Stop Motion CRAFT SKILLS FOR MODEL ANIMATION

186 STOP MOTION Water Add either splashes cast out of clear resin or cut out of clear or frosted acetate, randomly appearing for two/four frames here and there. Glycerine is thick enough to use for drips running down a window. For pouring water, or a torrent, use cling wrap or cellophane. Smoke Cotton wool teased out to thin wisps or try thin shavings of rigid white packing foam. Fog/mist A few layers of net stretched on a frame catching the light and animating gently could create fog. Tristan Oliver, DOP on Aardman’s e Wrong Trousers, lit stretches of net further back in the set for shafts of sunlight on an early morning street scene; this helped to create a sense of depth in the scene. Wind is is a bit ddly to achieve on a whole set if it’s an exterior, although it would bring a lot of life to the usual sti trees and hedges. It would mean having all your branches made with aluminum wire that you could animate. To achieve an e ect of wind with curtains, thread thin aluminum wire into the seams and hem of the fabric, so that it can be animated. Flags can be treated similarly. Alternatively, the fabric could be glued to heavy-duty foil. In e Big Story a ag was animated as a series of drawings, cut-outs and hung on a peg bar outside a window. Motion blur To achieve an illusion of speed, you could either move your background from side to side while expos- ing (not always an easy option!). An exposure of half a second to two seconds helps here. is would give you a blurred background. Or you could attach your character to the camera on a rig so that it was locked into the camera move, and shoot on the move, again with a long shutter speed. is technique was used for the motorbike sequence in Aardman’s A Close Shave and the train sequence in e Wrong Trousers. Consider the editor While lming, if your budget can stand it, consider the editor. ey can always use a little extra at the beginning and end of each shot so that they can get the cut in exactly the right place for the rhythm and pace of the piece. If you are walking a puppet on, start it right o screen. As well as helping you to get into the rhythm with your animation, it also allows a shadow to precede the puppet if the angles

READY TO SHOOT 187 of the lighting cause it. Let your opening move start a little earlier than you’d planned, and the same with the nal move. Final checks before you hit that button Is everything there that you need? Or is there something there that you don’t want? Is the set and everything on it absolutely locked down? Do you have spare for everything? You don’t want to get started and then have to break o in search of bits and pieces. It’s very important to keep your rhythm and concentration going. Do you have spare bits of Plasticine/clay in the right color for eyelids, teeth, spare hands standing by? 1. Are your sculpting tools all there? Small mirror to check lip sync; wet wipes to keep hands clean? 2. Check that nothing is on the set that shouldn’t be there. Check around the four corners of the frame: that will remind you of your composition, as well as show up anything that shouldn’t be there. 3. Is the shot in focus? Is the aperture correct? Have you set the shutter speed? 4. Check for any unwanted re ections and shadows—there may be re ections in shiny areas that you don’t see looking at the set, but you can see through the view nder. You can buy dulling spray from photographic shops, but check later in the shot that it hasn’t smudged. 5. Mark it: identify the shot with a board giving the title of the lm, scene number, and “take” number if necessary. is is helpful to the editor—and you—identifying your shots. If you have forgotten to put it on the start of the shot, it can go on the end, but it must be upside down—an editor recognizes this is marking the end of a shot, rather than the start of a new one. Glossary Black wrap: A heavy-duty black aluminum foil. Many uses, including quick x agging of the lens hood or making mini ags for the set. Available from lm and lighting suppliers. Camera tape: Generally white or yellow—a strong tape for a variety of uses. Traditionally used for taping up a can of lm to go to the labs. Useful for putting down marks, as one can mark increments on it with a ne pen. Available from lm and lighting suppliers. Compositing: Creating new images by combining images from di erent sources such as live lm, 3D imagery, 2D/3D animation, painted backdrops, digital still photographs, or text. Fill light: Light used to ll strong black shadows created by the key light. Can be re ected light rather than a lamp itself. Flag: A shaped at black metal rectangle, can be bought in di erent sizes, used to cut or control where light falls. “Flagging” the light simply means blocking it in some way. Large ags are available

188 STOP MOTION as black reproofed material over a rectangular frame. A “ ag” arm can be a small articulated arm attached to a camera mounting, to block lens are, or a much larger articulated arm used for bigger lamps at a distance. Key light: e main, strongest lamp—either replicating the sun or the moon, or the main source of lighting in an interior. LED: Light Emitting Diode—an energy saving light bulb that uses up to 85% less energy than a traditional tungsten bulb. Although initial costs are higher, the running costs outweigh this, with the added bene t of far less heat output than tungsten bulbs. Re ected light: e light re ected o a subject. Re ector: Anything that can re ect light onto your set—white/black polystyrene (styrofoam) white card, aluminum foil on a card, mirrors. Rim light: Lamp used to backlight characters, giving separation from the background.

12 Post-Production When I rst worked at Aardman I was working a fair bit with Dave Sproxton (co-founder of Aardman) And that was quite an education because he’s not an animator, although he knows it all inside out, how it goes together, the performance, etc. But to cut stu with him—he’s just not precious about the animation. And you learn so much from somebody like that. He’ll say “well that doesn’t work, let’s lop it o !” and you think “My God! My work! …” So you have to get that out the way and then you’re not so precious about all those beautiful little bits. ey aren’t the whole, they may help the story, but they aren’t the story … Je Newitt The picture edit You will have edited the lm as much as possible in advance with the storyboard, and at the animatic stage, and may only need to edit the lm in terms of a few frames cut out here and there. However, if you have had a bit more time you will have given the shots a little overlap or “handle” at the start and nish, to allow a bit more leeway at the edit stage. is will help achieve smoother edits when cutting on a move. But there is still the possibility that the lm needs cutting more seriously. e quote from Je Newitt above perfectly illustrates the bene ts, even if it is somewhat scary, of getting the fresh eye of a professional editor to work on your lm. It is easy to get caught up in your own lm and forget that in terms of getting an audience, you may not be able to stand far enough back to know if everything’s working. Color grading is a process of matching the colors between the scenes: color temperatures and tones may look di erent between shots, and at this stage you can smooth this by changing hues, brightness, and contrast if necessary. Simple editing software allows you to import your shots and arrange them as in Figure 12.1 on the right of the scene. You can then drag your shots down onto the timeline below—and the rst 189

190 STOP MOTION FIGURE 12.1 Clips imported to editing software frame of each selected clip will show up on the view nder. You can trim the length of the shot as you like. Software like this is easy to negotiate your way round and has some basic e ects and titling you can use. As you put your lmed animation sequences back into your timeline, your storyboard gradually comes to life as you link all these separate sequences to make the lm ow. With practice you’ll start to feel where the lm needs to be cut or mixed between scenes—where you want to fade to black or fade in and out of a scene—and the pace takes shape. Post production software such as After E ects or Photoshop will allow you to do the color grade, take out the green screen, and generally tidy up frames; then you can render your shots and export for a nal edit and add your voice-over, music, and titles. Here’s an example work ow: 1. Open new project, select “custom” 1920 × 1080, square pixel either 24 or 25fps depending on US/UK. 2. Select “import le,” select rst still image in folder, select “jpeg image sequence” (or RAW image sequence, depending on how you shot it in the camera ), select “force alphabetical order,” “ok.” 3. Drag it to your timeline.

POST PRODUCTION 191 4. Open that layer to “transform” options (or ⌘ T), “scale” it down to 35% if you shoot on a full- frame camera. Otherwise, manually scale it to t 1920 × 1080 composition. 5. You lose a bit on the top and bottom. Drag the image to crop as you like. 6. Click “Composition” tab, then “add to render queue ... .” 7. Select the render queue tab, click “Output module” tab and choose “Custom, apple pro-res HQ, 1920 × 1080, square pixel, 24/25fps, click “ok.” 8. Select “Output to” tab and name and decide where you want to save the video, click “render.” 9. Once it has rendered, you will have a large, standard, pro format video clip in 16 × 9 aspect ratio— drag this into whichever edit software you are using—Premiere Pro, Final Cut. Here’s a basic run-through of the work ow: All your stills will be in folders on your animation software. You’ll need to • Open a new project on your software (e.g., After E ects, or Premiere Pro). • “Import le” from your stop motion program. Select the rst still image in your folder, select jpeg image sequence (or RAW image sequence). • Drag the sequence to your timeline. • Open that layer (you’ll need to crop or transform, to scale it down, say to 1920 × 1080 to t to screen). • Click the “composition” tab and the “add to render queue.” Choose “custom” or whichever to export it. Compositing is is the technique of marrying two or more shots together in a process where you place di erent versions of the same shot in layers in your edit. It can be complicated or a relatively simple procedure such as cleaning up a rig. ere are several methods of building up a scene that you haven’t been able to create through straightforward stop motion, as mentioned in the previous chapter, using chroma key (blue or green screen) or checkerboarding (front light/ backlight). As discussed in Chapter 11, with a rig. Compositing is becoming more and more familiar as a problem-solving method and illustrates the extent to which stop motion animation and CG operation now work together naturally. Sound When your picture edit is complete, it’s time for the soundtrack—this is where sound design really matters. Music, the characters’ voices and the layers of sound enhance the mood of the lm. You have to build the soundtrack up from nothing—whether it’s an interior or an exterior scene, you will need all the atmosphere sounds that make up that scene.

