Creating Videos of your Art or Craft Work

To get started you of course need to sign up on YouTube and create an account. If you don't have much experience with the site, take some time to browse around and see how it works, watch some videos.

To create your videos you of course need a camera, there are any number of good digital video camera and digital still cameras with basic video recording. You will also need some video editing software (see each section for different software options).

Once you've created your video it's time to upload it. Make sure you put it in the appropriate catagory, give it an interesting title, description, and tags so people can find your video. Then link it on your blog, website, myspace profile, etc. to help get the word out.

This tutorial is for making an animated gif but it should be just as easy to save the result as an avi instead. *Warning* This tutorial shows he process of makign a turnaroud of a nude model so you've been warned if it offends you.

Making a Flyaround Image

This is the bare basic video. Take out your camera, set up your artwork in a well lighted area (I prefer natural sunlight), and take your video. If your work is 3 dimensional like mine you may want to walk around it with the camera or rotate it on a lazy susan. Below you can see an example that's a walkthrough of my photo studio.

If you want to create a video from a series of photos or scans of your artwork you can create a slide show. Thankfully slide show software has many more fun options to make your presentations interesting than an old fashioned slide show projector, you can add different transitions between photos, zoom in on areas of the photos, add music and titles. Below you can see an example I made using work in progress photos of one of my sculptures to show it's progression from concept to completion.

Some of the most popular art videos on YouTube are of artists demonstrating how they create they're work. You can video yourself painting, sculpting, etc. or compile a slide show of photos of your work in various stages and even include either recorded commentary or titles explaining the process.

If you have created a work of art based on a real person, animal, or object, or created a series of similar work a morph can be a fun way to display your efforts. A morph is created by software which blends one image into another (or a whole series). You can see an example I created below using a photo of my face and a self-portrait sculpture.

Once you've shot your video (or compiled a slide show or morph) you may want to do a little editing to make it look more professional. At the least you should add an opening title with your name and the title of the work, and at the end closing credits that mention your website if you have one.

Other things you can do are add extra audio, either music or recorded commentary with a microphone. Titles explaining further information about the sculpture, fun scene transitions (try not to go overboard with them, only use one or two types of transition per video). Combine several videos together, just keep in mind that 10 minutes is the maximum length of videos you can put on YouTube and under 5 minutes is probably best. Overall remember to have fun with the videos even a little goofy, people go to YouTube for entertainment so try to give it to them instead of being overly serious.

This tutorial lens is a creation of Noadi's Art

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