Here's a short behind the scenes film, from a series called "Raa Raa the noisy Lion" that I worked on.

animation exercise - bouncing ball

A good place to start with your animation is with a simple bouncing ball exercise.  You don't any puppets and it incorporates rhythms, weight, arcs and timing.

Point your camera downwards towards your desk or floor then use a coin and then follow the spacing on the diagram below to make it look like it's bouncing.  The ball should move slower at the top of the arc where momentum turns to gravity.

Try it several times each time try express different weights/types of ball by varying the spacing and the height

If you use plasticine or blu-tack you can include some squash and stretch as the ball impacts onto the ground.

Photography 101 - depth of field

If you’re going to use a DSLR you need to understand the relationship between aperture settings and shutter speeds. 

Aperture settings, known as f-stops, are found on the lens barrel of the older manual lenses, but if you use a modern electronic lens you’ll control it through the capture software.  The largest aperture (when the iris is open widest) is the smallest number - often around f/2.8, and the smallest aperture will be the largest number (say f/22).  Each change in f-stop setting halves/doubles the light reaching the camera sensor.

By changing the aperture setting on your lens you take control over the depth of field.  The smaller the aperture, the more you get in focus.  A wider aperture enables you to soften the background or foreground in your image. 

Each time you adjust the aperture setting you’ll need to adjust the shutter speed to compensate.  The larger the hole in the iris, the more light comes through - so your going to need a faster shutter speed and vice versa.

You should be able to control the shutter speed through the capture software.  The higher the number the faster the shutter speed – so 1/4 is a quarter of a second fast and 1/16 is a sixteenth of a second.  In normal photography a slow shutter speed would blur movement and fast one freeze action, but in stop-motion the camera’s locked down and the puppet will be still, so it’s not going to really matter.