192 STOP MOTION Interiors may have less layers of sound, but it may be important to hear the atmosphere outside— birdsong, tra c, etc. An interior will have a slight echo, as the sound waves reverberate o the walls. Exterior sounds have no echo—unless you are in a mountain range, thick woodland, or a tunnel. But they do have texture: wind, leaves rustling, water, birdsong, outer space (sound?), rain, tra c. James Mather, supervising sound editor on e Curse of the Were-Rabbit, and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and Victor Frankenstein, explains: Once the lm is delivered, you get given a day per minute to track lay. For a three-minute lm you get two to three hours recording Foley and spot e ects to picture. e Foleys are the most important stage—it’s the bond between the sound e ects, the music and the action. It’s what makes the characters real. It’s quite an art, because you don’t necessarily want to create natural- istic sounds, you have to create a world that goes with these strange characters, so you have to look at them and think, “Is it a rubbery sound? Is it a wooden sound?” And then come up with the e ect that works. Foley artists work to the lm and create e ects such as footsteps, wings apping, knuckles cracking, pencils scribbling, sounds that need to be matched in time to an action on the lm. e sound editor treats the sounds so that they work for the lm, using di erent recording techniques. Mixing together the layers of sound to make the nal soundtrack for the lm If you are doing the sound mix yourself, there is some very basic information to get right about mixing sound. Have the dialog in mono, keeping the sound central (don’t pan left or right on the desk). As industry standard you will need some reference tone set at −18 dB (1 kHz tone) held for one minute at the front of your soundtrack. Once you’ve nished the recording, transfer it to your edit program. It will need a one-frame “sync pop” (a one-frame burst of tone at 1 k) two seconds or 50 frames before the rst frame of visuals, including the titles. Put another sync pop two seconds after the last frame as well. ere should be a corresponding “ ash (white) frame” in exactly the same place on the picture. e tone and ash means audio and video can always be aligned. ere are copyright-free music and e ects tracks on the Internet you can use; if it is the right music that’s ne, but the choice of music is very important, it can really lift a lm. Other than these “free” Internet sites, you cannot use a music track without the permission of its author—a complex, slow, and sometimes extremely expensive procedure. Even “Happy Birthday to You” is subject to copyright laws. ese laws are enforceable as soon as your lm is shown to a fee-paying audience. If you’re uploading to Vimeo or YouTube you’ll nd online help about using copyright music or images. Best of all, create a unique music track for your lm. If you are at college, nd out if there are any musicians who would play for you, or if you know of a music college, approach them with a project.

POST PRODUCTION 193 Titles and credits Finally, you need to put on the titles and credits. ese can be created with your editing program. Be aware in what environment your lm may be screened. Don’t make the type too small either for big screen or for TV. If you want rolling credits, work on your instinct for timing, neither too fast nor too slow. Don’t let the credits end up as long as your lm. ere will be people who have contributed to your lm and it is very important to give credit to them; check if you have credited all funding agen- cies, all in-kind support, and that any music is given a title and credit. If you are able to, get a profes- sional designer to create your titles and credits, alternatively, there are speci c softwares for the job. Exporting your final film You may need to convert your lm into di erent formats for distribution. For sending les via the Internet or uploading to YouTube or Vimeo, you’ll need to make it into a viewable le, both support a variety of les and have tutorials on what codecs you need for best results. If you are entering your lm into competitions, check each festival’s competition guidelines for their preferred format. Many festivals have a submissions portal for uploading your lm and they will guide you. Don’t forget that if you are sending work to the United States or the Far East, you need to produce the nished work in NTSC, which plays back at a di erent frame rate to the PAL format used in the United Kingdom, Europe, and India. Glossary Chroma Key: Special e ects term for compositing two images together based on color hues. Also known as color-keying, color separation overlay (CSO), or blue screen/green screen as those are the most popular color hues. ese are container les. Codec: Video and audio data need to be compressed, so it is encoded, examples are WMV; MP4, H.264, AAC for video and MP3 and WMA for audio. File Formats: ese are container les: AVI. Mov or WMV.



13 Getting the Job The Business of Animation My rst experiments in animation were in my rst year of art school. It was an assigned proj- ect, and after my rst test shots, I knew this was for me. It seemed to be the perfect mix of art: sculpture, painting, lighting, performance and music. From then on I had a fairly clear path to follow. After two years in art school I moved to California to go to lm school. I never had any training in character animation. I just interpreted my lm assignments in animation, extremely crude, misinformed, uneducated stop motion. It was fun and I loved it, but the lms were total crap. After I graduated I heard they were doing e New Adventures of Gumby in San Francisco. It was perfect, low-end entry-level stop motion. So I moved to San Francisco to beg for a job and, eventually, they let me in. at’s where I met a lot of the animators that I have worked with through the years, and that’s where I learned how to animate. Trey omas Animator of e Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach, and Corpse Bride Know where you stand A good animation course will prepare you for the animation industry, so that you know what to expect and know how to present yourself to a potential employer. When the likes of Je Newitt and Trey omas started out, an animation student was a relatively rare thing. Nowadays, there are hundreds of animation courses. However, there is a great di erence between the type of work done at an art college and the sort of work that people make a living with. In some rare cases, a graduate will hit the market with just the right idea at the right time and have their work spotted at a festival or a degree show by a company representative. But for most of us, there is a more circuitous route and it involves developing an understanding of how studios work by looking through websites, watch- ing their programs, and reading industry journals. is nal chapter looks into some studio work 195

196 STOP MOTION practices, what a commissioning editor looks for in a script, and gives you some tips on how best to present your showreel. Different work, different studios All studios have di erent reasons for their existence. Some are set up by animators trying to make their own lms, but in order to sustain their work they may need to take on commercials from time to time. Others produce a steady stream of children’s TV series. Very generally speaking, the UK animation industry struggles to survive in a market-driven system that means often the only way the general pub- lic, other than small children, will get to see good British animation is in a commercial. Animation special e ects is a fast-growing area that demands computer skills in FX softwares, and can often be a route through for a character animator with transferable skills. Gaming is a vast industry across the world now and animation for games is attracting a majority of animation students. Post-production houses have a seemingly endless thirst for skilled computer/character animators. But stop motion still seems to be the preferred medium for the preschool audience, especially in the United Kingdom. Its tactile, dimensional nature is what makes it so successful in marketing to a younger audience. is also follows through to feature lms, where stop motion shows no sign of waning in popularity, although compared with CG, it is only kept up by a few studios. Commercials Commercials are the jam on top for many animation teams. is is what the studios hope will pay the overheads and the wages for what is usually a skeleton sta . If all goes well they can salt away a little, and it may be used for projects that could expand the studio’s repertoire. With the kind of budgets sometimes available for commercial work, one would expect the bene ts to be of the high production qualities, innovative ideas, and a chance to display one’s talents. is is not always the case, however, as the costs of the production can sometimes spiral in the decision-making process—and the results may not be quite the showcase one was expecting. In the rst stage of the process, the client will choose an agency with a good track record. e agency will invite various animation companies to pitch for the job, sending round a script and a storyboard. Companies can invest a lot of time, e ort, and creativity just pitching for a commercial: developing characters and set designs, and lming sometimes quite complex animatics. Based in the West End of London, Loose Moose hire studio space and crew as each job comes up, a large studio space would be prohibitively expensive, so working in this way, they can rely on the profes- sionalism of a team of experts, but as it’s a hired space, they can’t a ord the luxury of testing time, unless there is a particularly generous budget. So the animators have to be prepared to go in and start “cold.” On a commercial, Loose Moose shoot on average about three seconds of animation a day and shoot for about 10–15 days. If there is a chance, they will set up two units for a seven-day shoot.

GETTING THE JOB 197 By contrast, Aardman Animations has most of its production on site. Even though they will hire in freelancers, they have a core of sta animators, a camera department, model making department, and administrators. A former Aardman creative director, Luis Cook, describes his approach and the relationship between animation company and agency: As a creative director you need to know exactly what is going on around you, go to exhibitions, watch TV ads, look at hoardings, magazines. It may be art, it may be fashion, you might not like it—but you’ve got to be aware of it. When a job comes in I try and make it look as di erent as I can. Partly because it makes life more interesting for me and hopefully you don’t get too stuck in a style. e idea always comes from the script and listening to who your client is—tonally. Which way do they want to go with it? Is it going to be dark, is it going to be serious, is it going to funny, is it going to be brightly colored, is it going to be fast-cutting, or slow? Do you want to make it boring? Do you want to make it exciting? All these things come from the script. Do you want to make it minimal or overloaded with imagery? Sometimes it’s really obvious, other times you have to work at it and coax people round. You can only trust what the agency tell you; the client wants one thing, the agency another—it would be useful sometimes to go straight to the client, but you can’t. You have to trust what the agency tells you. You have to remain calm if the agency goes wobbly. If they’re coming at you with a terrible idea, say “Hmm that’s interesting. Let me have a think about it and get back to you” to give yourself space! On a recent commercial this American guy from the agency said to me “ is is a million dollar campaign, get rid of the art!” Culturally, we were coming from di erent backgrounds; for him my ideas were too abstract. But he was right—it became a very successful campaign and they shifted a lot of product! Stop motion is becoming an incredibly attractive proposition for commercials. e area I haven’t covered in this book is the type of stop motion that proliferates virally because of its stunning creativ- ity. Unique voices like pes lm.com (PES) and blublu.org (Blu) are celebrated for their ability to create eye-catching animation with objects, in the street, through cityscapes. Animator, Tom Gasek has writ- ten a great book, Frame by Frame, covering this sort of nontraditional animation. Series Series work is often de ned by its quick turnaround, lower budget nature. e characters are often re ned down to a simple stylized design; the animation is also simpli ed, for greater speed and e - ciency. It’s very often these elements that make this form of animation enduringly popular with chil- dren, and the same elements that give the characters marketable appeal. is in turn can make the medium a hot property for the TV companies and licensees. Dave Sproxton of Aardman comments on the studio’s commitment to stop frame: Given the right approach, stop frame can be made quite economically to great e ect. I doubt whether Shaun the Sheep [BBC children’s series] would have looked so good or been as entertaining had it been CGI. Aardman are continuing with the stop frame tradition both in features and TV, with several proposals in the pipeline. We also have CGI projects but we’re not letting go of our roots.

