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Stop-motion animation is one of the most challenging productions to undertake due to the sheer amount of time needed to capture all the small details and movements for the screen, but the team for Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget revealed the way they found to help streamline what was going to be a difficult process.
Members of Chicken Run's animation team spoke about the process of bringing the sequel to life for Netflix when they revealed to IndieWire one of their most useful assets – digital tools. Animation supervisor Ian Whitlock told the outlet the tools were invaluable, though the team was sure to keep the any use of CG character models limited to what the physical models could do to ensure it translated the way they wanted to the screen.
“The CG chickens can’t do anything beyond what the physical ones can do,” Whitlock said.
Chicken Run's director of photography Charles Copping added extra context to Whitlock's statements, saying that the digital tools at their disposal allowed the team to plan out shots for the puppets. In turn, this helped save time on the overall production.
“We have software that tracks the camera position, and we can see real-time the virtual production which starts off as a sort of a pre-vis world, but as the CGI department finesses it all, we get a real-time representation of what’s going to be beyond the characters in the digital backgrounds,” Copping said.
Stop-motion animation has typically been a labor-intensive and time-consuming form of animation which, in turn, means fewer number of films or shows in the genre. However, the embrace of digital tools in the new Chicken Run's production process could be a sign of things to come within the genre as more studios can make use of these same tools to churn out more stop-motion projects to entertain audiences.
