Introduction To Clay Animation For Beginners

Learn to create clay animation at home using your smartphone. Perfect for beginners and kids, this hands-on course guides you step-by-step!

  • Overview
  • Curriculum
  • Instructor
  • Review

Brief Summary

This course is all about creating fun and engaging clay animations right at home! Suitable for both beginners and families, you’ll learn how to write scripts, design characters, and film everything using just your smartphone. Let’s make some animated magic together!

Key Points

  • Learn to create clay animation at home using your smartphone.
  • Understand the end-to-end process of stop-frame animation.
  • Hands-on course with a class project to guide you.
  • Creative outlet for kids and adults alike.
  • No prior animation experience required!

Learning Outcomes

  • Develop a basic understanding of animation principles.
  • Create a complete script and storyboard for your animation.
  • Design and build a character using clay.
  • Film and edit your animation with smartphone apps and software.
  • Gain hands-on experience through a step-by-step class project.

About This Course

Learn how to create stop motion animation at home with your smartphone!

How To Create Clay Animation For Beginners

“Outstanding course for a total beginner like myself. Very encouraged to proceed with clay animation. Thank You Rachel.” -Gary B.

Do you want to learn to create clay animation?

Looking for a fun and educational activity for the kids or grandkids this weekend? Or perhaps you've always secretly wanted to know how to create stop-motion animation yourself? Get hands-on with this fun, messy and creative course!

This course teaches you how to create stop frame clay animation at home, using your smartphone, whether you're on an iPhone or Android phone.

You will learn the end-to-end steps for creating stop motion animation, from writing a script, to building characters and sets, to adding audio and lip syncing sound, and filming and editing.

This course is a hands-on course, which you can follow step-by-step to create your own clay animation short film, using a class project as an example. The camera you will be using is the one you've already got - the one on your smartphone!

Why take this course?

Are you a creative looking to tell stories in a new medium?

Are you a parent looking for fun new hobby for your kids?

Or have you always loved claymation and wanted to be a clay animator yourself?

In this course, you will learn:

  • The basics of animation

  • How to create a script and storyboard for your animation

  • How to design a basic character using the medium of clay

  • How to build a set using a templates as a guide

  • How to lip-sync your characters mouths using tools like Audacity to help create an exposure sheet

  • How to film using a smartphone app (on either iPhone or Android)

  • How to edit your film (using iMovie or Windows Movie Maker)

Including the hands-on project, you can finish this course in a few hours, or over a series of weeks, depending on how you want to create your film!

About your course instructor:

Rachel Beaney is a clay animation hobbyist who has been creating clay animation on Youtube for two years. She has researched how to create clay animation and come up with easy and accessible DIY solutions so you can create stop motion animation at home.

Student reviews:

“Thank you Rachel! It was fun and interesting… My three granddaughters and I will be happy to produce our own movie and finally win all the Oscars!” - Alex L.

“First time I learned anything about making a clay animation, and I found it interesting and happy I took the course.” - Kenneth N.

“Brilliant course, very hands on and helpful.” - Ofer G.

Who should take this course?

This course is for anyone who is passionate about learning clay animation as a hobby at home.

You don't need to have studied animation or film, but being passionate about learning, experimenting and creating is a must! Clay animation can be a slow process, so having patience pays off.

Having a basic understanding of computers will be a useful skill as we use different types of software along the way.

Don't forget that all Udemy courses have a 30-day money back guarantee, so if you're unhappy with the course for any reason, you can get your money back.

Children under the age of 13 might need a set of adult-sized hands to help out in this course.

What are the course requirements?

You are welcome to watch the course just to learn about the process, or you can follow along step-by-step and create your film based on a class project.

If you're going to embark on a stop animation adventure, you will need a few supplies - but most of these you should have around the house.

Shopping List:

Things You Need:

  • Clay or plasticine – whatever colours you want your character to be! Two or three handfuls of clay should be enough.

  • Smartphone Tripod (it could be a mini phone tripod, a smartphone attachment to a traditional tripod or a DIY-clay-and-glad-wrap tripod will do!)

  • Cardboard (thick – i.e., a pizza box)

  • Cardboard (thin – i.e.,. from a newsagent or cereal box)

  • PVA glue

  • Plain Paper

  • Scissors

  • Pen

Optional extras:

  • Stamp/water sponge pad

  • Toothpicks

  • White beads and black enamel paint for eyes

  • Clay carving tools

  • Lamps

Smartphone apps:

  • iMotion app for iPhones (free!)

  • Motion app for Androids (free!)

Computer software:

  • Microsoft Movie Maker – editing software for PCs (free!)

  • iMovie – editing software for Macs (free!)

  • Access to a printer to print resources/handouts

What are you going to get from this course?

You will learn the complete process of how to create a stop motion animation film.

This course has a resource kit for animation, which provides resources and templates for your stop motion.

You will create a complete clay animation short film when you are done with this course.

  • understand how to write a script and storyboard

  • know what things to consider when building a clay character

  • know how to create and find sound and audio for their animations

Instructor

Profile photo of Rachel Beaney
Rachel Beaney

Rachel Beaney is a freelance digital media specialist, with a wide variety of experience in creating multimedia projects, social media and online content.She has worked as an editor, a social strategist, on social media execution, community management and real-time social media integration. She is fluent in creating engaging content, with a solid technical understanding of the web.She’s worked on social...

Review
4.9 course rating
4K ratings
ui-avatar of Yelena Savranskaya
Yelena S.
4.0
1 year ago

I enjoyed the course. It gives you all the necessary insights to start your creation. My only issue was that the resources had outdated links that led to the websites that weren't available or removed. It would be great if the instructor could update the course.

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ui-avatar of Renee Aviles
Renee A.
4.5
2 years ago

bv bv bv

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ui-avatar of Nelson Dal Cin
Nelson D. C.
1.0
4 years ago

First course that I bought here that I didn't learn a thing (I bought over 40 courses before). 90% of the links on resources are outdated (not found) and it didn't have a single exercise for hands on learning. It didn't have examples and the only time she did something, she didn't show anything. It looked like she didn't want to teach us about that. I always try to see the best but it's impossible to do that with this course. This is the first negative review I made. I didn't know how to animate, wasted 1 hour and I still don't know how to animate. I'm a video editor and colorist if you think that I don't know anything.

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ui-avatar of Crystal Lee
Crystal L.
5.0
4 years ago

It was great introduction to the stop motion film making!

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ui-avatar of Ashley Zufelt
Ashley Z.
5.0
4 years ago

I liked a lot!

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ui-avatar of Miles Brezin
Miles B.
5.0
5 years ago

I really leaned a lot from just this part of the course the tip that helped me the most was the one where you said that the frames had to be going by at least 12 a second for it to look animated.

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ui-avatar of Tim Shiu
Tim S.
4.5
5 years ago

I like the brief, clear introductions to all the topics in the videos, with good helpful tips. It is great then to have the resources for more in depth learning. A very good course.

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ui-avatar of Babitha Elias
Babitha E.
5.0
5 years ago

good

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ui-avatar of Harley Hooker
Harley H.
4.5
5 years ago

I have enjoyed this little course. i hope you subscribe to my channel! Its Called ClayDunkin

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ui-avatar of Donnie Rendon
Donnie R.
1.5
5 years ago

very dissapointed almost all the videos are in the preview and can you pleaze actually teach us how to make the character not fall apart

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