198 STOP MOTION Series work is also one of the best training grounds for animation. Some of this country’s top anima- tors, Steve Box, Loyd Price, Barry Purves, all developed their talent working for several years on pro- grams like CMTB’s Trapdoor or Cosgrove Hall’s Wind in the Willows and Chorlton and the Wheelies. TV specials Probably the most challenging task for any animation team is a feature lm. A half-hour TV special is a wonderful experience for animators in terms of handling continuity and character development, but making a feature lm tests the cohesion of a team in many ways. A feature lm requires a huge crew and soaks up anyone with animation skills for a long period. Often, a graduate’s rst experience on a feature is being on a production line making one small part of a puppet, or cleaning up the same puppets over and over again ready for the next scene. is can be dispiriting, especially if you never get to see the rest of the studio. It takes all the company’s resources to sustain in the crew a sense of following through a big adventure, and belief in the ultimate goal. Moving up one notch from being an animator to directing a team of animators can be a di cult transition. Barry Purves re ects on directing Hamilton Mattress, a BBC Christmas Special made by Harvest Films: On Hamilton Mattress I was directing four to ve animators. e di cult thing is keeping an overall style and they were four very di erent animators. You have to allow them their creativity, so that when one makes Hamilton do something extraordinary, you have to let the other animators take ele- ments of that. In trying to get a walk similar, an animator can be so focused on that scene, he may forget how it ts in to the rest of the story. So I try to keep them all on track. When I’m the director and animator, if I see a gesture going wrong, I can work my way out of it. Or if there’s a cut point coming up, and I realize I’m just not going to be able to do it in time, then I can nd something else to make it work. But directing animators, you are one step removed. It was hard trying to pull it all together, but the rewards are amazing, especially when some of them do something you just wouldn’t have thought of (see Figure 13.1). Features Feature lms pull a pool of talented stop motion animators, modelmakers and camera crews from one side of the globe to the other. e demand for a skilled crew to enable the huge volume of work needed for a feature creates a precarious existence for animators. For an intense period of time, there is a vast amount of work to be done, and once that work is completed, the animator is out of work. So the competition for each lm or TV series is great, and people often have to be prepared to travel across the world to keep in work. For the animation director, the transition from working on TV series or specials to a full feature lm is a huge step, when the focus of their skill shifts to entertaining a global audience, and maintain- ing their vision when confronted with huge teams of animators.

GETTING THE JOB 199 FIGURE 13.1 Hamilton Mattress Dir. Barry Purves Source. Courtesy of Harvest Films. Copyright Hamilton Mattress 2002. Nick Park of Aardman Animations comments: Working with a small team is quite easy. I still stayed very much in touch with the Plasticine myself on Wrong Trousers. We [Nick and Steve Box] did roughly half the animation each, but even on Wrong Trousers, I didn’t want to let go of Wallace and Gromit, so Steve did all of the penguin. By Close Shave I did let go of it. Doing the animation of Wallace was the main risk: he might get a di erent shaped face—because we were manipulating his mouth in such a big, radical way it would be easy for the individual animator to put his own stamp on it and take it o in another direction. On A Close Shave we developed pre-made “replacement” mouths for Wallace. We used it on Chicken Run, where each character had their own set of mouths. It helped keep it all consis- tent in style. But each lm I had to step back more. I say stepping back—it’s not really stepping back; I did do a few scenes of my own in Close Shave—so I did feel I kept some hand on it—but on Chicken Run I couldn’t animate. I never felt I’d lost control. ere is a part of it I regret, because I do like doing the animation, I love doing it, but at the same time, to make a lm of that size you can’t a ord to do that, because you have to spend your time going round telling everybody what to do. It is easier to do it yourself than to tell everybody else what to do! As great as our animators were on Chicken Run, I think by the mere fact that a lot of people are working on it, the style can get homogenized, because everyone’s trying to aim at a common thing. It’s much harder to keep the edge on the style.

200 STOP MOTION Case study: Creature comforts Gareth Owen, a producer at Aardman who delivered the U.S. Creature Comforts series for CBS describes the process of series production (see Figure 13.2): When a new series comes in I work on exactly what the company commissioning the series wants and how we are going to deliver it within the time and budgetary limits. Usually the writing and storyboarding phase is a huge process that you need to go through, but with Creature Comforts, as it is all recorded live dialogue and conversations, there is no script. We get a character designer in as soon as the interviews are digitized, so that we can have pictures to overlay the audio: it’s always easier to think of a character when you have the visual on screen. We’ll try di erent voices to see how they t and start working towards an animatic for each episode. Next I’ll get an Art Director and a Model Making Supervisor on board. We’ll have a pre- production meeting with them, the DOP, the director, and an animator to plan the rst puppets and sets we’re going to build. We need to answer questions such as: how big does this puppet need to be in order for the animator to animate it comfortably? How much action does this character have to do? Once we’re happy—then we can start the model build. e model making team will consist of a team leader, sculptors, mould makers, and assistant animators who’ll be doing the lip sync mouth sets (replacement mouths). e art department has set and prop builders and a rig- ger—the model makers and the set and props team work pretty closely together to ensure everything FIGURE 13.2 Gareth Owen on the set of Creature Comforts. Source. Copyright Aardman Creature Comforts USA Ltd.

GETTING THE JOB 201 matches  up in scale. e time of day is important for the angle of light or any practical lights needed on the set. Also as sometimes the sets we make need to be huge expansive vistas that need to t into a small unit, we have to cheat the scale of the background set. To get this right we always do a rough mock up of the set in front of camera using polyboard or even cardboard and usually a cut out 2D picture of the characters. en we can accurately measure the dimensions of the set and provide them to the set builders. We advertise on our website to nd the rest of the crew and, in the case of animators, we ask for showreels. For Creature Comforts we had about 200 animation showreels in—some were from students and some from experienced animators. We looked at each one. In some cases, with a begin- ner, there may be just one shot where you can see they have got the timing and the character. One guy who came onto Creature Comforts had only animated one shot, in his bedroom—and it was perfect! He just had that spark and he has carried on through the series, he’s an absolute natural. It’s not always based on experience—it’s based on talent. People who hadn’t worked for us before did a two-week trial. We’d give them a line of dia- logue and a character and throw them in at the deep-end. Once they’ve had a go at it, a director will go in and help them: act it out for them, give them some advice, nd out if there’s anything troubling them—really as much guidance as we can give. en they animate the same line again, and if there’s a marked improvement in their work and we can see they are getting it, then we continue their training, but if it didn’t work out, then that’s it, I’m afraid, at least until the next trials! We needed thirty animators on Creature Comforts but over half of those were our regular Aardman animators and there were another ten or so who had been trained for the earlier UK series of Creature Comforts, some of whom came straight from college—they went through the same process, only they had six weeks of training, where we started with the simple squash and stretch exercises and took them through the whole range right up to full lip sync and action. ey are all now regular animators for Aardman or working on other projects around the UK or on features in the States. at level of training is pretty vital. People who come from a college course haven’t had that intense training, they don’t get that kind of experience on a course, mainly due to lack of equip- ment and time. We generally allow two weeks for a model to be made from start to nish—most of the time is spent on making the armature, the actual skinning of the puppet is pretty quick. e sets and props are mainly made in-house, occasionally outsourced if there’s anything large or too complicated that would keep our sta tied up. When the set is ready the base is put on legs in the studio and rough lighting is put in place; the rigger will bring the puppet in and place it on the set and the director will come in and line up the camera and the puppets to the positions he thinks will give the best look. When a puppet comes out of model making we don’t see it as a nished character. It takes the animator to put a certain sense of character into a model; they put their own stamp on it. We then take a day or two to get everything in place—everything lit, rigged in, the set and props dressed to camera and absolutely everything (light stands, rigging stands, set bases) glued down—it all needs to be rock-solid in there and hopefully we’ll have time to do an overnight test to see if anything shifts or changes through the night. On a series we generally run an eight-hour day, with an hour for lunch. e animators aim to shoot an average of four seconds a day. Multiple character shots will obviously take longer to shoot than a single character and so the schedule has to allow for that. Even the type of puppet mouths can have a huge impact on the amount an animator can shoot in a day. Simple sausage shape stick on mouths mean that there isn’t large amounts of sculpting to do in comparison to the usual full

202 STOP MOTION mouth replacement system used for the majority of the puppets and the animators on these char- acters will sometimes shoot as much as 10–12 seconds in a day. e shot needs to be approved as soon as it’s nished. Once the shot is creatively approved, the DOP and the camera assistant will check the shot, make sure there are no ashes, light changes or set shifts, and if there is a rig, they need to do rig removal plates (clear shots of the set, which they will also have done at the start of the shot). en they will re-board for the next shot. In between shots, while the DOP, camera assistant, and sparks are setting up the next shot, the director and the animator will go into the LAV unit (live action video) to rehearse the shot. e audio plays out and either the director or the animator (or both if a two-character shot) will get roughly into the position the characters are in on set in and act out the shot. It really helps the direc- tor to direct the animators and be able to clearly say—“I want it like this, or that…” And also to look back at the video and say “I really like that gesture you did there” It allows you to put human characteristics into your puppet. When you’re saying a line you naturally make body movements that you’re unaware of, that you don’t register you’re doing—all those subliminal things that you would want to put into your animation to bring your characters alive. It also gives you time to think of any gags or background interaction between two characters—you might decide that you need a bit more time in the shot to allow for some background action. Every Friday we have rushes with the whole crew, we’ll stop half an hour early, have a beer, and watch what we’ve done that week. We put a lot of time and e ort into making a good sound base. For Creature Comforts we clean the interviews up as much as possible and make up a track that’s relevant to where they are in their animated world now. Generally we spend about three days per episode on track laying, sending the sound editor a rough cut and notes on exactly what we want. We use a Foley artist quite a lot, as well as making our own sounds. Early on we’ll be thinking about what the music will be like and will commission someone who has the right experience. Musicians often work to a detailed brief but I’ve always preferred to keep it vague and allow them to write what they think would be the best music for the piece whether it be title music or background music. Once all animation is complete and all the shots have any rigs removed and had any e ects passes added we need to lock down the edit to the correct length with title sequence and credits and any commercial break spaces if relevant. Once locked and played out on to a master tape, we’ll go to a post-production house to grade the nal picture. e DOP will go through every shot enhancing the colors to all look as beautiful as possible. We’ll nish the sound mix, paying particular attention to lip synch and probably have both Dolby 5.1 mix and stereo versions. We’re then ready to deliver the program to the company as per their speci cations and with all the paper work that goes with it. ey generally want 16:9 and 4:3 versions and often we will need both PAL and NTSC versions. Sometimes tapes sent to broadcasters will come back a few days later rejected because of breaking some kind of audio or visual guideline like a dead pixel or an illegal colour—one dead pixel broaches the transmission guidelines! It’s very simple and quick to correct and deliver back. Applying for jobs Getting work with an animation company is more often than not a question of being in the right place at the right time. To improve your chances it’s important to know exactly what sort of work companies

