Dave Alex Riddett

This morning we had the pleasure of meeting the director of photography at Aardman, Dave Alex Riddett, who spoke to us about what it's like to be in the animation industry.

He started by describing how he came to be in the industry; starting off as a student in Leicester and then here in Leeds, to then basing himself in Bristol after his studies into film. It was in the 1970s when this happened, which is the same time as Peter Lord and David Sproxdon's start up for the Aardman Animation Studios. Riddett joined the company at the same time as Nick Park, in 1985, where they animated several commercials (this was apparently the fastest way to earn money at the time), which eventually lead onto the short and feature length films we all know and love.

One part of the process he particularly loves is photography (a feeling I can relate to!), and talked about his favourite tool, the bolex camera. It was one of the cameras he used to create the short films in his early days; since there was no way to digitally edit films at the time he relied purely on the camera work to produce the final image nicely.

Bolex Camera

Jumping from this to the present, he showed us a lot of behind the scenes photos and footage from various films, particularly the recent Shaun the Sheep film; firstly describing how they used to rig characters - on the old Wallace and Gromit films the models were quite small, so the poles and wires used to hold them in place and to make them easier to move were a lot smaller, compared to the rigs used in todays films. In the image below you can see the elaborate system used to animate shaun the sheep.

A behind the scenes photo of the process into animating with rigs,
from Shaun the Sheep

He also discussed what's expected of an animator at Aardman and some of the techniques they use to film and edit footage, using 'The Wrong Trousers' (1993) as an example in comparison to 'Pirates! An Adventure with Scientists' (2012).

The Wrong Trousers was filmed using tricks of the camera and no post production; for example in the train track chase scene they used a long exposure setting and moved the background to create the illusion of movement. Whereas Pirates had a bigger budget, therefore they could use multiple character models, swap out the mouths to animate the lip syncing and shoot every scene twice - once with and once without characters in - to paint out the rigs used to animate them and keep the backgrounds exactly the same.

In most of their productions throughout, if there's a scene involving a hill they usually build the set flat so it lies horizontal to the floor, and set the camera up at a different angle.

Wallace and Gromit 'The Wrong Trousers' (1993)

It was great to hear loads of cool tricks behind the Aardman films, and to see such an elaborate presentation and development videos to see the process into setting up the shots, (he even brought in actual models from Shaun the Sheep!) It has definitely inspired me to learn more about stop motion and animating!

The models used in the film 'Shaun the Sheep'