This year's Macworld/iWorld is overflowing with iOS apps, a reflection of the growing importance of Apple's iDevices in the Mac community. The best among these are really novel software offerings, and Boinx Software's iStopMotion 2 stands above most of the rest as a fun and well realized leveraging of the iPad's technology.
iStopMotion does exactly what you'd think from seeing its name: it allows users to film stop motion videos — think Wallace and Gromit — using an iPad. Boinx's kiosk in the middle of Appalooza has been a crowd favorite since the expo began, children and adults alike looking on, transfixed.
The demo setup consisted of several adorable clay monsters. With demo participants occasionally snapping pictures for key frames, the attendant would reshape and reposition the clay monsters to have them perform a series of motions. Along the way, he'd tell the participants when to snap pictures using iStopMotion's interface.
The resulting product was a smooth animation of the sort one might expect from classic "Sesame Street": not on the level of, say, Chicken Run, but more than impressive enough to merit the Best of Show award the software got.
It's a really impressive app that produces some frankly delightful results. I'm curious, though, as to whether it will be as easy for regular users to navigate in real life as it was with assistance from the kiosk attendant. I noticed confusion on several faces when the attendant mentioned things like "key frames." It's possible, though, that a short tutorial will bring the average user up to speed.
Reprinted with permission from Apple Insider
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