How To Make A Children's Cartoon Claymation

I know what your thinking: How can I make a cartoon? I'm just an average person. Well so am I and I make cartoons quite often. Although this guide is more about making children's claymation cartoons this method can be applied to any type of animation or cartoon. Check out our finished claymation cartoon video to the right by giving it a click.

CREATING CHARACTERS - Before pulling out the cameras or setting the stage for your cartoon you need to come up with a good character idea and a good name for said character. In this case I have decided to name mine Sammy Squid. While naming/creating your character if you have an idea of the story you want to have in your cartoon this would help. In the case of a claymation (or stop-motion) cartoon you should then mold your main character out of clay.

WRITING THE SCRIPT - If you already had a good idea how your story will go when you made your character this should be a sinch. Recommendations I would make include keeping the story short and too the point. As it is a children's story include a moral or make it funny.

CREATING THE SET - It doesn't have to be elaborate unless that is what you want. In the video for our Sammy Squid cartoon at the upper right you can see the only building in the scene is a small house used for the bully's timeout. The beach and sand is actually just a sand colored blanket that is draped over a kitchen table with some small boxes and other miscellaneous junk at the edges of the table under the blanket to appear as hills.

CREATING A STORYBOARD - With claymation cartoons you will want to chart out every camera shot according to your script and make sure it all makes sense. This way if it doesn't you can change it before filming (in this case taking pictures as it is stop-motion).

SHOOTING YOUR SHORT FILM - Once you have everything in place, characters, set, lighting (which can be a normal overhead lamp), camera on tripod, etc you are ready to make your film. Keep in mind as we are doing stop-motion you will move your characters a little each time and take a picture after each movement at the end you will string the pictures together on your computer to create the animated film. Understand as well that quality pictures can be taken by almost every digital camera or digital camera these days that does 1 megapixel or more(most likely you own one that does much better than this already).

I hope this guide helps and if you have any questions at all please leave them in the comments below I would be happy to answer them.