Cadbury fingers advert.
A post on the FLIP blog poses the question “Is it animation or is it puppetry and what is the difference?”. They are talking about the Cadbury fingers “Good Times” advert which uses puppets filmed in real time rather than with stop-motion filming.
Oscar and BAFTA-nominated animation director Barry Purves has written a book that teaches the skills required to develop as a creative stop-motion animator or articulated puppet maker. Basics Animation: Stop-motion explores how all the elements of film-making camera work, design, colour, lighting, editing, music and storytelling come together to create animation.
Oscar and BAFTA-nominated animation director Barry Purves will lead a two day discussion and celebration of puppets in all their many and varied forms, from the most basic rod puppets to stop motion animation figures.
A series of short videos about the making of the animated puppet film “Coraline” can be viewed on the Film in Focus website. Coraline is directed by Henry Selick and is said to be the first stop-motion animated puppet adventure to be originally filmed in 3D.
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 an aspiring puppet animator you can now learn from the master of fantasy animation in a series of movies on YouTube. Some of Harryhausen’s most notable works have included his animation on Mighty Joe Young made with pioneer Willis O’Brien, which won the Academy Award for special effects in 1949, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and Jason and the Argonauts, featuring a famous sword fight against six skeleton warriors.
Animator Barry Leith with Paddington at FilmFair studios (1982)
Paddington Bear was featured in Animator’s newsletter issue 3, winter 1982 when we interviewed director of animation Barry Leith at FilmFair Animation Studios. At the time Barry was working on the Paddington Bear TV series. In that series Paddington was a puppet and the humans drawn animation, cut-out and mounted on card so that they could be integrated on the same set as the puppet.