Animator is a resource for budding animators, be it with a pencil, plasticine/clay, puppets or computer. Animator has two main sections; a blog with information that we hope is useful to animation enthusiasts and an archive of articles originally published in a magazine called Animator’s newsletter.
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 Matter of Loaf and Death was the big TV hit of Christmas 2008 and features the voices of Geraldine McEwan, Peter Sallis and Sally Lindsay.
In the movie Wallace and Gromit have opened a bakery and business is booming, mainly because a Cereal Killer has murdered all the other bakers in town. Gromit is worried that they may be the next victims, but Wallace does not care, as he has fallen head over heels in love with former star of the Bake-O-Lite bread commercials, Piella Bakewell. Then Gromit makes a shocking discovery which points to the killer’s true identity. Can he save his master from becoming the next baker to be butchered?
In an interview with Times Online it was pointed out that there are fingerprints in the Plasticine characters. Nick Park replied; “We’re very proud that it’s hand-made, and we don’t want to tidy things up too much. Those thumb prints are a reminder of the work that went into it.”
There is a fascinating behind the scenes video entitled “Wallace and Gromit – A Matter of Loaf and Death – How They Donut” on the Aardman’s channel at the YouTube website.
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.
Among the movies on offer are Peter Lord’s Oscar-nominated Adam in which God is attempting to lay down some rules to the first man on Earth – while Adam himself is longing for somebody to keep him company. Plasticine animation.
Will Becher’s Boxed In centres on an old man, living alone in a sparse room. But when a mouse incurs into his tiny world, he rediscovers some purpose and vigor. Puppet animation.
Creature Comfortsis the Oscar-winning short from Wallace and Gromit creator Nick Park, in which interviews with the public are used to put words in animal mouths. Plasticine animation.
Adam, Boxed In and Creature Comforts from Aardman Animations studio.
Let us know your favourite out of this Aardman collection in a comment to this post.
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.
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.
Morph was created by Peter Lord of Aardman animation. The studio went on to produce the “Wallace and Gromit” movies, so from small acorns great oak trees grow.
The kit contains three blocks of Plasticine; a large terracotta block for Morph’s body, and small blocks of white and black for the eyes. There are some suitably sized plastic props including a skate board and a cricket bat. There is a leaflet with diagrams on modelling Morph and the best bit of all; a “How to model Morph” DVD. The DVD has Peter Lord modelling Morph from a block of modelling clay, or Plasticine, as we call it in England. As he models he gives tips on how to go about it. For example the legs and arms are pulled out of the ball of Plasticine rather than being added on. This gives them more strength. The DVD also includes 15 Morph episodes.
There is also a “my own Chas” kit that enables you to create your own cheeky Chas out of Plasticine. This also has an instructional DVD that includes 10 bumper length episodes plus an introduction to Chas from Peter Lord.
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.
In very clear language Tristan takes the children through the process from scripting to animation using clips, real models from the films, drawings and stories. Near the end of the video clip he takes questions from the children who demonstrate a great enthusiasm for the subject.
A sequence I found particularly interesting was how they get the plasticine characters lips to move in time with the sound track. He shows a set of pre-moulded plasticine mouths that are substituted in turn to give the movements. That alone shows the great attention to detail that is needed to bring the characters to life.
Tristan Oliver has shot all of Aardman’s best loved stop frame animations, including The Wrong Trousers, A Close Shave, Chicken Run and The Curse of the Wererabbit.
The eleven minute video clip can be viewed at the BAFTA web site.
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. You would expect software of this calibre to be very expensive, but luckily for us home animators it comes in a range of prices to suit most pockets. The basic version is called “Stop Motion Pro Action!” and this does enough to satisfy the needs of a novice animator. It is compatible with Microsoft Vista, XP and Windows 7.
The first step was to download the software. It is a big file at 24,536 KB so took several minutes. Once downloaded it was just a matter running the file to set up the software. This went very smoothly and I was soon ready to make my first movie. When the program is loaded it pops up a box asking what you want to call your move and the name of the first scene. Having done this you are now ready to add some still frames.
There are various ways of feeding it with stills; a web cam, a digital still camera, a video camera or even a scanner. I had my digital still camera to hand so decided to use that. Some still cameras allow you to connect them to a computer, view a live image on the screen and record the still frame to the computer. Unfortunately my camera is not one of those so I had to settle for taking a series of pictures and then transferring them to the computer with the cables provided by the camera manufacturer. I set the camera to its lowest picture size of 640 by 480 pixels. This gave me room for thousands of pictures on my memory card.