GETTING THE JOB 203 are doing; there’s no point showing them your work only to turn them down when they o er you a chance on a children’s series and you would rather work on computer games. Look online to see who’s hiring and what’s in production. Going to festivals and events where you will meet other animators is the very best way of networking. Degree shows are important—the better college courses mail out to invite production companies to degree shows, and the companies come if they can. Make sure your college does this. Your showreel With hundreds of applicants each week, a company needs a good reason to look at your work. Send them something you think will stand out: well-designed and irresistible. Some companies o er guide- lines as to what they want to see. LAIKA has a very clear FAQ section which tells you exactly how to approach them, what they want to see, and how they want to see it—and they choose to invite a link to your online presence, whereas Aardman Animations prefer to see showreels and portfolios sent by post. So it is essential to do your research and see how each company is best approached. 1. Put your best work at the front. When a company is pushed for time they will expect to see your best work in the rst few seconds. is could either be a quick compilation or a 30-second short clip from your best lm. ere is no point in sending a long reel with examples of all of your work. But if your piece of work is very long, and the best bit’s in the middle, edit! Give the viewer a 30-second trailer. Because if they haven’t seen what they want in that time, they’ll move on. 2. Clearly Identify the pieces you have worked on and in what capacity. It’s no good sending in a clip from a feature lm on an animation showreel, when the truth is you were refurbishing parts in the model making department. Be honest and clear. 3. Label It. is sounds obvious, but we’ve all seen reels that once had a cardboard case and now are a blank CD or DVD. Label the disk itself as well as the case with the title, your name, contact number, and e-mail address. Put your name and contact on the front and end of the reel. Update it when you have some important new work to show, but don’t bombard companies every few weeks with a new CV or showreel. 4. If you are sending work to the United States from the United Kingdom, remember it must be an NTSC conversion, that’s their standard—and for tapes coming to the United Kingdom from the United States, a PAL conversion is needed. 5. If they want you, they’ ll call you. For the big companies, like Aardman in the United Kingdom or LAIKA in the United States, you should be prepared to wait for some time for a response. Usually, they will view the work, then if it arouses interest, it’ll go further and perhaps be viewed by a director. But the bigger companies get many showreels in every week and can’t always get to look at them immediately, especially after graduation time. If you’ve not heard anything, you

204 STOP MOTION could ring after about four weeks and ask for constructive comments. You may have to wait for between two and three months for a response. 6. Remember, be nice when talking to the receptionist, they have the power to stop you right there. 7. When you are making up business cards put an image from your lm on it. is helps people see immediately what you do and xes your work in their mind. 8. Be reasonable about how you classify yourself—“Joe Bloggs, Stop Motion Animation” sounds better than “Joe Bloggs, Animator, Designer, Director, Illustrator.” e latter sounds like you don’t have particular skills or ambition and will take any old job; this might be true, but it doesn’t instill con dence! And if you want to be a bit more realistic, as you are a beginner, you may not yet be thought of as an “animator,” hence, “animation.” Festivals Try to keep your work seen—festivals are a growing business; there are more and more small festivals looking for di erent things. If you can attend festivals, they are excellent places for getting to meet people. e big festivals, like Annecy or Ottawa, are the places most animation companies try to get to; look up on the festival website to see if there are any pitching opportunities or chances to meet up with company recruitment o cers. e British Council (www.briti lms.com/festivals) lists all the festivals and what the festivals are looking to screen, when their deadlines are. e British Council can also help with traveling expenses if your work is being screened abroad. Spela Cadez, a Slovenian animator, whose lms “Lovesick” and “Boles” have been screened at hundreds of festivals and won many awards, got into animation unex- pectedly: “After my graduation in graphic design, I continued my studies in Germany, at the Academy for Media Arts, Cologne. I wanted to study interactive design. At some point I thought it would be good to know the basics of animation, so I went to the animation class. ere was no animation teacher at that time, just a professor who loved animation arts and his course involved workshops of great animators like Caroline Leaf and Piotr Dumała. is was when I rst came to a puppet work- shop. It was so much fun building something with my hands that it immediately took me over. I made my rst puppet there and the teacher liked it so much that he took me to Annecy a week later. at opened a whole new world for me and I never went back to interactive design” (see Figure 13.3). Sending proposals to commissioning editors e job of a commissioning editor is to nd the right programs for a TV company. ey have to nd an idea that they believe in enough to be able to convince their own company, as well as others. So this is what they need to know about your project:

GETTING THE JOB 205 FIGURE 13.3 Still from Boles Dir. Spela Cadez Source. Copyright 2013. 1. What is it about? Send them two lines that encapsulate the whole idea with a one-page synopsis of the proposal. at is what most commissioning editors want to see at rst. ey don’t want pages and pages of script, or descriptions of merchandising opportunities. e idea is everything—the rest comes later. 2. What will it look like? Send some designs for your characters and some key visuals that display the style of the lm. Don’t send in original work, as this makes the recipient very nervous! No one wants to be responsible for losing your work. So send in copies. 3. What sort of audience will it attract? Are you aiming this at children or adults? TV companies have very speci c age group targets—look at channels to see how the programming changes through- out the day. Is your idea going to appeal to preschool (from 1- to 4-year olds); 5–7-year olds; 8–10, 11, 12? If it is an adult idea, how much animation do you see that is purely for adults? ey do have to consider their market, and a really strange and obscure idea may not help them attract viewers. 4. What slots on TV will it t into? Commissioning editors would all expect anyone approaching them with an idea to know what sort of format they are looking for—to have an understanding of which slots they can program animation into. 5. What’s the duration? Give them a story that ts their slots. Some will have slots for 5- or 10-min- ute animations. More common is the 26-minute series; in fact, 13 × 26 is a favorite—so can you see your idea developing into 13 episodes?

206 STOP MOTION 6. Is there anything similar already on TV or in production? e commissioning editor needs to be aware that this idea is not going to be too like anything else that’s coming on air. It sometimes happens that an idea becomes popular; several people seem to come up with the same idea. Don’t get paranoid, it doesn’t necessarily mean that your work is being ripped o , it just means that you have your nger on the pulse and have created something of the moment—it happens. Make your presentation look good. Handwriting can be charming but honestly it is better to have your stu printed with a good layout. You have to do everything to accommodate people who look at several scripts per day, and however dedicated they are to getting animation on TV, don’t have all the time in the world to talk on the phone and to dwell over long scripts. If they are interested from your initial approach, they will invite you for a meeting, and if still interested they would probably draw up some sort of formal develop- ment agreement. You should get some legal advice of your own at this stage. e next stage would be for them to commission you to write the script. After that they would start to move on to looking at production and budgeting—then you may be on your way. Even if a commissioner wants your idea they may not be able to fully nance it. e majority of TV channels are not able to fully nance any project and will take a project to other companies for co- nancing. ey may take it to somewhere like the Cartoon Forum—this is a marketplace for work, set up by Cartoon, the European Association for Animated Film, an organization based in Belgium. It takes place in a di erent location in Europe each year and is attended by more than 250 potential investors, all interested in animation. So it can be a very slow process from script to screen. Commissioning an idea doesn’t necessarily mean they want you to write it. An animator who can write their own material as well as direct and animate is a rare being. It is likely that the producer would bring in a writing team or a script editor to work on your idea. Be aware that what starts out as a personal project may end up being a very di erent, very public experience due to the nature of production and the sheer amount of people that become involved. It’s like letting your baby grow up—don’t be too precious, let it go into the wide world. Many successful model animators have made the transition to work in CGI and can move between the disciplines comfortably. Keep up your computer skills in quiet periods between jobs, train up on new software, always keep on your toes, and be aware of what’s going on around you. But remember that animation skills are what is important—not software skills. Software will change; animation tim- ing and performance are fundamental to all animation. e last word goes to Je Newitt, who has given me some great quotes to use in this book: It’s always a dress rehearsal—the public think you can hone it and hone it, but you can’t—you only get one go. With a play like Hamlet, you know the story, you have the sets and the costumes—and you rehearse it. With animation it’s just “You’re on! ere’s the audience and there’s the camera. Go!” Good luck.

