Introduction Devices You'll Need and Teacher Ideas This book is designed to explore the history and technique of stop motion animation. The software is secondary and is in fact so easy to use and ingenious that it allows you to concentrate on the art instead of the technology. You will need to use a computer, a camera, and connectors, so let's get these issues out of the way so we can start having some fun. Computer Stop Motion Pro is designed to run on the Windows operating systems XP, Vista (32 bit, 64 bit), or Windows 7 (32 bit, 64 bit). It is recommended that you have at least a 1.8+ GHz CPU and 1 GB of RAM for Windows XP and 2 GB for Vista or Windows 7. The faster the machine, the better! For hard drive space, you should have more than 10 GB to store your projects. If you are an Intel MAC user, you can run Stop Motion Pro if you install Apple boot camp, Parralells, or VMfusion and a version of Windows XP, Vista, or Windows 7. If you are using a web cam, keep in mind that it will have system requirements as well so you will need to add those to the Stop Motion Pro recommendations. For Chapter 1 I use a Microsoft LifeCam VX-6000 web cam. Its system requirements are as follows: Processor