What is stopmotion

stopmotion is a LaTeX packtage that puts images on each pages so you can riffle them to get a nice stop motion effect!

How to

The images must be assemble in a single folder with all the same names plus an index starting at 1 (e.g. ./images/image1.png, ./images/image2.png, ./images/image3.png, etc)

To use it, include the package using \usepackage[bothpages]{stopmotion}. The avalaible options are bothpages, rightonly and leftonly. These options are mutually exclusive in nature, but it is not tested. Therefore defining two of them will lead to undefined behavior. After including the package, one must initialize stopmotion by using the \initializeStopMotion{path_to_images}{number_of_images}{x_position}{y_position}{size} command. Where x_position and y_position are the coordinates on the page (if twoside is defined, the even pages uses -x_position instead). The path_to_images is the relative or absolute path to the images, including the name of the images, but excluding the indices and extension (e.g. ./images/image) . The number_of_images is the maximum index of image to draw before restarting to 1.

Afterwards, when they want to start the drawing of the images on the document, they must use the command \startStopMotion{starting_index} where starting_index default value is 1. To stop the stop motion, one can use the command \terminateStopMotion. Please note that it is possible to restart the drawing, but default index will be again 1 and not the last one when the stop motion was terminated.

It is possible to rescale or reposition the image using the commands \setStopMotionSize{new_size} and \setStopMotionPosition{x_position}{y_position}, which are pretty self-describing!

Example

% Load the document
\documentclass[a4paper,10pt,twoside]{article} % oneside also works fine
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} 

% Load and initialize the stop_motion package
\usepackage[bothpages]{stopmotion} % leftonly or rightonly are also options (only relevant when oneside is on)
\initializeStopMotion{./images/stop}{24}{200}{370}{.05\textheight}

% Populate the document with some lorem ipsum text
% Start the stop motion on page 3 at index 5, modify some aspect on page 10 and terminate on page 15
\begin{document}
  %%% SOME TEXT UP TO THE PAGE WHERE ONE WANTS TO BEGIN THE STOP MOTION %%%
  \startStopMotion
  %%% SOME TEXT UP TO THE PAGE WHERE ONE WANTS TO STOP THE STOP MOTION %%%
  \terminateStopMotion
 	%% SOME TEXT
\end{document}

Enjoy stop motionning your documents!

Written by Pariterre on the 13th of August, 2019