The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists

The line up of voice artists for Aardman’s upcoming feature film The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists has been announced. The new stop-motion, Plasticine / claymation animated film is being produced by Aardman Animations for Sony Pictures Animation.

The modelling material used for Plasticine or Claymation stop-motion animation tends to soften under hot lights. At best this leads to more fingerprints showing on your models and at worst the models will refuse to hold their shape or collapse.

Daylight may seem like the obvious answer but it can create problems. The sun will move across the sky during the time it takes to complete your animation and the result will be moving shadows cast by your models. Also, if there are clouds in the sky these may cause the brightness of the light to vary and cause a flickering effect on the finished animation.

The ideal lighting would not reflect any heat onto your models, whilst being bright enough to do the job. Keeping the lamps well back would reduce any heat to a minimum but may result in casting a shadow of camera or animator onto the set.

Designed for educational use, the Hue Animation Studio is a great way to introduce children aged 5+ to the art of stop-motion animation. At the moment it is selling on Amazon UK for less than £50 (full price £79.99), the kit contains everything you need to create stop motion animation videos, apart from a computer.

The kit includes a Hue HD camera, fully-featured animation software for Windows or Mac and Plasticine modelling clay. With Christmas just around the corner it would make a wonderful gift for a youngster in your family. It is sure to keep them engrossed during the Christmas holidays.

Following 12 months in hush-hush development, it has finally been revealed that Wallace & Gromit are to be pictured on this year’s Christmas stamps. Aardman teamed up with Royal Mail to produce the special edition Christmas stamps. They go on sale from the 2nd November 2010 and show the duo going about their seasonal duties.

Nick Park, the Creator of Wallace and Gromit, said “It was one of the biggest challenges my talented team and I have faced yet – to create memorable Christmas images of the duo – the size of postage stamps.

The Wallace and Gromit TV short “A Matter of Loaf and Death” has been nominated for an Oscar for best animated short film in the 82nd Academy Awards. It was made at the Aardman animation studio and directed by Nick Park. Nick has previously been Oscar nominated five times and won four times (the fifth nomination was against another of his own films).

A collection of 13 short films from the Aardman Animations studio have been added to a film site called Indie Movies Online. The movies are free to watch although you do have to sit through a 30 second advert before the movie plays.

If you are considering having a go at Plasticine animation then an easy way to start is with a “my own Morph” kit from Flair Create. It is available from Amazon UK .

The Plasticine stop-motion character Morph first appeared on a children’s TV art show called “Take Hart” in 1977. He interacted with the shows presenter Tony Hart, providing short humorous sequences. Much of the action consisted of Morph changing shape, such as rolling into a ball. Or he would disappear into the table top as if sinking into water. These kind of actions suit the medium of Plasticine as it is infinitely changeable.

Director of Photography, Tristan Oliver, demonstrated the secrets behind Aardman’s animated Wallace and Gromit movie “The Curse of the Wererabbit” to a group of 11 year olds in a video clip on the BAFTA website.

Having mentioned the Stop Motion Pro software in my previous post about plasticine animation I decided to test drive the free version that is available as a download from the Stop Motion Pro website. The latest Wallace and Gromit half hour special from Aardman, “A Matter of Loaf and Death” was filmed using Stop Motion Pro HD Studio.