14 Animation Masterclass Teresa Drilling Teresa Drilling has been an award-winning character animator for more than 20 years. She attended the Rochester Institute of Technology in the United States, studying graphic design and painting. For 14 years, she worked at Vinton Studios, in Portland, Oregon, where she became one of their senior creatives. She won an Emmy for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation in 1991 for her animation on Vinton’s Claymation Comedy of Horrors Show. In 1999, she moved to Britain to work as an additional key animator on Aardman’s Chicken Run and followed this with work on Wallace and Gromit: e Curse of the Were-Rabbit. I met her at Aardman’s features studio in Bristol, where she was working on the latest Creature Comforts series for the U.S. market. She kindly agreed to create and animate a character for this book, describing her thoughts on the process as she worked. e session, over two days, took about 13 hours. I’ve kept the conversation pretty much as it progressed, discussing aspects of stop-motion animation as well as speci cally the animation she was doing for me. ere were long periods of silent concentration interspersed with fascinating observations. The model Character designed and sculpted by Teresa Drilling, Model maker: Johnny Tate. e monkey charac- ter was based around a ready-made armature lent to Teresa. (Figure 14.1a and b). is armature had huge feet and really short arms—I don’t know what it was before, but I think these may be the biggest feet I’ve ever put on a character—it was fun seeing just how big they could get. It seemed to suggest a monkey. is look is a little dainty, a little feminine, but hopefully not too cloying. 207

208 STOP MOTION FIGURE 14.1 Teresa Drilling. (a) Armature design. (b) Character drawing (a) (b) e armature is covered with tape rst to give some grip for the Plasticine, then the Plasticine is built up over the top. e bulk of the “skull” is a chunk of rigid Plastizote, which helps to keep the head lighter, and provides a solid point to rig the head into the body as well as provide a good sur- face for the Plasticine to adhere to. e move she will do suits the monkey character—she will leap from standing into a sitting position—a very quick move, but one that incorporates some squash and stretch. On what creates a character When I was working at Vinton’s, e Children’s Television Workshop gave us an opportunity to do something for Sesame Street. We came up with a character for them, adopting some elements of an internal animation exercise we had been working on. We each had one pound of orange clay and the challenge was to shoot four seconds of metamorphic animation that started and ended with that pound as an “Orange Ball” in the center of the frame. at sort of range and malleability was perfect for a Sesame Street character, so we started with the orange ball from the exercises, gave her a mouth because she had to sing, and let her metamorphic demonstrations and ultimate return to ball form be her signature identity.

ANIMATION MASTERCLASS 209 First position e rst position: it’s a resting position—she’s poised. I’ve got her weight on one leg. It’s always nice to have the model a little asymmetrical, have the weight on one leg or the other, it gives it a little more life and it also gives you some place to come from. I check her from di erent angles to make sure she’s balanced nicely—it’s really easy when you’re looking for reference at a two-dimensional image on a at screen, to animate yourself into a corner if you’re doing large body movement and improvising as you go (Figure 14.2). Frame 1: For this movement, the head will lead—so I’ll start with the eyes. Eyes rst … then head, shoulders, and hips (Figure 14.3). Most movement is led by the eyes in most performances, unless for instance, a character is being led reluctantly, as if they had to leave a party but there was still someone there that they wanted to talk to, in which case their body would start moving for the door, but their eyes would still lag behind. In most cases, eyes lead action—and eyes move quicker than any other part of the body, so eyes can go from one side of the head to the other in just one frame and still look natural. Usually, I knead a little bit of wax into the clay of the eyelids, because then they’re not as soft and you can adjust them a lot easier. If you look closely at the eyes, you’ll notice that there’s a small area of the eyelid that’s pushed out slightly by the cornea. As someone looks from one side to another, the cornea rolls along under the eyelid, like a wave under the surface of the water. is bulge looks like a little tent over the top of the iris. As the iris moves from side to side, this little tent shape in the eyelid should also stay with the iris and move side to side as well. FIGURE 14.2 Frame 1

210 STOP MOTION FIGURE 14.3 Frame 13 (At 24 frames per second, there would be 11 frames in-between Figures 14.2 and 14.3.) You get so much expression out of the eyes from the angle at which the eyelid is positioned over the eye. Sad eyes tend to have the eyelids angled up in the middle of the face and down on the outsides. Angry eyelids tend to be slanted in the opposite direction. Frame 13: It’s interesting to work with shifting weight. It’s a shame to just have your character standing at-footed and straight-legged. Just shifting a little weight onto one foot or the other really helps give your character more life and poise. I pre-visualize breaking the movement down and imagine it in slow motion. I think about the performance, both emotionally and physically. And physically, I think—where is the energy coming from? What is the main mass of the body doing? is character’s main mass is low in the hips because she’s female—which is nice as she’s going for a jump. So the question is—what parts of her body are actively supplying energy, and which parts are being passively pushed by the energy? When I rst joined Aardman on Chicken Run, they were speci cally looking for experienced clay animators. I really lucked out when they decided to give me and my clay experience a shot. I was rst put in a testing unit that doubled as the prep space of one of the key animators, Guionne Leroy. Aardman speci cally decided to cast female animators on Chicken Run—because the chickens were female. I was given Bunty (a character from Chicken Run) … to do a little animation test. I wanted to move the head, and couldn’t nd a positioning plug anywhere on it. What we’d do in the States, because the clay was so soft, was to have a little square hole in the back of the head with a piece of K&S in it … and you’d stick a tool in this hole to use as leverage to turn the head without touching the clay (a technique Ian Whitlock used to animate the Were-Rabbit on e Curse of the Were-Rabbit, to avoid disturbing the fur).

ANIMATION MASTERCLASS 211 So I’m looking and looking, and I can’t nd it. I nally ask Guionne, “How do you move the head?” She looks at me and, maybe because she’s thinking I must be a little dim, very slowly reaches out, takes hold of the head, and simply turns it. I thought, “My God!!” I touched it and discovered it was hard, unlike American clay, and didn’t pick up ngerprints! I realized that this was why the Aardman characters had their sort of look—why their charac- ters were often individually sculpted by hand instead of molded—because it made sense with this harder English clay. I started out sculpting in American clay years ago. American clay is much softer, and much more oily than the Newplast (English clay). Newplast is softer today than it used to be, about halfway to American clay in consistency from where it was, but I still nd it a useful alternative to the American Van Aken for some applications. is little monkette is sculpted in Newplast. With the much softer American clay, it’s very easy to work in a lot of subtle detail. You lightly drag a tool across the surface and you’re done. A lot of characters here at Aardman have heads that come o so you can sculpt the mouths and details easily—the hands however don’t—and that took a little getting used to. The extreme downward position Frame 25: She’s still moving downward. Make sure the foot that will be pushing o is clearly grounded. Now she’s going to tighten up her face in anticipation of the jump. “Anticipation” is just compressing everything for a nice big release in the opposite direction. ere’s a great trick to use for squash and stretch action—when you’re doing the squash, squeeze your character’s eyes shut—and when you get to the stretch, open the eyes way up. But for now, she’s just tightening up her face. You generally can’t go too far with anticipation—it’s kind of magical. A lot of people, including myself, tend to be too tentative when they push the extremes—you play it safe and then when it comes back and you see it, you realize; “Damn! I could have given it so much more!” I say push it more! (Figure 14.4). I look a lot at the silhouette shape of my animation, what Ollie Johnstone ( e Illusion of Life) calls the “staging.” e staging is not the same thing as the “pose.” e pose is the position your puppet is in. Staging is how that puppet looks compositionally in frame at any given moment. A good way to check it is to look at the graphic aspects of your character—this is especially helpful to keep in mind if you’re sculpting. You can check the visual rhythm from this perspective—spot odd bulges, and put things back in place—cleaning up your silhouette strengthens your staging and clari es your action. is is where I’m going to give her some knuckles. at’s the beauty of English clay—it’s sti er so you can do more structurally with it. American clay is soft and easy to dent, so you can unintention- ally damage—as you go. I’m convinced that di erent animation styles evolve from the di erent sorts of materials available to work with.

212 STOP MOTION FIGURE 14.4 Frame 25 (11 frames in-between Figures 14.3 and 14.4.) Beginning the upward move Frame 31: I really want to keep her feet well planted for her push o . It’ll kill the illusion of weight if those feet aren’t grounded … (Figure 14.5). ink in terms of “where’s the energy coming from?” rather than calculating a mathematical for- mula in your head, “ is part of the body has to accelerate at x per mass ….” at will just make you FIGURE 14.5 Frame 31 (5 frames in-between Figures 14.4 and 14.5.)

ANIMATION MASTERCLASS 213 crazy. Allow your intuition to take you where it needs to go. Be mindful of the energy and where it’s travelling and let the force work for you. Teresa is sculpting all this while … suddenly she picks up a scalpel and makes an incision … Every once in a while you’ll get an air bubble—it’s something that happens with clay characters on armatures— and if you don’t take care of it, it’ll start moving around and cause the clay to start to separate o the armature. e best way to deal with it is to slice into the bubble, push the air out, and then seal it up again. at air bubble undoubtedly got in there when I built up her stomach. I had put a piece of clay on her stomach and smoothed it out not realizing that I had an air pocket in there. e more you try to smooth out an air bubble instead of removing it, the more damage it can do. Plasticine can develop a marbled look over time as incidental dirt gets worked into it. It’s really important to keep your clay clean—especially on a commercials job, when clients are looking closely at each frame. As soon as you see dirt on your character, try scraping the very top layer o with a scalpel. It becomes more di cult if the dirt has gone deeper, because then you may have to replace a big chunk with clean Plasticine. at can be tricky because you usually have to do a lot of blending in with the Plasticine around it to make it match. Generally, I don’t like to add or take away material from a character; you want to try and maintain your volume. is is particularly important when you’re referring to a two-dimensional screen. Your character’s volume might be your only spatial reference point. But occasionally, you expose a joint in your armature and you have to cover it with extra clay. So I’m always doing a mental evaluation—how much have I put on? Will I need to take it o again? If things are going really well, there’ll come a natural point where it’ll be obvious, and will bulge out at you, wanting to be taken o . It helps to real- ize that it needs to be done, that it’s part of the ongoing clay animation process. Frame 32: e energy is now pushing up into her torso, but hasn’t reached her head yet, so the motion of her head is still a passive following-through. So we’ve gone from the energy pushing up out of the knees into the torso, straining upward and arching the back (Figure 14.6). Once she’s in the air, I’ll have to go with the trajectory I’ve started on so she has to be at exactly the right angle from the toes up. I can’t readjust after she’s airborne without it looking like an unnatural shift (Figure 14.7). I like to keep a “home” position in mind—if at any given point the animation has strayed too far one way or another, it’s really useful to know the location of that natural relaxed home position. It helps you from getting lost in the middle of complex action, when there’s a lot going on. I can make a note of it on my log, for instance, when a portion of a character is making a really strong movement, then makes a rebound, then another, and so on, decreasing as they go—you have to end up nishing the movement at what would be a natural home position. So if you already have that position in your head, it makes your job easier. A lot of people will ask—“How do you know how far to move it?” Well, it depends …. Because I’m thinking—“how heavy does it need to feel … how much resistance should there be? What sort of emotion is behind a gesture? Is it in the water? Is it on the moon? How will gravity a ect it? You could go crazy trying to gure out everything mathematically—or you could just allow your intuition to guide you. Look at it as it goes—well it needs to go there—why? Because it looks right. And now it

