Aardman Animations the plasticine puppeteers. Plasticine animators Peter Lord and David Sproxton gained their early experience animating Morph for a children’s television show. Nowadays their studio is in great demand for television commercial work but they still find time to produce entertainment animation, such as their Lip Synch series shown recently on Channel Four. Report… Read More »
The brief called for something of a pliable nature with the ability to change shape, to metamorphosis, something the producer was very keen about, so Morph was born. “I’ve never liked it when he changes shape,” confesses Peter. “When he has changed into a duck or a goose or something, he has stopped being a… Read More »
I ask Peter how talented young people can train to become model animators. “Well, we do have students here but I couldn’t claim to be doing much training. It is easy to say I believe in it but it is difficult to put into practice. We get students in quite a lot, but as far… Read More »
There is a deal of preparation before the animation can start. “On this particular job the model makers upstairs are contributing a great deal by making special inbetweens. The chaps head changes into a lion’s head so they have made me ten heads for changing. It is probably a bit more Vintoney to make all… Read More »
“I set it in a maze to make it claustrophobic. He eventually gets out of the maze through a window. I worked with two professional comics on the soundtrack. The sequence in the pub was a bit of their act. I wanted them to expand that to five minutes but it has taken them years… Read More »
David J.M. Coleman describes a way of adding visual interest to a Plasticine puppet film with camera movement. I wanted to make a film of a legend… and after rejecting quite a few classical myths because they required too much specialist knowledge from an audience, I decided on the third part of the Old English… Read More »
The next step in camera movement after this is to liberate the camera from its earthly existence altogether, and give it wings. This is achieved mind-bogglingly-well in the many adverts and title-sequences on television which now use sophisticated 3D computer animation: the Indesit advert, and the absolutely outstanding new title-sequence for Weekend World are the… Read More »
David Coleman tells us about Animated Black Theatre and Camera movements. Most of you have seen live-action “black theatre” puppet shows, where the stage and the puppeteers are completely dressed in black and can thus manipulate the puppets in space (without the need for strings, sticks or other obtrusive equipment) while themselves remaining “invisible”. It… Read More »
In one scene from “Vulture” in which each of the three characters is filmed on a separate exposure, we see in the far distance a man in red (i.e. an element in the composition that remains on an implied “ground”) watching the vulture – on the same level to start with – spreading his wings… Read More »
Reminiscences
By D J M Coleman
I first began to draw ‘animatable’ pictures in the early seventies, after seeing Bob Godfrey’s excellent DO-IT-YOURSELF FILM ANIMATION SHOW. The fact that I did not possess a cine camera did not bother me. I hoped to borrow one of the two I knew existed in my wider family and save up for “a film” myself. I spent a great many hours drawing complete scenes on IZAL medicated toilet-paper a convenient source of standard-sized sheets of tracing paper.