I tried to remember to snap a few pictures when the kids came over to do their filming work.  This slideshow will give you an idea of how we did the animations.  I built a lighted stage on top of my pool table (for stability).  I used iStopMotion on an old Macintosh G4 with a Canon Elura 100 connected via firewire.  I also used a Nikon Coolpix 5400 connected via USB for the time-lapse sequences (snake hatching).  The digital camera produces a much better picture than the DV camera.  All of the chroma-key work was done with FX Composite Lab Pro (it is a very professional program).

iStopMotion was great. We set all animations for 15 frames a second, which means 675 pictures for the average 45 second film.  We constantly reviewed our work to see where we were going with a shot.  We didn’t hesitate to delete a dozen shots if things seemed to be happening too fast (usually the problem).  We used a heavy tripod for most shots and I had a tiny table tripod for the closeup work.