Claymation Tips?

Lucky Cynic

For a class project of mine, I am to be making a claymation movie picture and while it wolnt be too long or too impressive, I would like some tips as to how to go about making a very nice quality movie. I plan to take pictures using my crappy video cam corder and simply edditing all of the images into a movie with Windows Movie maker, which isnt too bad. I'm more worried about keeping the animation looking smooth. The basic plan is to make a sort of diarama and have the camera move along a sandy beach and then stay focused on a mount as a coconut begins to grow slowly into a full palm tree. I have a few issues though. How many FPS should I aim for? 3? 7? 21? Also, Im not soo sure as to how to do the day/night sequence. I think im going to make a sun and moon paper model and having them paperclipped to the same place, and every 3 or 4 frames, changing them and turning down the lights to show the day/night sequence in action. Seems good? Im going to have the tree grow up by not adding chunks of it, btw, Im going to show the leaves form and shit which is going to be a real bitch but I have a lot of clay and hope to get several leaves already premade and them keep using them as individual leaves begin to grow to be full size. Anyways, any tips?

Besides being patient?

Aroused Bull

Normal film runs at 24 frames per second; a lot of stop motion uses "doubles", i.e. 12 fps. For a class project, you probably don't need that level of quality - it takes for-fucking-ever to do claymation, so basically you're going to have to trade off smoothness and quality for length and vice versa.
The major problem I see with your tree is that, with claymation, you have to be very careful not to accidentally change or move the model at all - except, of course, for the motion you want to capture. While you're creating leaves on the tree, you're going to have great trouble making sure nothing gets accidentally changed or bumped from shot to shot.
Your proposed day and night sequences will come out just as constant flickering unless you slow the sequence down a little - 3 or 4 frames is far too fast. You'd give a better impression of day and night if you slowed it to about a second at a time or so; even if its less accurate given that the passage of time in the film is going to be very fast, it's a permissable artistic liberty.

Lucky Cynic

What if I edit the film in Moviemaker to make each frame shift into the one following it? Sure, it will take a lot of time, but maybe I can add in extra smoothness that way?

Aroused Bull

I went on Youtube and found these for reference. They're pretty crappy, but they'll give you an idea of different frame rates.

5 fps
10 fps
15 fps
20 fps