214 STOP MOTION FIGURE 14.6 Frame 32 (No frames in-between Figures 14.5 and 14.6.) doesn’t look right—why? And then you do a tiny little adjustment—that’s perfect! Why?—because it’s right. Frames 33 and 34: As the monkey leaves the ground, Teresa has brought in a rig that xes to a K&S slot in the monkey’s back (see Figure 14.8a and b). e tie-downs have been removed and the holes where the tie-downs held the feet to the oor have been lled. Two shots are taken of the monkey in this position—white card simpli es the monkey’s silhouette so that painting out the rig is a quicker and easier job. is carries on until frame 13. FIGURE 14.7 Frame 33 (No frames in-between Figures 14.6 and 14.7.)

ANIMATION MASTERCLASS 215 FIGURE 14.8 (a,b) Frame 34 (No frames in-between Figures 14.7 and 14.8.) (a) (b) For stop motion work, you need stamina, focus, and concentration. But I think probably, the apti- tude that is most crucial to have, if you’re going to do any kind of animation, is not how good are you at sculpting or how athletic you are—or how good you are at engineering—it’s how good you are at seeing. You have to train your eye to perceive tiny little shifts and icks. In using reference lm, look at when a movement starts—does it start with a ick of an eye? You look for the tiniest things. You see a person swallow—and you think—will that detail help? And you can decide whether to use these details or not, but the ability to see them is what makes the di erence for a character animator. ings like drawing classes, sculpting classes, or perception classes help you to learn how to see—or just sit in the park and watch. Sit and watch people walk—how they move. One animator friend of mine was telling me it’s easy for him to learn a lot about someone when he watches them walking now. He can tell if a person’s hip is hurting, or if they have a problem with their knee, or their shoe’s too tight. It might be harder to lie to animators. Maybe we would be good poker players! Sure, it takes a terri c amount of concentration, but at the end of a bad day, you have to remember it’s not brain surgery, no one’s going to die if you made a mistake, maybe just lose a little money …. Slowing down at the top of the move Teresa continues to talk while animating the monkey down onto the crate … (Figures 14.9 through 14.15). Frame 36: I’m putting a little marker on the set so I’ll know she’s moving along the correct line of action. I used to put all kinds of markers on the set. Before we had frame grabbers, we would set up a video camera next to the lm camera and look at the live image on a nearby monitor that we could

216 STOP MOTION FIGURE 14.9 Frame 36 (1 frame in-between Figures 14.8 and 14.9.) FIGURE 14.10 Frame 38 (1 frame in-between Figures 14.9 and 14.10.) mark increments on with a grease pencil. I would put a mark on the back wall of the set and then I would put myself right in front of the camera, making sure I had the corner of the video monitor in my sight. en I’d shift my stance until the monitor corner would line up with the mark on the back wall. at way I’d know I was looking at the monitor and my marks on it from exactly the same spot every frame. We had parallax issues between the lm and video images back then and that was a way to keep things more precise from frame to frame.

ANIMATION MASTERCLASS 217 FIGURE 14.11 Frame 39 (No frames in-between Figures 14.10 and 14.11.) FIGURE 14.12 Frame 40 (No frames in-between Figures 14.11 and 14.12.) Clay is nice … often when the puppets bend at a joint that they’ve got clothing sculpted over, they get automatic wrinkles. Clay has a long shelf life, it improves with age, up to a point—but it also requires being worked up to a useful malleability. ere was a place I worked at that had a store of Plasticine that was beautifully aged but they didn’t know what they had, and they tossed it out. And then when they got another clay job they could only get new clay that didn’t sculpt as well. It was really a shame because a lot of people would have shared clay advice with them if they had known.

218 STOP MOTION FIGURE 14.13 Using a tool to “roll” the eye socket smooth I have many tools, some expensive, some cheap, but I guess my favorite little tool is this one with a graduated point that’s perfect for rolling (Figure 14.13). If you don’t want to get clay colors on your character cross-contaminated, take a bit of the color you’re about to work with, knead it between your sculpting ngers and the clay will clean any other clay color or dirt out of your nger prints. Hands are really important—you can get as much expression from a hand as you can from a face. Portrait painters know that. Anatomy is a really good thing to know about. I found a local art college where there was a really good teacher. He taught us all the bones then went over the muscles. I do gure drawing too. It helps with your seeing. And with understanding spatial animation too, it’s really crucial, even when you’re not doing a realistic face—even if you’re doing a graphic stylization of a face. In order to know what to make it do—to imply a certain e ect, it’s really useful to know how it works in real life. Like right now—on the Pig (the character Drilling is animating for Creature Comforts)—I’m doing a lot of work with eyelids, probably more than some of the other characters are getting—and that’s part of my Vinton reference interpretation experience that I’m bringing to animating in the Aardman style (Figures 14.14 and 14.15). It’s programmed into us to watch eyes. oughts and intentions are rst expressed in how eyes move, and the eyes almost always move rst. ey indicate what action is going to come next. Paying attention to eyes comes in really handy when you’re doing character animation. Basically, good eye animation will make the character come alive—and transmit what that character is actually thinking. Often you’ll notice that while your character was nicely nished for the frame you just photographed, imperfections in the sculpt will catch the light once you turn your character to another angle for the

ANIMATION MASTERCLASS 219 FIGURE 14.14 Frame 43 (2 frames in-between Figures 14.12 and 14.14.) FIGURE 14.15 Frame 45. (1 frame in-between Figures 14.14 and 14.15.) next frame. at’s perfectly alright, you just have to do a little clean-up that wasn’t needed before because it wasn’t visible. It’s just an ongoing dialogue among you, the puppet, the set, and the lights … Note for sculptors—Don’t bother doing nished sculpting where the camera can’t see it—no matter if you feel it would complete your sculpting—NO! at wastes time. Let it stay rough, and clean it up as you go.

220 STOP MOTION Settling into final position SS—In her nal position, you can see her shoulders are beautifully de ned. Oh that’s because of working with Gromit—Gromit was all shoulders, held just right. Nick Park would say, “ at’s it, right there.”—and I would say—“But I can’t see the di erence,” but by the end of it all I really could see the di erence—so thank you for training my eye, Nick! (Figures 14.16 and 14.17). FIGURE 14.16 Frame 49 (3 frames in-between Figures 14.15 and 14.16.) FIGURE 14.17 Frame 53 (3 frames in-between Figures 14.16 and 14.17.)

ANIMATION MASTERCLASS 221 Working with Nick has been a fantastic experience. A great learning experience on so many levels— in terms of how he can be in charge of a whole project and keep that all in his head, and still be the sweetest, most gracious personality. You don’t have to be a bully, you don’t have to be a tortured genius … At the end of the day, we’re all here for the same purpose—to create something new in the world that hasn’t existed before. Teresa Drilling Source. Photo by S. Shaw.

222 STOP MOTION Monkey Jump: e completed sequence (b) (a) (c) (d) (e) (f ) (g) (h)

ANIMATION MASTERCLASS 223 Monkey Jump: e completed sequence (j) (i) (k) (l) (m) (n) (o)



Index A rst position, 209–211 Aardman Animations, 12, 30, 51, 105, 123, 154, 197, 199, 203 model, 207–208 Advanced model making, 73–107 settling into nal position, 220–223 slowing down at top of move, 215–219 ball-and-socket armature, 76–79 software, 11–13 hard mould making, 90–93 story reels and, 45 humanoid joints, 79–83 toolkit, 15 maquette, 75–76 e Animator’s Survival Kit, 2 model making masterclass, 101–107 Anticipation, action and reaction, 144–149, 211 mould making, 88–90 breaking up movement, 149 replacements and 3D printing, 83–88 digging a hole, 147–148 soft mould making, 94–101 examples, 144–146 After E ects, 16, 190 exercise, 146–148 Allen keys, 78, 80, 107 follow-through, 148 Aluminum wire (armature), 56, 107 hammering, 147 Anderson, Wes, 73 hands and feet, 148 Angry Kid, 2, 73 rhythm and pace in movement, 147 Animal and bird movement, 154–157 snap, 149 bird’s ight, 155, 157 Anti- are, 114 bird’s walk, 155, 157 Armature four-legged animals, 154–155 coat hangers for, 47–72 lizard walking, 155, 156 character design, 47–50 Animals in Motion, 135 making your own puppet, 54–72 Animated Conversations, 123 staying upright, 50 Animated, getting, 17 working with modeling clays, 51–53 bouncing ball exercise, 25, 26 drawing, 60 color correction, 18–20 nishing wire, 62 easing in and out exercise, 21–23, 25 glueing wire, 61 familiar objects as rst approach, 17–18 scale drawing for, 79 twisting wire in drill, 61 le naming and storage, 20–21 Artem, 110, 115, 116, 120 notes on movement, 23–24 Aspect ratio, 18, 19, 36, 42 planning, 30–32 Avery, Tex, 163 dodgem cars, 30–31 B old ones are best, 31–32 Backdrop setting up for rst time, 18–21 single frame or double frame, 24–25 lighting, 117, 174 squash and stretch, 25–28 using forced perspective, 118–119 timing, 24–25 Backlight, 173, 174 X-sheet, 28–30 Baker, Noel, 74 Animation, 1 Baking oven, 107 business of, see Business of animation Ball-and-socket armature, 76–79, 107 character, 159–162 health and safety warning, 78–79 comedy and comic timing in, 162–167 making own, 77–78 computer, 2 Base, 110–112 masterclass, 207–223 Berkey Systems, 119 beginning upward move, 212–215 creating a character, 208 extreme downward position, 211–212 225

