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ANIMATION www.postmagazine.com 24 POST NOV/DEC 2024 include all the building of the puppets and the sets, and the building the animatic with the story team. That's a good two years from then till we finish… We start with a really-small crew. We start just with two animators and then expand, so by the end we've got 30, 35 all shooting simultaneously. But you can't start like that. That would be crazy. We build it slowly." How many stages will you have going at the height of production? "We have about 40 live, and then about another five that are being dressed or set up, so about 45. They're all different locations. Obviously, they change throughout the film. We actually started this film shooting all the interiors because it was a smaller space and we were still working on Chicken Run at that point. So we had a small space in the studio and a lot of the stuff in the opening scenes are actually inside the interiors of Wallace's house or the police station. We start there and then by sort of halfway through the film, we finished all of those interiors." Does Aardman have a single location where this all takes place, or is it spread out? "No, we're still using the same site, actually. The original Chicken Run site was acquired to make Chicken Run one. And it's where we've been film- ing everything ever since…Actually, they did have a breakout space, but it becomes really hard to manage if you've got two. Even within the space we're in, the directors end up walking about seven miles a day, just covering their rounds, so you don't want to go any bigger." Can you talk about the camera setup you're using? Is it a traditional motion-picture camera or an animation-specific camera? "We're just using digital stills cameras, so high-end photographic cameras. We're not using actual film cameras at all. This changed, I think, around sort of the mid- to late-noughties is when we switched from 35mm film cameras — which Aardman had acquired from the film industry — to digital stills. But we're still using those lenses — the original lenses adapted from the film cameras. Really, really high quality prime lenses. Anyone can shoot animation like this essentially on a phone or tablet because all we're doing is taking high quality still images one after another and then they're com- bined in the edit process." How are those still images coming together on a timeline? "It's all automated. We actually use a program called Dragonframe, which is designed by anima- tors for the industry, and that just manages all the captures, so as we're animating, we can watch it back in realtime. Obviously, the raw images, they go through a separate pipeline into edit, but it's all automated. Thankfully, we don't have to worry too much about physical lining them all up." Do you have a specific digital camera that you prefer? "I don't think it's a secret…they are Canon, I'm pret- ty sure. That's what we've used as far as I can re- member, since the beginning of the stills process." As for the digital VFX, I would imagine you have to determine what is going to be added in post early on? "It's a blurry line to be honest. It's never that clear cut. In essence, we go with whatever looks best for the film. It's much more about the sort of aesthetic. The practicality of trying to create effective water on a large scale doesn't really work, so at the be- ginning of the film, we did lots of tests. Wherever we can, we do in-camera. There are various points in the film where water is created by our assistant animators using hair gel, wax, Vaseline — all of those things. Also, in this film, we used this resin that you could cure, so it's completely crystal clear, but you could sort of sculpt it. For example, when the jam gets splattered on the toast at the beginning, we sort of built see-through bits of jam with this resin, so in the beginning of the film, we've got some in-camera effects. But things like fog, water, fire, they're really hard to do…If you want it to look realis- tic, the best way for those kinds of effects is VFX." Does Aardman have in-house visual effects capabilities, or does that go to an external facility? "It varies film to film, but on this one, we had it all in-house. They can scale up to do a feature film. There (are) other departments at Aardman that make commercials and digital. It's actually a huge business (with) lots of different sides to the compa- ny. But…Nick and Merlin, they wanted to have that very authentic feel to the VFX, so it really sat well within the worlds of Wallace & Gromit, and to be honest, going to an external supplier of VFX for the film industry probably wouldn't have given us that. So we were really keen to keep the in-house nature, and work with people that understood the style." What becomes of all the assets after production wraps? Do you keep them in storage or a library? "We try and keep what we can, and we've actually got two archivists who work at Aardman, and it's a full-time job. They archive everything that we make. But the bigger sets, we can't keep. It's just going to cost too much. So we tend to sort of have smaller sets, and all the props will be kept. Some of those really expensive larger sets, we just have to strike them. And basically we try and recycle what we can. We're much more conscious now as a company of the environmental impacts of filmmaking. There's a couple of exhibitions that do tend to go around. I was in New York with Nick, and we take the puppets with us, so the actual real film puppets, they .tend to have a bit of a life after the film." What scale are the characters? "I reckon Wallace is just over six inches. Norbots, probably three to four inches high. They're really specific sizes, and that's because we don't have different scales in this film. We've got one scale. That's partly because we want to build the whole world. We don't want to build lots of versions. But that means we've got to have a scale that works for those really-wide shots, but also the extreme close ups of Gromit and his brow when he's changing expression. We've physically got to put a camera right there next to this tiny puppet, and the animators are going to animate that by hand." So it's not just the typical action-hero/1:6 scale? "They're all slightly different. And I don't know exactly why that is, but, Shaun the Sheep's world is slightly different to Wallace & Gromit, which was slightly different to The Pirates. They've all got their own bespoke scales…The other thing is, Wallace & Gromit's world — all their props are slightly oversized, even for them. It's just part of a sort of chunky world that they live in. The mugs are huge… His hands are massive as well. If you see Wallace's hands, they're actually really chunky, so everything's got a very unique look about it in this world." What's next for you? "I'm actually excited! I'm working in the Aardman Academy, where we bring people in to teach them animation skills, but also teach filmmaking. I'm preparing for a filmmaking course where 12 people from around the world have applied with a film idea, and they pay to come and make it here. They basically make it under the supervision and the support of Aardman. It's a really-exciting prospect because it sort of it feels very fresh and new." Dragonframe is used to assemble sequences. Imagery is captured with digital still cameras.