Stop-motion training in a digital world
3D World UK|October 2021
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
Stop-motion training in a digital world

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.”

This story is from the October 2021 edition of 3D World UK.

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This story is from the October 2021 edition of 3D World UK.

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