Present

The Brothers Quay

The brothers quay are formed of Stephen and Timothy. They are identical twins born in Norristown,Pennsylvania, US. They currently live in England and have so since 1969; when they came here to study at  Royal College of Art. The identical twins are admired and renowned for their creative work; Most of the animation is made up of dolls which creates a dark feel. The brothers work usually doesn’t contain dialogue which means they rely a lot of music and sound FX. The brothers work spans from music videos to films they have worked for the BBC and MTV. The brothers were still very creative before any of the films; they designed book covers for science fiction novels. One of the quays biggest successes was the ‘street of crocodiles’ it was a 21 minute stop motion video, it was released in 1986. It was about a man who closes a lecture hall and finds a puppet. The man goes through a ‘mechanical realities and manufactured pleasures, the camera eventually shows how unfulfilling the surroundings actually are. The short film was very musical like the rest of the brothers work. Unlike a lot of films the brothers liked to show the movements of its props. The brothers would have been very proud to find out that ‘terry Gilliam thought it was one of the best animated films of all time. 

Tim Burton

Tim burton was born on the 25th of August 1958 in Burbank California. He is a writer, film producer and director. He is most famous for “The Nightmare Before Christmas”. Tim burton has always been interested in stop motion even before he was a teenager he would make stop films in his back garden. As a student Tim burton wasn't very well behaved his teachers said he was only interested in painting drawing and watching films suggesting burton is a very visual person. Tim burtons animation techniques are very interesting the night before Christmas which Tim Burton wrote and produced took 3 years to film. It included 230 different sets hundreds of different puppets displaying characters feeling and emotion. The film had 24 frames per second. For just 1 minute of completed film it took a whole week. The main characters body has a robot like structure making it easy for the film makers to move different joints of the body. This precision helped the film to gross 50 million dollars, which in 1993 nearly 20 years ago was a lot of money. The impact of Tim Burton’s nightmare before Christmas helped animation become big in the film industry. When tim burton made another stop motion film “James and the giant peach” this renewed interest in stop animation leading the path for the like of chicken run. Tim burtons career has involved many big roles 1 of them being the director of batman and Charlie and the chocolate factory. Tim burtons target audience is dark and quirky themed. I feel tim burton is great although he is not everybody's taste including mine he has still been part of some very big films. He has led for the way for films such as chicken run.

Aardman Animations

Aardman Studios is based in Bristol. Aardman has made many blockbuster films including; Wallace and Grommet, Flushed Away and Chicken Run. Aardman was founded in 1972 by David Sorption and Peter Lyod. Aardman studios specializes in clay. Aardman studios is very precise in their stop motion techniques Take Chicken run for instance they had many different clay faces for each different letter in the alphabet. It had 10,000 different frames. It took 3 weeks to shoot 1 frame. There was 24 frames a second. They went through an incredible 900 kg of clay and 4000 liters of paint. There was over 3 years of animation. Aardman Studios helped chicken run set the baseline for modern animation after chicken run Hollywood started to use animation in its films. Aardman studios has many genres from creating television adverts such as “change 4 life”. To “chevron” cars to the BBC. Aardman is well know in the media industry thanks to chicken run. Even in commercials such as chevron aardman has still used clay again concluding my point they specialize in clay. Aardman have show they can make 2 hour films or 2 minute films and still make them effective. I feel most of Aardman’s work is aimed at a young audience as flushed away and Wallace and grommet are both for young audiences also the chevron advert looked like a kids program.  Kids can interact more with animation as its fun especially clay. Aardman studios have made stop motion so effective by an excellent team such as a painters, model makers, set dresser, voices, graphic artists, spay shops, model makers, fabricators, dubbing engineers , digital grading, composting artists. This is why films such as chicken run and Wallace and grommet have had such excellent awards and reviews and this is also why in years to come animators will look to aardman as the modern creators of computer animation. The downside to clay animation is unlike a animation that has been done all on a computer is it can be easily broken or burnt; aardman studios had a big fire costing millions and losing lots of casting from the Wallace and grommet film it also take a lot longer than normal film and needs an extremely big cast. I feel aardman studios is great it started as a small business from Bristol (hardly Hollywood) and went on to great things. It has helped films win Oscars and many other prizes.