Stop-motion is more of an animation technique with a story history that can be traced back to the 19th century and which has gained ground in recent decades thanks to franchises such as Wallace and Gromit. If you feel inspired to make your own movie in this style, all you need is your phone.

The most basic form of stop-motion animation you can perform on your phone is to take one frame after another and then stitch them together using a movie creation application such as iMovie (free for iOS) or Splice (free for iOS and Android ).

Choose a more specialized tool

 you can use features such as overlays to give you an idea of   what the previous slide will look like when you set up a new one (technically known as an onion). The best applications - including the one we'll show below, Stop Motion Studio, give you a composition guide to set everything up, as well as options for running group shots. You can also check out Stop Motion Maker for Android and iOS, which learns fast and offers add-ons such as video filters.

With Stop Motion Studio

Because we can't cover the details of every stop-motion editing application, we chose one of the best in the Stop Motion Studio team after spending some time with a few. Our advice will be specific to this application, but in general you should extrapolate it to any program you choose.

Stop Motion Studio is available on your phone, but it also has apps for Windows and macOS if you want to transfer them to your computer for editing. All your projects will sync seamlessly between your devices. You use the software for free, but you can upgrade and access other features. Full details are in the app, but add-ons include sound and video effects, the ability to change the background (green screen effect), and support for 4K output.

To start Stop Motion Studio

click the New Movie button that appears on the home screen (you can also see a preview of the project called Big Fish). Once you've created a new project, you're ready to frame your first photo: Take it in your phone's camera view, then click the camera icon in the upper right corner.

This is where the main shooting takes place: Use the red button (right) to capture an image. To the right are also the settings and timer buttons (clock icon), see what you have so far (play icon), and adjust settings such as zoom and white balance. (scroll icon).

Drag the slider on the left side of the screen up or down to slowly display the previous slide - this will really help you place each slide. It is important to make sure that you keep the camera in a consistent and firm position, otherwise the composition of the resulting video will fluctuate.

You can stop the capture interface at any time by clicking the back arrow (top right). This returns you to the timeline table, where you can browse all the slides you've captured so far. Tap each slide to see several options, including copying and deleting individual slides.

To the left of the timeline screen are buttons for recording your own sound (this is the microphone button) and other elements such as project captions and video clips (this is the add button). You can't add captions without purchasing the Pro version, but you can create your own and take pictures of them.

Click the gear icon (bottom left) to set project options, including aspect ratio, speed, and output resolution. If you get stuck at any point, click the question mark icon on the right to bring up an overlay that shows what all the buttons are doing. Just above that is a handy undo button, for reversing your most recent change. When you’re all done, go back to the opening screen and long press your project’s to start the process to finish your work.