I’ve wanted to do a video/stop motion GIF for a while now but I just hadn’t decided what to do it on. I was scanning round my office and my eyes fell on my Man-E-Faces figure and it just seemed like a no brainer. Simple movement, restricted behind the helmet, perfect. I just had to add the motion blur and bob’s your uncle.
For those interested I made this in Photoshop. Firstly I took photos of the head turning at eight different points between each head. In order to keep the figure steady I actually had him squeezed into a Bullseye ‘Bully’ tankard.
I had one master layer with the Man-E-Faces head with a hole cut out where the faces look through. I then had all the different photos in layers under that and just aligned them up manually. I added motion blur incrementally so that the first pictures in each head turn had low motion blur and the middle image in each head turn had higher motion blur. After that I had to also cut out all of the head switches, the bit you twist with your fingers. I just did this for one head turn and then copied it three times as it is the same after it rotates a third of a revolution. I just added very minimal motion blur to this one. These then went in layers above the main helmet master layer. And that was it really. The Photoshop Timeline window is very easy to use. Pretty quick to put together. It’s not perfect but I’m still pretty pleased for my first attempt in only a couple of hours.
