How Do They Do Water In Wallace And Gromit Animation

How'd They Do That?: Stop-Motion Secrets Revealed

compiled by Heather Kenyon

In The Wrong Trousers' train chase scene, animators
moved the wall in the background to create a realistic
motion blur. © Aardman.
O due north October nine, 1997, Nick Park and Peter Lord fabricated a rare Los Angeles appearance at the University of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as role of the Marc Davis Animation Lecture Series. The at-capacity oversupply was very circumspect to the presentation. However, a special hush fell over the audience every bit Nick explained that the soap bubbles and water with which Gromit washes windows in A Shut Shave was really created using a combination of articulate pilus gel and glass beads.

We asked six stop-motility maestros to reveal a few more tricks of the merchandise: Henry Selick, Barry Purves, David Fain, Andrew Ruhemann, Voltaire and Mikk Rand. Here'south what they had to say:

Henry Selick (U.South.)
Manager, The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and The Behemothic Peach
"In The Nightmare Earlier Christmas there is a grotesque fountain in the town foursquare that looks to be choking itself. The trick was the water. What nosotros did was make a series of replacement sculptures out of translucent plastic and used a replacement bike. Nosotros didn't use whatsoever water at all. We based the movement on traditional animation and and so cast it in a queer resin."

This gruesome scene from Barry Purves' Screen Play
used a special red toothpaste to simulate blood.
© Bare Boards Productions.

Barry Purves (U.K.)
Director, Side by side, Screen Play, Rigoletto, Achilles
"For claret, I use a cosmetic toothpaste. It's red and slightly dyes the gums a deeper shade, in outcome making the teeth whiter. Mixed with a little glycerin to make it await wet, information technology'due south easily animatable and does not run or dry out. Unfortunately, it smells of spearmint. I tin can't look at one of my decease scenes at present, without smelling of spearmint!. . . . KY lubrication jelly is also wonderful for tears."

David Fain (U.S.)
Animator, Action League Now!
"The testify is an interesting hybrid of nigh 20% animation while the remaining 80% what nosotros telephone call "Chuckimation," which consists of puppeteering and hurling the characters past the camera. This previous season we've worked with a variety of substances ranging from Aloe Vera gel to simulate fried Alien, to mixing all three colors of Nickelodeon "Smud" with water and tempera paint to produce the substance Meltman oozes in the show's opening sequence."

Andrew Ruhemann, Passion Pictures (U.Yard.)
Producer, Doppelganger.
"KY Jelly was used as a substitute for snot in the making of Doppelganger, a Reebok commercial. It was used to evidence that the evil Ryan Giggs double is a dirty, slovenly kind of chap!"

Voltaire's station ID for The Sci-Fi Channel.
Epitome courtesy of Voltaire.
Voltaire (U.Due south.)
Director/animator, commercials (Sci-Fi Channel, MTV and The states Network)
"For a Halloween promo that I animated for the Sci-Fi Channel, I had to create cease-move skeletons with pumpkin heads. The skeletons were made of armature wire and plumber'south epoxy. Plumber's epoxy is a resin that you mix and in four minutes information technology turns to stone. Needless to say you have to be a fast sculpt! I wanted the heads to exist jack-o-lanterns, just for them to expect dried out and old. Rather than the usual route which is sculpting them in clay, making a mold and and then casting them in condom, I made shrunken apple heads. I carved the faces directly into the apples and and so let them dry. It created a actually wrinkly, old look.

"For the prepare I was looking for some kind of texture that would make the ground, which was primarily craft paper and h2o putty, expect very earthy and organic. I ended up creating a mixture of cinnamon, nutmeg, cayenne pepper and instant coffee grounds. I so spray-mounted information technology to the paper and it really looked like earth. The nice thing is that each one of these powders has a distinctly different colour to information technology, so past mixing them in different proportions and by individually sprinkling them, you finish upwards getting a really organic modeled texture. All of the dried out foliage came from a stale flower and institute store. These thorny, seed casings and podlike things concluded up giving the landscape a very macabre wait. We used these instead of sculpting trees.

"At the very end of the spot in that location'due south a Victorian haunted mansion. Nosotros were getting down to the wire and hadn't yet built the house, so I sent one of my assistants to Starbucks and asked him to liberate about 200 wooden stirrers. We cut them like miniature wooden siding and built a little forced perspective business firm out of the stirrers. Then nosotros spray painted the entire thing blackness. It is probably the quickest and cheapest mansion e'er congenital!"

Mikk Rand, Nukufilm (Republic of estonia)
"When nosotros animated the flick Dorsum to Europe, directed by Riho Unt, nosotros idea we had discovered making water by using hair gel!

"Anyway, here are a few more examples:
Cotton wool wool was used to imitate smoke and smog in Kaerajaan (Dir: Mikk Rand) and Dorsum to Europe (Dir: Riho Unt). Cotton fiber was as well used to create snowfall in The Elf'south Tree (Dir: Rao Heidmets) and The Elf'south Coming (Dir: Heino Pars).

Rice in water was used for falling snow in Cloak-and-dagger (Dir: Mati Kutt) and Edgeland Tales by Mikk Rand & Priit Tender. We also use corn, rice, rye, wheat, barley and oats together in the water because they fall at unlike speeds and expect more natural.

Another way we have created snow was to apply salt from Byelorussia [Democracy of Republic of belarus] for the picture Christmas Story (Dir: Aarne Ahi).

Licorice was used to imitate the maggots in Back to Europe (Dir: Riho Unt).

Java made with half the liquid, so that it is extra strong, looks like oil. Nosotros used this technique in Back to Europe (Dir: Riho Unt)."

Heather Kenyon is Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Magazine.

Note: Readers may contact whatsoever Blitheness Earth Mag correspondent past sending an e-mail to

editor@awn.com.