How does stop-motion animation work?

One minute of stop-motion is 1,440 photos, and a good animator makes about four seconds a week. Nudge a clay chai-wallah frame by frame, look inside his metal skeleton, make him talk with swapped mouths, ghost the last frames with onion skin, and plan your own film on a phone.

Read how it works: How does stop-motion animation work? · The history of stop-motion animation · More boxes on Glassbox

Chapters in this interactive model

1. One frame at a time: Nudge the puppet, take a photo, repeat. Play the photos fast and it walks.
2. Puppets and armatures: A metal skeleton with stiff ball joints, a soft skin, and screws in the feet.
3. Faces and replacement animation: Swap a mouth each frame, or sculpt it. Make a puppet talk in sync with a voice.
4. Onion skin, spacing and flicker: See the last frames ghosted on the live view, space a bounce, and stop the flicker.
5. Paper, people, matches and sand: The same one-frame-at-a-time trick works with almost anything you can move.
6. Make your own stop-motion with a phone: A phone, a tripod, a lamp and some clay. Plan the shots, count the frames, avoid the five classic mistakes.