Come and meet the crew!
Previously when making short videos, I have used iMovie and Canva. I decided to try Animoto for the video editing and Stop Motion to bring the crew to life. A couple years ago I watched my son make a stop motion video for school. It seemed quite complicated and I was so impressed with his final product!
I can say that creating the short stop motion videos for this mini-project using the Stop Motion App was very simple. I did it all with my phone and some extra lighting. There are many YouTube videos out there for some extra help, but to get started you really don’t need any extra help. The app itself has many built in features to explain how it works, offer some tips and tricks and get you going.
Once I had my 5 little stop motion videos, I decided to try Animoto to put together the final video. This is a simple easy to use video editor, with intuitive interface. Animoto has a useful selection of templates and slide layouts available. However, after using Canva and iMovie I was frustrated with its limitations. One that I came up against quite often is resizing the text box. You can’t. I ended up using <enter> to create a new line. While this worked, it is a klunky work around. I also found the font selection and difficulty with slide transitions.
They seem to have a good selection of stock images, although I didn’t explore this too much.
The free plan has a watermark attached on each slide. I didn’t think to take a screenshot of the watermark before I upgraded, but it does take up quite a bit of real estate. I didn’t mind it so much for this project; however, I ended up paying for one month so I could actually download the video to put on YouTube, rather than use a link to Animoto. I think it is a great app for beginners, which I would consider myself, but I did wish I had more customizable options. While I really enjoyed learning a new app, I think next time I think I will go back to one Canva or iMove.