witnessing magic happen when we watch stop-motion animation, the process of filming objects slowly over time to give the illusion that they’re actually moving of their own accord. There are many apps available that help you create your own animations on a regular computer – iStopMotion for the Mac by Boinx Software being one of the best. But there’s always the inconvenience of having to use a bulky computer to get the job done. Thankfully, Boinx has completely redesigned its app and ported it to the iPad, dropping many complex features and, in the process, made the whole experience easier, cheaper and more approachable than ever before.

The interface is incredibly simple. The gallery contains a short demo animation, but tap on the + button to create your own. You can choose to work with either the front or back cameras, or connect to an iPhone or iPod touch to take photos remotely from those devices instead, thanks to the free iStopCamera companion app. You’ll end up with much better quality shots that way, especially if you own an iPhone 4 or 4S. Sadly, even if you wanted to rely solely on a remote camera, you can’t operate iStopMotion for iPad on the first iPad, due to RAM and processor limitations.

The main interface contains a big record button on the right, and a playback button on the left. You can set the focus and exposure individually – as long as the camera you’re using supports that feature – choose how many frames per second you want to work with (you can actually change this at any time, to make your entire project play back either faster or slower) and toggle visual aids on or off, like grid lines (to help you obey the rule of thirds) and an overlay option. This last feature is possibly the best one. With it, you can see a semi-transparent copy of the last shot you took. It helps immensely when figuring out which parts of your scene needs to be moved for the next shot and as a result, is toggled on by default. You also have the option of deleting or duplicating a shot, but there’s no way to reorder them. It also isn’t possible to break your project down into scenes, to make the creation of more complex projects easier.

The time-lapse option is intriguing. With it, you can set the app to take shots automatically from once per second, to once every hour. You can use it to either move your subjects without having to constantly get back to the iPad to take a shot, or set your iPad (or remote camera) somewhere to create time-lapse movies without you having to do anything else beyond that.

Exporting your work is done from the Gallery section where you can review existing projects, or create new ones. Here you can add a soundtrack to your film, email it, or upload it to YouTube or Dropbox. But if you’d rather do some further work on it in another app or a different computer, your best option is to save it to your iPad’s camera roll. You’re given various options in terms of quality, from small (426×240) to full HD (1920×1080). The highest resolution is obviously only supported by the third generation iPad, or if you’ve used an iPhone to take the shots. It’s a little puzzling though that the high quality HD file (1280×720) ends up being the same size as the full HD one, but whichever one you choose, the resulting movie looks great.

Simple enough to get you started in seconds, iStop Motion for iPad is a versatile app for beginners as well as lovers of this filmmaking style.

Read the iStopMotion for iPad review at Tap! The iPhone and iPad magazine.
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