iKITMovie

The Lego Movie had a large success and it certainly inspired many people to create their own animations. Creating something similar is quite hard and it requires huge amounts of resources. An easier and cheaper solution is to create a stop-motion animation, for which you can use any digital camera or webcam. iKITMovie was developed specifically for this purpose. It provides you with everything you need to create stop-motion animations, with soundtracks and special effects, as fast and easy as possible. The software is capable of capturing footage with a connected camera and it allows you to edit the images like in a traditional video editor.

iKITMovie is free to try for a limited time, with some restrictions. The software can be installed in a minute, on Windows XP, Vista, Win 7 and Win 8. It asks for a 1.33 GHz processor or better, at least 2 GB of RAM and 128 MB of video RAM or more, which should not be too much for a modern day computer. Once installed, the program can be launched right away, without setting up any additional tools or codecs.

The user interface resembles a simplified video editor. Its clean layout and the large and colored buttons can make any operation very easy. Stop-motion animations are basically sequential images, typically used to make objects look like they are moving by themselves. Although the illusion is not as effective as traditional videos, it is based on the same principle and the results are often impressive.

Creating a stop-motion animation can be done by simply taking pictures of an object in different positions. This is where iKITMovie makes everything much easier. Rather than setting up a camera for each picture, transferring them to a computer and importing them into a program, you can connect a webcam, digital camera or a camcorder to the program and take snapshots from its user interface. For example, you can place a LEGO piece or other objects in a certain position, take a snapshot, move the object slightly and take another snapshot.

Snapshots are imported and added to a video timeline automatically. You may click different options for manual or automatic snapshots and drag sliders to adjust the frame rate and camera focus. You can also add music, recordings or other sounds in different audio channels. The software comes with its own sounds library, which you can explore in a tree structure, on the same interface. You can also find a large number of sample backgrounds, overlays and recording options, on separate tabs.

The software's overlays can bring life to your animations. They include facial and mouth expressions, animations and more. If you intend to create an animation with LEGOs or other figures, you can place these expressions on their faces, insert explosions or other animations and so on. Overlays can be customized on a separate window, on which you can resize and move them and set the program to keep them visible on one frame or on a certain number of sequential frames. When your animation is ready, you can export the entire sequence or part of it, in WMV format or export the animation's properties.