Stop-motion training in a digital world

3D World speaks with Mark Simon Hewis, head of department at Aardman Academy, as he develops its training for people passionate about stop-motion

- Mark Simon Hewis

PASSIONATE FOCUS

A passion for the craft enriches commitment

“With the 12-week stop-motion courses it’s week-by-week of another craft, another skill being taught by directors and animators and going off and doing a task and responding,” says Hewis. “And [it’s about] being in a community of people. We’ve had an awful lot of people from the US, Colombia, rural India, Melbourne, Sydney, Qatar and all across Europe, and we become a group of geeks geeking out about stop-motion. It’s ace!”

There’s a real sense of satisfied surprise in Mark Simon Hewis’s voice when he recalls how, during the past two decades, the terrain and perception of stop-motion animation has radically evolved. “When Aardman was starting with Chicken Run they just couldn’t find enough animators,” he reveals. “They just couldn’t find people who did stop-motion. Stop-motion was incredibly unpopular if you weren’t Disney doing 2D, and it certainly wasn’t something that a lot of people dreamt about doing. And so Aardman realised that they almost had to train people up. So that’s what they did. They got people in who’d done a little bit or showed a lot of interest and they started doing a three-month course which trained people, and a lot of them walked straight onto Chicken Run; onto the highest-grossing stop-motion film in history. And, actually, some of the people who now teach on the Academy, who are directors and senior animators, they did that course.”