Industry Week Blog: Episode 6 Jim Parkyn

Jim Parkyn - Aardman Animations

To finish off Confetti’s hugely successful Industry week I was given to opportunity to hear from a more “hands on” professional which was in fact Jim Parkyn; model maker, toy designer and all round nice guy of Aardman Animations. More after the jump.

As we all sat down and where given the usual formalities things where underway and we were introduced to Jim Parkyn himself. It was at this point I noticed the big table full of ceramic modelling clay or better known as Plasticine, needless to say I was already filed with excitement. I like to think of myself as a creative person and I was hoping for a hand on approach but I would have to wait and see what Jim had planned for us.
To begin with Jim explained a little bit about who he is and where he’s from before treating the audience to a short video made by staff members which was an attempt at using the same stop motion techniques that have made Jim so famous. With that said the production values where say not quite as impressive as that of Wallace and Gromit however the audience certainly enjoyed to see it. With that said Jim then discussed his early creations such as the 80s classic The Trap Door, not knowing this I was filled with glee as it was a personal favourite of mine and took up a lot of my childhood! It was from this that Jim moved to work with Creature Comforts which is an interesting twist on public interviews, in that they are chopped and edited and given a Plasticine set and made to look like an interview with wild animals. This sounds a little odd but for those who haven’t seen it before I suggest you do soon as you can because it is wonderfully hilarious.

After showing the audience a clip from Creature Comforts Jim then went on to tell us all about his journey to becoming a model maker for Aardman, he started by explaining how he began by studying Product Design and then after taking part in some after-hours courses found himself taking part in a course in Wales which specialised in CG and 2D animation.
Jim spent two years with this study and then finally graduated in 98, it was here that he when worked on an unsuccessful sci-fi animation which he expressed a certain lack of confidence in. It was from this that Jim went on to talk about his progression through the industry touching on this work with the BBC on Robbie the Reindeer and how he moved from this to end up at Aardman, with his first job being on the family favourite Chicken Run. After this he moved onto work with the ever charming Rex the Runt where he focused on character design and then contributed to the Tortoise vs. Hare.

With that said Jim returned to talking about Creature Comforts, he expanded on it further and went into a lot more detail this time. He began by talking about how animators cut corners in the way that if part of an object isn’t seen in the animation then it isn’t made, for example how in a clip where the back of a sofa is not seen then the design team would not make it. This fascinated me as this is identical to the way that 3D modellers in the game industry work too, if something is never seen then it isn’t made. From this Jim showed us a video which detailed the process in which a clip from Creature Comforts is designed, staring with a detailed concept sketch to filming real actors mouthing the script to working with the animation. He explained how the interviews are all real life occurrences which are then manipulated and “cut up” so the team can work with it and create the short animation, he chuckled when detailing how the more vain the responses are the worse creature they tend to be in an ironic way.

“Creature Comforts are a head on stick animation” Jim explained, this meaning that the animation is primarily focused on the head and facial expressions. He then showed us a video once again but this time a documentary which followed the entire process from the recorded interview to the finished animation. I was blown away by the amount of commitment and creativity that the whole team has when making an animation like Creature Comforts with the documentary showing how the company has an almost magical touch to it.

From this Jim talked more about the industry itself detailing how getting a foot in the door with animation is generally a combination of experience and luck and expressing how it is very much a “right place at the right time” industry. With that said Jim assured the audience by explaining how the skills used are relative to a lot of other industries too such as the game and film industry and how easy it is to move between the two.
Jim then opened the floor to some Q and A to which he was asked about creation times for a full animations as well as the implementation of Computer Graphics and how that will effect stop motion animations such as his. In response to these Jim detailed the complexity of each animation and how it’s completely dependent on lots of key factors, in terms of Computer Graphics Jim discussed how the process certainly is easier to do the same job however a lot of the magic and soul is lost in the process. With that said Jim then told the audience how before the lecture finished we were going to collectively make our own models out of the Plasticine located on the stage. Once everyone taking part have received their Plasticine we began modelling Gromit from the famous Wallace and Gromit animations of the 90s, with a little help and advice from Jim we all managed to create something that was perhaps not perfect but a whole lot more magical than anything that could have been achieved with computer graphics.

By Samuel Johnston, FDSC student in Games Technology.