The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists

Little break today, I went to see Aardman's Pirates! on an adventure with scientists! based on Gideon Defore's series "The pirates" series. (2004: Pirates! on an adventure with scientists!) here's the taster of the



The studio is well known for its use of the traditional methods of stop motion or clay animation, a technique of using a pre-modelled plasticine figurine characters in a hand crafted environment. The models are moved into poses, much like the "pose to pose" technique of 3D animation except rather than blocking out the key poses then the in-betweens, the full sequence is shot together and the character is moved by hand, taking photos of each pose and in between.


My review

I think the character designs have definitely stayed true to the craft, even updated onto a 3D computer animated platform but Aardman proved this before with the release of Flushed away. The one problem I had with this was that there were so many lovable characters each I think had the Wallace and Grommet unique quality and so articulate in design.

However I wanted to know a little about the captains crew,  the cross-dresser? the drunk? even the fish dressed as a pirate had so much appeal, we are introduced to these characters at the very beginning and these characters for me they didn't appear as one-dimensional, simple characters; they have layers to them, which could have been unravelled more as the story progressed. Instead I think we are not given the full opportunity to "get to know them".
 I don't think there would have been much empathy for the crew because of the little background but then, as an animator, the thought of the animation team squeezing another 10/20 minutes of animation  for a little back story would make me feel more than enough sympathy to compensate.

Spoiler: The monkey I think had to be my favourite character and the flash cards gag worked so perfectly, I think the reason it worked so well was because of how the cards were presented in each of the scenes (the staging),  how one particular shot, the Captain, Charles Darwin and Monkey all fall from the tower and the cards fall as a secondary action, spelling out the monkey's sentence. Has to be one of Peter Lord's classic visual gags.

For animation, I think the locomotion of the characters and visual effects reflect the physical limitations and movements of the clay animation Aardman are most famous for. The arms and legs move just like the original Wallace and Gromet plasticine models with the bendy metal wires inside and the 3D models reflect the Plasticine material. This must have so difficult to animate as the animation team ain't just animating characters, they have to simulate the plasticine material of the characters as well.

The entire film is elegantly pieced together in such a bizarre fashion (almost daft, but in a good way) and has that charming British timeless touch Aardman brings to all their films. A must see I say.