This weekend, THN joined BAFTA and the team from Aardman Animations at their interactive workshop at the Barbican Centre in London, for their fantastic live animation workshop to celebrate animation and THE PIRATES! IN AN ADVENTURE WITH SCIENTISTS! Dedicated young fans of the legendary animators battled through the rain with their parents and were rewarded with an amazing workshop where they could; make and design their very own pirate hats, plus find contenders for the best pirate drawing prize and even make their own Polly. Plus, along the way they were helped by animators and designers from Aardman. At this wonderful showcase, future animators and designers were even given a chance to create a storyboard for their own pirate adventure, under the expert eye of storyboard artist Jay Clarke, who showed us how to story-board and how our favorite characters, including Shaun the Sheep and Wallace and Gromit, are brought to life on the screen.
The Aardman and BAFTA workshop had a great atmosphere, we’re very pleased to report that parents and children were equally impressed with the hands-on experiences under the guidance of some of the best in the business. There was an enormous sense of enthusiasm from all sides, which was nowhere more apparent than in the interactive live animation presentation following the workshop. At this part of the event, a model builder and animator from Aardmann walked and talked us through the process and problems of completing an entire animated film like THE PIRATES! (which took a whole five years!). The focus was very much on getting kids to start creatively animating by showing them a simple demonstration that involved the whole audience, myself included! We all waved our hands madly in the air, while the presenters took a series of pictures and then merged them together to look like actual waves, like an awesome human ocean. This was followed with clips from the film showing how they match the actor’s mouth shapes to the models of their characters and also a video explaining how model builders construct all the different characters, which each take three months to complete.
As the day came to a close, we attended a Q&A where Aardman souls answered a deluge of questions from the boisterous crowd, including some surprisingly technical questions from a 4-year old who asked about 3D printers, which we found out they did in fact use in the model building process. The team were fantastic in their explanation and involvement with the crowd, as well as their encouragement of the children to start getting into creative animation as soon as possible. All these moments together became incredibly inspiring and in the apt words of Jay Clarke:
“There’s a lot of brainstorming and ideas, but the main idea is to have fun with it”.
THE PIRATES! IN AN ADVENTURE WITH SCIENTISTS! is available to buy now on DVD or Blu-ray! In fact, why not even pick up ‘The Making Of’ by clicking here. Finally, scroll down for more photos of this amazing event.