226 INDEX Berry, Paul, 73, 77 Cartoon, 148, 163, 206 e Big Story, 186 Casting Blackton, James Stuart, 51 foam latex, 95–98 Black wrap, 120, 174, 187 silicone, 99–100 Blender, 84 Chaplin, Charlie, 146, 162 Blinking, 165, 166 Character Blocking out your shots, 177 animation, 159–162 Bob the Builder™, 129, 130 dealing with more than, 165, 167 Body mould, 93 design, 47–50 Bolexbrothers, 2, 4 Chavant clay, 107 Bolex cameras, 10 Checkerboarding, 182 Borthwick, Dave, 2 Chicken Run, 159, 168, 207, 210 Bouncing ball movement, 23, 25, 26–28 Children’s Television Workshop, 208 Box, Steve, 198 Christmas tree bulbs, 116 Boxtrolls, 6, 7, 86 Chroma keying, 182, 193 British Council, 204 Cinema projection ratios, 19–20 Brothers Quay, 2 Clark, Blair, 77, 89 Bruce, Barry, 12 Climpex, 119, 120 Buildings, 114, 143 A Close Shave¸ 186 Burton, Tim, 73, 74, 77 Clothes, 53, 70, 72, 148 Business of animation, 195–206 Coat hangers for armatures, 47–72 character design, 47–50 applying for jobs, 202–203 making your own puppet, 54–72 commercials, 196–197 staying upright, 50 creature comforts, 200–202 working with modeling clays, 51–53 di erent work, di erent studios, 196 Codec, 193 features, 198–199 Color festivals, 204 correction, 18–20 know where you stand, 195–196 grading, 189 sending proposals to commissioning editors, 204–206 silicone, 100 series, 197–198 Comedy and comic timing, 162–167 showreel, 203–204 blinking, 165 TV specials, 198 eyelines, 163–165 more than one character, 165–167 C Commercials, 196–197 Cadez, Spela, 204, 205 Commissioning editor, sending proposals to, 204–206 CAD software, 110 Compositing, 187, 191 Camera Computer graphic (CG) character animation, 2, 12 Contact adhesives, 107 angle, 37 Conversation Pieces, 123 choosing, 10–11 Cook, Luis, 48, 197 Cooper, Tommy, 162 digital single-lens re ex, 11 Copydex, 100 smartphone, 10 Cornford, Nigel, 100, 101 tablet, 10 Corpse Bride, 73 webcam, 10 Cosgrove Hall Films, 12, 73, 112, 130, 131, 151 moves, 176–177 Costumes/dressing, 100–101 pan, 176 Creature comforts, 123, 167, 200–202, 207 tilt, 176 Curing, foam, 99 track, 176–177 e Curse of the Were-Rabbit, 192, 210 position, 174–175 D shake, 184 Dedo lights, 15 tape, 187 Depth of eld (DOF), 175–176 e Cameraman’s Revenge, 5 Canhead, 167, 168 Caricature, nature and, 5–7

INDEX 227 Fimo, 108, 119, 120 Dialog, 15–16, 45, 128, 133 Final Cut Pro (for Mac), 16 pre-production, 124 Final position, settling to, 220–223 recording, 125–126 frame 49, 220 frame 53, 220 Digital Processing Systems, 12 Fire and explosions e ect, 184 Digital single-lens re ex (DSLR), 11 First position, 209–211 Director of photography (DOP), 109, 110 frame 1, 209–210 Disney Studios, 1, 24, 28, 74 frame 13, 210–211 Dodgem cars exercise, 30–31 Flag, 187–188 Double frame, 24–25 Flashlight bulbs, 116 Double, Sculpt, 83 “Flashlines”, 66, 89 Dragonframe, 12–13, 16, 18, 21 Fleischer, Max, 5 Dragonslayer, 4, 5 Flocking, 113–114 Drawing from life, 136, 137 Foamcore, 91, 110, 120 Drilling, Teresa, 207, 208, 221 Foam injector, 108 Dumała, Piotr, 204 Foam latex, 108 Duracell bunny, 101–107 casting, 95 process for mixing, 95–98 E Focal length, 11, 174, 175 Easing in and out exercise, 21–23, 25 Focus, in shot, 41, 175, 176 Editing, 16, 189 Fog/mist e ect, 186 Food mixer, 108 animatics and story reels, 45 Footprints in snow e ect, 185 nding good, 35 Four walls and sky, 109 design and building of sets, 109–114 Epoxy glues, 108 base, 110–113 Epoxy resin mould, 93 buildings, 114 Equity (UK actors union) website, 124 creating landscapes, 113–114 Establishing shot, 36–37 scale, 110 Exercise, 132, 146, 161 exterior sets, 116–118 forced perspective, 118–119 bouncing ball, 25 interior sets, 115–116 dodgem cars, 30–32 making props, 119 easing in and out, 21–23 practical lights, 115–116 Exterior sets, 116–118 research look, 109 Extreme downward position, 211–212 rigging, 119–120 Eyelines, 163–165 Frame by frame, 5, 12, 135, 136, 197 Frame grabbers, 11–13 F Frankenweenie, 73, 74, 75, 101 Fablon, 120 Friction head, 13 Fantastic Mr. Fox, 24, 73 Fast-cast resin, 92 G Fast walk (8–12 frames), 151 Gabriel, Peter, 2 Feature lms, 198–199 Ga er tape, 16 Festivals, 204 Gaming, 196 Fiberglass resin (or GRP, glass-reinforced plastic), 93 Garage lamps, 14 Fi and the Flowertots, 73 Gasek, Tom, 197 File formats, 193 Geared head, 13 File naming and storage, 20–21 Gelling times of foam, 99 Fill light, 173, 187 Glass ber, 108 Film Glove mould, 93 “Gobo”, 116, 117 of frame resolution, 32 grammar, 36 styles, 34–35

228 INDEX Goleszowski, Richard, 51, 163 Joints, 76–77 Go motion, 151, 154 Jump cut, 37 A Grand Day Out, 129 Jurassic Park, 4 Gromit, 6, 7, 35, 49, 129, 207, 220 Gumby, 51, 52 K Gumstrip, 120 K&S, 59, 62, 69, 80, 150 Guy, Tony, 155 Keaton, Buster, 162 Kelvin scale, 172 H Key light, 173, 188 Halogen lamps, 14 King Kong, 4 Harbutt, William, 51 Kino Flo, 15 Hard mould Knick Knack, 2 making, 90–93 L plaster moulds, 92 LAIKA, 85, 87, 203 resin moulds, 92 Landscapes, creating, 113–114 Harryhausen, Ray, 4, 47 Lasseter, John, 2 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, 192 Latex, care of, 99 Heavy-duty foil, 115, 119, 120–121 Laurel and Hardy, 162 Hilligoss, Nick, 110, 113, 173 Leaf, Caroline, 204 Hittle, Tim, 17, 167, 171 LED lighting, 14, 188 Holman, Joe, 74, 75 Lenses, 11, 19, 175 Home on the Range, 6 Leroy, Guionne, 1, 4, 133, 159, 168, 169 Hot glue gun, 16 Lewis’s Newplast clay, 51, 53, 108, 211 e Human Figure in Motion, 135 Lewis Uro, 108 Humanoid joints, 79–83 Lighting, 14–15, 116, 117 ball-and-socket joints, 80 professional rig arm, 82 backdrop for, 117 rigging points, 80–83 background, 174 calibrate your monitor, 172 I color temperature and lighting gels, 172–173 Idea–script–treatment, 33–36 key light, 173 measuring light, 171–172 nding good editor, 35 Lip sync, 16, 76, 83, 123, 127–133, 187 script, 34–35 Liquitex, 100 treatment, 35–36 Logitech Quickcam, 10 e Illusion of Life, 2 Loose Moose, 133, 196 Image production, 9 Lord, Pete, 30, 123, 129, 140, 154, 159, 161, 183 iMovie, 16 e Lost World, 4 Insulation board, 108 Interior sets, 115–116 M iStop Motion, 12, 18 M3 nut, 59 Mackinnon, Ian, 73, 74, 75, 82, 89 J MacLaren, Norman, 2 Jackson, Gary, 105 Maquette, 74, 75–76, 88 Jason and the Argonauts, 4 Mars Attacks!, 73 Jobs, applying for, 202–203 Johnstone, Ollie, 2, 211 e Mascot, 5

