Tips for lighting your stop motion animation

Apr 23

In the tutorials I have made so far I haven’t taken any time to explain how to set up lighting for stop motion animation. The main thing you need to know is that if the lighting changes during the shot then it will distract from your animation so most stop motion is shot with controlled electric lights in a studio.

Shoot in a space with a thick curtain or blind

If you shoot in room with light coming through the window, the sunlight will change during the hours you animate and so will the lighting in your shot. The best way around this is to shoot in a room with a block out curtain or blind.

Using household lights

It is absolutely possible to light your films using lights from around the house. It will work best if you have lamps with LED bulbs, ideally all with the same colour bulb. If you’re character is supposed to be outside, it’ll work best if the bulbs are all “cool white”. You can experiment with “warm white” bulbs, but it’s better not to mix warm and cool bulbs. Warm light would be more appropriate to cosy indoor story location.

Positioning your lights

The best lighting to start with is three point lighting. You can see in the image above that there are two lights (we can see the black silhouettes) standing on the floor, both pointing at the set. These two lights will illuminate the face of the subject and minimise shadows. Then there is another light high up in the middle. This light will illuminate the set and the back of the character.

The lights are roughly positioned in a triangle, two in front of the character, and one behind the character. You can experiment with adding more lights if you have them, but this is a good place to start.

If your camera is good in low light you could also experiment with having dramatic lighting from one single light, particularly if your story is very dramatic.

Professional lights

I work with LED panel lights which have really come down in price in the last few years. They are good because they give they don’t flicker, don’t get hot, and are usually dimmable. They’re also light weight enough to move around easily and small enough to fit in between a model and other filming equipment.

A tutorial showing great results using desk lamps

But… you don’t have to control the light

Masters degree student Kirsten Lepore shot her film Bottle outdoors. I’ve heard her talk about the process and it was seriously hard work, but it’s beautiful and so different to all of the films shot in a studio that it really stands out. Kirsten went on to be the animation director for Marcel The Shell With Shoes On (2021) currently on Netflix.

Vivien Mason