How Stop-Motion Movies Are Animated at Aardman

[Narrator] The new Netflix film Robin Robin

pushes the envelope of what's possible

with stop motion animation

and follows in the creative footsteps

of classic Aardman films like Wallace and Gromit,

Shaun the Sheep and Chicken Run.

The symbiosis with technology has massively helped.

We're able to do things now with stop motion

that wouldn't have been possible not so long ago.

[Narrator] The film's young directing duo

champion new textures and new visual effect techniques

while staying true

to the artisanal spirit of Aardman Studios.

[Dan] The Robin Robin world is all handcrafted.

Every snowflake in it has been shot in camera, hand animated

because we didn't want any CG in the film.

[Narrator] Let's break down the timeline and the technique

of the new stop motion Aardman flick.

The whole production took about two years

from when we were green-lit

to when we finally delivered the final film.

Probably about a year of that was writing and storyboarding.

[Narrator] From the script,

the film went through the prep and design phases.

Before any puppets were built out of needle felt

the characters were crafted on paper

and there's no undo button

on the set of a handmade film like this

so Dan and Mikey had to get their story straight

with a rigorous pre-production regimen

that took nearly an entire year.

One thing that we did right from the beginning

was to make a color script of the whole film,

to use color to help tell the story.

You've got to know exactly what you're doing

when you get in the room and start filming with an animator.

You've got to know exactly to the second

what you're gonna shoot.

Because of that it means

that you effectively make a rough version of the film

before you go onto set, before you even start shooting.

That version, we call it an animatic,

is made from storyboards

and edited together with scratch sound and music

and we'd often do the voices of the characters

if we hadn't recorded them by then.

So, you get this rough impression

of what the film is gonna be.

[Mikey] I think we had initially eight months

to build that animatic.

[Dan] Because of the nature of stop motion

you need to be shooting scenes all at once.

[Narrator] So that required

crafting at least five different puppets of each character

in at least three different scales.

So that's 75 puppets, including nine robins, 11 magpies,

20 mice, four cats, four squirrels, three frogs,

and three hedgehogs. [explosion booming]

Our job on a day-to-day basis was so much fun

of going into all these different rooms

with different parts of the world being rendered

at different stages.

[Mikey] Pretty much every set

was built specifically for a particular set of shots.

[Dan] The art department are busy the whole time

crafting the next set.

That's sort of the traditional stop motion sets

is that they're always able to break apart

and move around

partially because you've got to get animators into the set.

[Narrator] Here's Dan

mapping out the path of one of the characters,

walking the action much like on live action set.

[Dan] The blocking process was a really important part

of being able to figure out exactly what you're gonna get

at the end of the shot because with stop motion

it's very hard to do a retake.

We weren't allowed.

We weren't really allowed on this project

because of the schedule.

Once the sets in place you then have the process of,

you have the riggers.

There's a huge rigging department,

there's a lot of scaffolding

that goes into moving these puppets around.

And then we have the camera department,

which was led by our incredible DOP, Dave Alex Riddett

who was the DOP on The Wrong Trousers

and has a huge tradition of making films at Aardman.

And he would then light the set,

so he would paint with light

so there's lots and lots of camera set up

and lots of lighting preparation that goes in then

before the animator is finally able to step up to the stage.

And then we had about an eight month shooting window,

so we filmed for eight months.

[Narrator] A team of 14 animators

each banked about eight seconds of footage per week.

We don't shoot anything sequentially.

Well, one shot in particular,

it was a big shot and a big set piece of the film,

which is Robin's song right at the beginning of the film

where she dances her way through their rubbish dump home.

It was a pretty long shot, it's over 20 seconds

and also involved a camera move and a lot of choreography,

there was a lot of puppets in it.

Probably took about a week to set up the motion control

and get the camera working right.

After that you'd have all the lighting tweaks,

which took probably another few days or maybe a week.

And then once the animator's ready, they'll come in

and for that particular shot he did a block

which took him about a week.

That whole one shot,

it was probably like five weeks in one unit

that you've got to make sure that that camera move is right

and that it's not going too fast

and it's gonna leave them behind.

So, he was in there every day for two weeks

animating this sequence

and we just sort of locked him in there [laughing]

came back in two weeks

and he'd made this absolute masterpiece.

♪ We're on our way ♪

♪ To break into a house ♪

The fundamental basics of stop motion

have probably remained the same for a hundred years,

which you have something, you move it a little bit,

take a picture, move it a little bit, take a picture,

move it a little bit.

There's 12 frames per second,

so 12 images every second are taken.

As an animator they've got this great ability

to plan things out very meticulously

but also capture a real spontaneous energy.

We had this process where we would take each shot

and act it out ourselves.

When you can act little moments out yourself

there's a really immediate nature to that.

You'd take that video reference

and when you brief the animator on the floor

before they film it.

So, we actually do have a version of the whole film

with pretty much just me and Mikey

acting out every character in it, which is sort of insane

but probably for many people

probably more entertaining than the finished thing.

[Mikey] Some shots would be made up

of multiple, multiple exposures

and we use a program called Dragonframe,

which uses references.

We're able to use overlay images with the camera

to make sure, if we're shooting multiple plates,

that this element is gonna match up with this element.

[Dan] But with the software that we've got,

you've got a live playback

of every frame that you've taken so far.

So a big part of the animation process

is watching back what you've filmed

and anticipating the next position of the character.

[Narrator] That depth you see

is achieved by shooting various planes

and elements such as snowflakes, snowdrifts and silhouettes

separately on green screen,

which would then be composited later

by a visual effects team.

Every element in the film is something that's been filmed

rather than making CG backgrounds or anything like that.

I think the most we had was 60 plates,

a plate being a piece of character animation

or an element or a lighting exposure.

And we were really inspired by the Russian filmmakers

in the early years of stop motion, like Yuri Norstein,

and his film of Hedgehog in the Fog

where you get this really incredible sense

of depth and atmosphere.

If you saw how it was done,

it would be done in quite a lo-fi way.

[Narrator] The team used a stereoscopic technique

of shooting two frames at slightly different angles at once

in order to capture depth

that would be useful later in post.

[Mikey] So, although we weren't making a 3D film,

what this gave us was the depth information

that we wouldn't usually have with a stop motion,

you usually just come away from a scene with a flat image.

But by shooting it stereoscopic

we were able to then use that depth information

to embed all of our elements and so we could have

raindrops passing behind the blades of grass,

and trees disappearing into the mist,

and characters moving through it all

without the need of green screen or rotoscoping.

[firetruck siren blaring] I'm not a terrible mouse.

[Mikey] There was the cleanup of the neckline

and the eyelids of Robin, our main character.

And there's, of course, the integration of all the elements,

the snow and the mist and the fire and the water.

We also had the rigs to remove

so there was the scaffolding

that upholds all these characters as they're moving along.

The elemental buildup of things like rain was quite complex.

[Dan] The magic of stop motion is that it's all this craft

condensed into these frames that you're watching altogether

and there's a magic and a level of intensity to that

that we just love.