I know this ages me a bit but when I was a kid, I had a Super8 camera I used to make my own stop-motion animations film. I wasn't quite Ray Harryhausen but I had fun nonetheless. Is it possible to do this same type of stuff with todays camcorders?

Certain cameras do have that function. If not, it must be done manually by editing on the computer. You must take a billion screenshots and set each time to 1 frame. Its VERY time consuming but it works. good luck!