Stop motion in Final Cut Pro X - specific questions

[vmln8r]

Hi folks. I'm trying to create a stopmotion in which objects added to a frame fade in a specified direction. Here's some pictures which show what I'd like to achieve (taken from here):

The corner brick simultaneously rises out of the plate and fades in (the plate's also being distorted, but that doesn't seem essential). Is it possible to achieve this in Final Cut Pro X?

The second thing that has me stumped is how to achieve a consistent (white) background throughout a stop motion. FCPX's 'Match Color' works well for video, but seems to produce extremely inconsistent results for pictures, even across a simple ten-frame animation. I could use Photoshop, but would prefer not to. Here's one of the aforementioned ten-frames:

DIsclaimer: I have no intention of competing with artifex.

Edited June 11, 2012 by VMLN8R

[Darkdragon]

You can do the first thing using two effects filters. One would be just keyframiing the motion to make the brick appear to rise up. You'd need to matte out the background of that frame though. If you aren't familiar with these terms, you might want to look into some books on special effects and FCP filters. It's actually not too difficult, but a bit involved to explain over a forum post The second filter to use for the brick fade is just a simple FadeIn which is found under the transistion filters.

As far as the background issues you mention, that is really something you should be handling during production and not a "fix it in post" thing. The software can really only do so much if you have a dark or discolored image. Your best bet if you can't reshoot the images is to just key out the background entirely and slap a white background into the timeliine.

I know it's been a month since you asked, but I hope this helps!