Posts Tagged ‘puppet animation’

Barry Purves

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.

The event entitled PASSION, PROCESS and PERFORMANCE takes place on Monday 22 and Tuesday 23 February 2010 at the Norwich Puppet Theatre, in Norwich, UK.

Barry Purves will not only look at the different techniques, but also at why puppets, and the relationship between puppets and puppeteers, are such a fundamental element of all cultures throughout history. With the group he will try to answer ‘what are puppets?’ and ‘why do we need them?’

In the evening Barry will screen a selection of his own and some of his favourite films in full.

Barry has animated on and directed many series for television such as The Wind in the Willows, Rupert Bear, and most recently, Bob the Builder. He has worked in significant roles on such feature films as Mars Attacks and King Kong, and directed over 60 commercials and titles sequences, including a current campaign for Marketing Manchester.

Barry’s talk is based on discussions in his first book: “Stop Motion – passion, process, performance” which was released last year. Using animation as a catalyst, it looks at the creative process of many media. A second publication: “Animation Basics – Stop Motion”, will be released in early 2010 and will be aimed at students and first time animators.

You will find more details and booking information on the Norwich Puppet Theatre website.

Have you read Barry Purves’ book “Stop Motion – passion, process, performance”? If you have please share your thoughts on it in a comment to this post.

Coraline

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.

It is the story of Coraline Jones, who is bored in her new home until she finds a secret door and discovers an alternate version of her life on the other side. This parallel reality seems much better than her real life to start with, but then this seemingly perfect world turns dangerous – and the fun begins.

There are ten behind-the -scenes videos, each running for two to three minutes.

The one called “Bringing It To Life Featurette” uses speeded up footage to show the animators at work. There are also clips from the movie interspersed with interviews with the film makers.

A video called “Brian and Martin Featurette” concentrates on a scene where Coraline gets accidentally soaked from a bath shower. To animate the water they created a series of plastic models of the spray water and substituted them one frame at a time.

The “3D Featurette” demonstrates how they set about shooting the two viewpoints necessary for 3D using just one camera.

Let us know your thoughts on these behind the scenes videos in a comment to this post.

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.

Skeleton warriors from Jason and the Argonauts.

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.

The Harryhausen Chronicles documentary, narrated by Leonard Nimoy, covers much of his work with some great close-ups of his puppets and lots of advice from the master himself. In the introduction Ray Harryhausen says: “Fantasy is a dream world and I don’t think you want it quite real. You want an interpretation and stop motion gives it an added value that you can’t catch if you try to make it too real.”

The Harryhausen Chronicles are split into six parts. The links are below:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

What is you most memorable Harryhausen movie?

Paddington Bear in episode 1 of the original TV series.

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.

Now Paddington Bear is to take to the big screen in a production that is to be a mixture of live action and computer animation. The film is being produced by David Heyman, the man behind the Harry Potter films. The Sun newspaper reports Mighty Boosh star Noel Fielding has been signed up to play Paddington Bear’s cousin – a half man, half beast who, like Paddington, comes from Darkest Peru.

The original TV stories were written by Michael Bond with puppet and drawn animation by Ivor Wood. In the first episode the bear is spotted by the Brown family on Paddington station where he had arrived from Darkest Peru as a stowaway. He had a label round his neck that read “Please look after this bear, thank you”. In no time at all Mrs Brown named him after the station and he became part of their family.

It is understood the new film will be based on an original screenplay inspired by the various characters and episodes in Paddington’s life as told through Bond’s books. It is being co-written by The Mighty Boosh director Paul King and Hamish McColl, co-writer of 2007 comedy film Mr Bean’s Holiday. Paddington Bear has much in common with Mr Bean; both are very polite and very accident-prone.