CMU School of Drama


Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Designing the Stop-Motion Sets of Aardman Animation's Early Man!

Tested: Even though a stop-motion animated film is shot at a smaller-than-life scale, the sets and environments that need to be built for its clay characters can still be massive. Adam Savage enters the production design room at Aardman Animations to learn how Early Man's sets are blueprinted, prototyped, and then finally built to be filmed, one frame at a time.

2 comments:

Rachel Kolb said...

The draftings were all doen by hand!!!! They had so many draftings because each element goes into intense detail and they were all hand drafted! It does to show that the world hasn’t completely transferred to the world of technology, but for somethings the creativeness of hand drafting is still used. I’m curious as to why they/ the individual drafts people decided to used hand drafting instead of computer drafting programs like AutoCAD, Vector works, or Solid Works. This video also showed that scenic draftings aren’t only used in the world of theater. It didn’t cross my mind that other areas within the entertainment industry also did draftings of their scenic elements. The draftings that were shown in this video were a great illustration of the concept that Kevin taught today, that you start with a drafting of the bi picture and then get smaller and smaller so you have the necessary information to construct the element. You have a series of assembly drawings that lead to parts drawing.

Katie Pyzowski said...

I love that all the drafting was done by hand! I one hundred percent agree with what Perry's reasoning behind using hand drafting. Computer technology has not caught up to be able to draft and drawn with the meticulous detail and character that is evident in the drawings Perry and his assistant did for this animated film. There is a unique human and realistic quality that just cannot be recreated on a computer program. I thought it was so cool how much symbolic meaning was incorporated into the scenery. The foreshadowing theme of soccer embedded within the architecture is a really interesting way to incorporate a theme of the movie even deeper into the physical aspects of the production. I also found it interesting that the scenery was built around the look of the characters. I loved how the environment of the stone age people reflects their body shapes, and that the bronze age structures are based on the original costume of villain. The set truly is "the background level of the story" – filled with details pulled from the essence of the story to enhance the surroundings. It is an interesting approach to the design process, and it suits this animated movie studio very well – their products are beautiful.