Animal review

Damien McFerran

We review Animal, a movie making application for Google Android

Published on Feb 2, 2010

Stop-frame animation is becoming something of a dying art these days. The medium that brought characters such as Wallace and Gromit to life is rapidly being superseded by CGI, which is less-time consuming and grants the animator more freedom to experiment.

Purists will argue that it’s not quite the same and thankfully Android users can keep the practice alive with Animal, an app which allows you to create short moving picture stories using your phone’s camera.

Before you compose your stop-motion work of art you have to decide select the duration of the clip you’d like to create. You can choose from 4 frames or 12 frames, with the former being ideal for tiny animations and the latter being more suited to larger productions.

Obviously neither option is going to allow you to create your long-awaited magnum opus, but the files generated are small enough to email to friends, which is a bonus.

Once you’ve decided the length of the clip you’re presented with a real-time image from your phone’s camera. Tapping the screen takes the first shot, which is then relocated to the top-half of the display.

The bottom portion of the screen once again shows the view from your camera so you can setup the next image while consulting the previous shot to make sure everything flows together as it should.

As you take more and more shots the animation slowly starts to take shape; once you’ve completed your clip you can save it for posterity and share it with your friends.

Animal is unquestionably fun to use but it is limited somewhat by a few factors. Firstly, if you’re using an older Android device – such as the aging T-Mobile G1/Dream – then the poor quality camera will make your animations look washed out.

Newer handsets have better snappers and predictably they produce far superior results. Obviously the wide variation in camera quality isn’t the fault of Animal’s developer, but it’s worth noting all the same.

The problem with using newer phones is that Animal has a few stability issues. The developer has stated that the app was developed using a HTC Dream phone, so if you happen to possess one of these first-gen Android devices then you’ll find using this app to be a trouble-free experience.

However, judging from reports online there are major compatibility problems with more recent phones, such as Motorola’s Droid (or Milestone as it’s known in Europe).

However, things are still at a very early stage and the developer has publicly stated that as time goes by Animal will support more handsets.

While it’s clearly a work-in-progress Animal is still a worthwhile download.

If you’ve ever watched the exploits of Aardman Animation on TV and wished you could also master the endangered pastime of stop-frame imaging then give this a whirl – it might just set you on the path to your dream profession.