Well, check me out and chill… Last August I worked on a short motion graphics sequence for Aardman’s latest feature film, Shaun the Sheep Movie. Frequent collaborator and creative badass, one Gavin Strange, got me involved to animate and composite his designs into stop-motion scenes and shots.
Gav & I have done a handful of small-scale side projects for fun over the years, but when people like Aardman come knocking, you make sure you answer the door, invite them in and offer them some of your own personal batch of high-grade salted caramel cookies. Christ, it’s Aardman… When I first moved to Bristol from Dublin back in 2004, doing something like this for a company like this was simply a pipe dream, a distant, unrealistic ambition, so needless to say, I was excited/nervous as all hell to get involved with this. Granted, it’s not the most difficult or visually complex project I’ve done, but sometimes you show off work because it took ages, or because it’s highly complex or it’s a household brand, and sometimes you show off work because genuinely proud to be involved in any small way, particularly when you realise that this will probably end up being broadcast on BBC on Christmas day for the next 20 years or so…
The film is truly funny, in the same sort of vein as Wallace & Gromit, only completely dialogue-free. My son, who’s 2 1/2, sat the through the full thing, giggling his arse off. Check out a review here and a quick behind the scenes article here.
