Make a claymation on your phone
Claymation is stop motion with clay. How to make a clay animation: the right clay, a simple character and shooting with onion skin. Free, in your browser.
Prop your phone or tablet so it can't move (a stack of books works), set up your scene, and shoot one frame at a time.
How to make a claymation
- 01Get oil-based modelling clay (plasticine). It stays soft and never dries out, so a character can move for hours.
- 02Build a simple character: a round body and a head. Thin legs sag, so start with a figure that sits or slides.
- 03Fix the camera, set the scene on a table, and press the character's base onto it so it doesn't drift.
- 04Change the clay a little, take a frame, and repeat. Smooth away fingerprints as you go.
- 05Play it back, fix the frames that jump, add a sound, and export the video.
What claymation is
Claymation, or clay animation, is stop motion with figures made of clay. Because clay can be squashed, stretched and reshaped between frames, a clay character can do things no puppet can: melt, grow, turn into something else.
It has a long history on screen, from Gumby in the 1950s to Aardman's Wallace & Gromit and Chicken Run. The word itself was coined by the American animator Will Vinton. A phone and a pack of modelling clay are enough to start.
Clay that works
- Oil-based modelling clay (plasticine) is the standard: it stays soft, holds detail and can be reused.
- Avoid air-dry clay. It cracks and changes shape as it dries, so frames shot an hour apart won't match.
- Keep colours apart and wipe your hands when you switch, or everything turns brown.
- Lamps warm the clay and make it softer. Keep lights a little away from your characters.
Making clay characters move
- For anything that stands or has long arms, bend a skeleton (armature) from soft aluminium wire and build the clay around it.
- To make a character talk, sculpt a few mouth shapes and swap them between frames.
- Morphs are claymation's superpower: change a shape a little each frame and a ball becomes a cat.
- Smooth fingerprints with a modelling tool, or a fingertip with a tiny drop of oil, before each frame.
- Use the onion skin to check that each move is small and even.
Questions
What clay is best for claymation?
Oil-based modelling clay, often sold as plasticine. It doesn't dry out under the lights, keeps its colour and can be reshaped again and again. Avoid air-dry and polymer clay for animation.
Is claymation hard?
A simple claymation is easy: a clay ball that rolls, squashes and bounces takes 30 frames. Characters that walk and talk take more patience, mostly because clay shows every fingerprint.
How many frames does a claymation need?
About 10 frames per second of film at 10 frames per second. A 10-second clay film is around 100 frames; many classic clay films run at 12 or 24 frames per second.
Can I make a claymation on my phone?
Yes. Prop the phone over your scene, open the studio on this page and shoot frame by frame. It shows your last frame over the camera (onion skin), so you can see how far you've moved the clay.
Is claymation the same as stop motion?
Claymation is one kind of stop motion: the kind made with clay. Stop motion also covers puppets, toys, paper cut-outs and even people (pixilation).