INDEX 229 illusion of, 140, 141 Masterclass lifting heavy box, 142–143 animation, 207–223 model making, 101–107 Music and copyright e ects, 133 Muybridge, Eadweard, 135–136, 154 Mather, James, 192 McGraw, Feathers, 168 N McLean, Brian, 85 Nathan Flynn, 83 Medium-density berboard (MDF), 110, 114, 119, 120 Natural light, 172 Microsoft Lifecam, 10 Nature, caricature and, 5–7 A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2, 3 Neighbours, 2 Mighty Joe Young, 4 Newitt, Je , 9, 28, 33, 135, 140, 149, 159–160, 167, 189, 195, 206 Milliput, 54, 62, 108, 119, 120 Newton, Isaac, 23 Mini-spots, 16 Miracle Maker, 113 e Nightmare Before Christmas, 24–25, 77, 159, 168, 185 Modeling clays, working with, 51–54 Model in relaxed pose, 59 O Monkey jump, 222–223 O’Brien, Willis, 4 Monsters Inc., 2 Onion skin, 12 Morecambe, Eric, 162 Out of the Inkwell, 5 Morph, 51, 52, 135 Overlapping action, 148 Motion blur, 186 Owen, Gareth, 200–202 Motion control, 177 Motivation movement, 38 P Mould making Pal, George, 6 Palethorpe, Ange, 133 sculpt, 88–89 Panning camera, 39, 41 seams, 89 Park, Nice, 24, 32, 33, 35, 47, 49, 51, 123, 129, 167, 199 textures, 89 Peake, Peter, 184 undercuts, 89 Perception video recorder (PVR), 12 Mouth shapes, rough guide to, 131–133 Perforated steel, 121 Movement, mechanics of, 135–157 Performance, 159–169 animal and bird movement, 154–157 character animation, 17–18, 159–162 bird’s ight, 155, 157 comedy and comic timing, 162–167 bird’s walk, 155, 157 subtle character animation, 167–169 four-legged animals, 154–155 Photoshop, 190 lizard walking, 155, 156 Pib and Pog, 184 anticipation, action and reaction, 144–149 Picture edit, 189–191 breaking up movement, 149 Pingu, 73 digging a hole, 147–148 Pixilation, 2 examples, 144–146 Plaster moulds, 92 exercise, 146–148 Plasticine, 6, 51, 53, 54, 66, 94, 208, 213 follow-through, 148 Plastiline, 66, 108 hammering, 147 Pojar, Bretislav, 2 hands and feet, 148 Posing model, 138–139 rhythm and pace in movement, 147 balance, 138 snap, 149 line of action, 139 illusion of speed, 151–154 Postman Pat, 73 posing model, 138–139 balance, 138 line of action, 139 studies from observation, 135–137 invaluable Muybridge, 135–137 using live reference, 135 timing, 140 walking and running, 149–151 weight, 140–144 creating a sense of, 143–144

230 INDEX Post-production, 189–193 shooting with, 178–183 walking and running, 150 compositing, 191 exporting nal lm, 193 Rim light, 173, 188 picture edit, 189–191 Rotoscoping technique, 5 software, 190–191 “Royalty-free” soundtracks, 133 sound, 191–192 Run (six frames), 151, 153 title and credits, 193 Russ, Cat, 69, 71, 105 Practical lights, 115–116 Price, Loyd, 73, 198 S Prime lens, 11 Saunders, Peter, 48, 73, 74, 75, 84, 88, 89, 100, 112, 116, 120, Prop making, 119 Puppet, 105 130, 131 animation, 2, 5 Scary Cat Studio, 47, 105 bunny, 105 Scott, Anthony, 185 designing, 50 Script, 33, 34–35 drawings for simple, 56 Sculpey, 108, 119, 120 durable clothed, 58–59 Sculpt, 56, 66, 88–89, 94, 105 eyes, 62, 65, 72 Sculpting tools, 108 feet, 65–69 Seams, 89–90 foot armature, 66, 68, 69, 72 hair, 62, 64, 72 e Secret Adventures of Tom umb, 2, 4 hands, 65, 69 Series work, 197–198 head, 62, 63, 69 Sesame Street character, 208 health and safety, 56 Sets making, 54–72 materials list for, 55, 69, 72 design and building of, 109–114 scale of, 110, 111, 112 base, 110–113 simple wire and plasticine, 54–58 buildings, 114 staying upright, 50 creating landscapes, 113–114 tools needed for simple, 55 scale, 110 Purves, Barry, 30, 73, 139, 140, 151, 161, exterior, 116–118 162, 198 interior, 115–116 Shooting with rig, 178–183 R checkerboarding, 182 Rain e ect, 185 chroma key or green screen, 182 Rapid prototype, 84 setting up for glass shoot, 183 Rare earth magnets, 108, 121 using glass, 183 Recording, 126 Shoot, ready to, 171 dialog, 125–126 nal checks before you hit button, 187 sound, 15–16 health and safety issues, 174 Red Hot Riding Hood, 163 lighting, 171–174 Re ected light, 188 setting up shot, 174–178 Re ector, 173, 188 shooting with rig, 178–183 Relaxed walk (16 frames), 151, 152 special e ects, 183–187 Release agents, 92, 108 Shot Replacement heads, 128 camera move in, 39–41 Resin, 62, 84, 92, 100, 108 elements, 37 Reverse angle shots, 39, 110 establishing, 36–37 Rex the Runt, 51, 94, 163, 183, 184 Rigging, 13 lm grammar/composition of, 36–41 climpex, 119–120 aspect ratio, 36 points, 80–83 camera angle, 37 camera move in shot, 39–41 continuity, 38–39 crossing the line, 39 lm grammar, 36

INDEX 231 Sound advice, 123–133 focus, 41 lip sync, 127–133 motivation, 38 music and e ects copyright, 133 plan, 36 pre-production, 124 reverse angle shots, 39 recording dialog, 125–126 setting, and 36–37 sound breakdown, 126–127 sound, 41 Special e ects, 183 reverse angle, 39 camera shake, 184 setting up, 174–178 consider editor, 186–187 blocking out your shots, 177 re and explosions, 184 camera moves, 176–177 fog/mist, 186 camera position, 174–175 footprints in snow, 185 depth of eld, 175–176 motion blur, 186 motion control, 177 rain, 185 own welfare, 177 smoke, 186 shooting, 177–178 water, 186 shutter speed, 175 wind, 186 Showreel, 203–204 Speed, illusion of, 151–154 Shutter speed, 175 Sproxton, David, 12, 123, 197–198 Silicone, 66, 89, 94, 108 Staging, 211 casting, 99–100 Starewitch, Ladislas, 5, 6 moulds, 94 Star Wars, 4 Silvers, Phil, 162 Sticky wax, 108, 115, 121 Simple editing software, 189–190 Stop frame lming, 183 Simple wire puppet armature construction, 57–58 Stop motion, 1–5, 10, 12, 83, 191, 196, 197 Single frame, 24–25 Stopmotionanimation.com, 8, 185 Skellington, Jack, 185 Stop Motion Pro, 12, 16, 18 Sledgehammer, 2 Storyboard, 41–45 Slowing down at top of move accuracy and, 43 frame 36, 215–216 for aspect ratio, 42 frame 38, 216 de nition, 41 frame 39, 217 examples, 43, 44 frame 40, 217 Story reels, animatics and, 45 Smartphone, 10 e Street of Crocodiles, 2 Smoke e ect, 186 Subtle character animation, 167–169 S Murray & Co., 119 Sunbeam Mixmaster, 95 Snip foam, 66, 69, 72 Sutcli e, Neil, 84, 88 Snow White, 5 Sutcli e, Stuart, 89, 90 Soft mould Svankmajer, Jan, 2, 3 basic rules for, 94 “Sync pop”, 192 care of latex, 99 casting foam latex, 95–98 T casting silicone, 99–100 Tablet, 10 coloring, 100 costumes/dressing, 100–101 e Tale of the Fox, 5 curing, 99 Tate, Johnny, 207 gelling times, 99 Tati, Jaques, 162 making, 94–101 Tex Avery (Red Hot Riding Hood), 6 plasticine press moulds, 94 Textures, 89, 91, 100, 113 silicone moulds, 94 Some Day my Prince Will Come, 5 ere ere, 2 Sound, 191–192 omas, Colin, 123 breakdown, 126–127 omas, Frank, 2 mixing, 192 omas, Trey, 53, 195 recording, 15–16 in shot, 41

232 INDEX omson, William, 172 Vision, persistence of, 24 3D printing and replacements, 2, 6, 83–88 Visualization, 45 Voice, 33, 123, 126 puppet faces, 86 rapid prototype or 3D printing, 84–88 W replacements, 83–84 Walker, Christine, 112 under Pig, 133 Walking and running, 149–151 Tilt, 39, 41 Timing, 140 fast walk 8–12 frames, 151 Tin Toy, 2 relaxed walk 16 frames, 151 Tippett, Phil, 4, 5 rigging, 150 Titles and credits, 193 run six frames, 151 Toby’s Travelling Circus, 73 Wallace, 35, 49, 129, 199 Toggling, 12 Wallace and Gromit: e Curse of the Were-Rabbit, 207 Toolkit, 15 Water e ect, 186 Toy Story, 2, 159, 168 Webcam, 10 Tracking, 39, 41 Weight, 140 Tripods, 13–14 creating a sense of, 143–144 Trnka, Jiri, 2, 128 illusion of, 140, 141 Tulips will Grow, 6 lifting heavy box, 142–143 Tungsten lighting, 14 Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, 6 TV specials, 198 William, Richard, 2 Two-dimensional (2D) animation, 1–2, 30, 43, 150, 163 Wind e ect, 186 e Wind in the Willows, 130 U Windows Moviemaker, 16 Undercuts, 89, 91 Wood, 56, 108 e Wrong Trousers, 129, 168, 186 is Unnameable Little Broom, 2 Upward move, beginning, 212–215 X X-sheet, 16, 28–30, 171 frame 31, 212–213 frame 32, 213–214 frame 33 and 34, 214–215 frame 43, 219 frame 45, 219 V Z Van Aken (Plastalina), 108 ZBrush, 84–85, 88 Victor Frankenstein, 192 Zoom lens, 11, 39, 41