For this test I rested the camera on my desk, held it down and clicked the shutter. I then moved a couple of objects and took another picture, and so on until I had a sequence of 30 frames. I transferred these to my computer ready to import into Stop Motion Pro.
You click on “Import” on the file menu and browse to the folder where you stored your pictures and select them. You then get an option to change the running order if you wish. When the pictures are loaded the first frame is displayed on the screen ready for you to run the movie. A click on the toolbar below the picture and the scene is played. No matter how long you have been doing animation it is always a thrill to see your work come to life on the screen.
Having got your pictures into Stop Motion Pro there is much more to do with them. A feature that caught my eye on the “Getting started” tutorial on the Stop Motion Pro web site was the ability to make a reverse copy of your action. You use a tool that copies the frames you select and pastes them after your first set in reverse order. The objects on my desk now moved forward and then returned to their original positions. I set the play to loop so that they went forwards and back continuously, what fun.
The basic version also enables you to paint on the frames so that you can create special effects such as explosions.
When your movie is ready you can export it to a AVI, WMV or MOV file and share it with your friends. The next version up called “Action! Plus” even has YouTube uploading built in.
The best feature of this program is the ability to preview your plasticine animation as you go along. To enable this you do need to have your webcam or digital camera set up to capture live frames on your computer. Stop Motion Pro adds you frame captures to your movie as you go along and you can play the animation created so far, at any point. This means that you can check on the speed and smoothness of your animation and adapt it if necessary. This feature makes it a great learning tool.
All in all it is a great piece of software and it is well worth trying the free trial version from the Stop Motion Pro website.
If you found this review useful please let us know in a comment to this post.
Maybe you have been inspired by the adventures of Wallace and Gromit and would like to produce your own animated plasticine films. If you are wondering where to start here is a complete beginner’s guide to plasticine animation.
First some advice from amateur animator Fred O’Neil (writing in A.N. issue 4): “Try putting a ball of plasticine in front of the camera, set the camera to single frame, and take one picture only. Taking care not to shift the ball from its original position, squeeze it very slightly, and take another picture. Continuing in this way, the ball you began with will assume various shapes, and in this way you can obtain inspiration. Work patiently and slowly for the whole effect can be spoiled large movements.”
If you are new to animation you are probably wondering where to get a camera that takes single frames. If you, or someone in your household, has a webcam or a digital still camera then you already have such a camera. It is just a matter of getting the single frames taken on the web cam or digital camera into your computer and make them into a movie. There is some software that you can download free that will capture your images and enable you to convert them into movies. It can be used with a video camera, webcam or digital still camera and is compatible with Windows from XP onwards. See the external links at the end of this post for more details.
Now that you have your camera set up you are ready to learn from the experiences of some other animators. Lewis Cooper tells us “You’ve decided to make a film one frame at-a-time. To make it you’ll need lights which get very hot but the substance you have chosen to use slowly melts under those lights. Not only that, the substance has the alarming tendency of falling over at regular intervals, thereby flattening the features you’ve carefully modelled. Even if you can achieve the impossible and prevent it falling over, the very act of manipulating the substance to get your animation slowly disintegrates your model. You’ve guessed it – this melting, squashing, disintegrating substance is plasticine. It is also an excellent medium for the animator to work in. These statements side-by-side indicate the basic requirement for all animators. They need to be a little nutty. Having established that fact, let’s talk about animating plasticine.” You can read the rest of the article in A.N. issue 3 page 14.
David Coleman recalls his first experience of plasticine animation (writing in A.N. issue 5 page 20): “All went well during-the first twenty-eight hours of shooting. I did not have to do as much re-furbishing of my huge and heavy, white horses (more than a 500g pack of plasticine in each of them!) as I had expected. One nomad did seem determined to get a new nose job every few hours, but I was in time to catch most of those suicidal characters who tried to dash their faces against the chipboard of the square. People say plasticine figures are less temperamental than real actors but don’t you believe it!”
What are you planning to do with this informaton about plasticine animation? Please share with us in a comment to this post.
MonkeyJam – a program designed to capture images from a webcam, camcorder, or scanner and assemble them as separate frames of an animation. Free to download.
Stop Motion Pro – image capture software as used by Aardman Animation Studios. Download a 30 day free-trial version.
Links to other sites from the pages of this website are for information only. Products are reviewed for the interest of the reader. No guarantees are expressed or implied.
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