How did you feel when you were asked to work as lead animator on The Corpse Bride? It was a dream come true, a stop motion feature being made right on my doorstep - London! Opportunities to work on a film like this do not come round that often, so when they do you jump at it. Also, the chance to work on a Tim Burton film is, and was, a privilege. It gave all the animators involved the time to really show what their craft is capable of. A lot of people must be involved in the making of a film like this. How much of it is the vision of the director Tim Burton or, as lead animator, did you get a certain amount of creative freedom?  | | The animator plays his part |
Yes, a great many talented people are needed to produce a stop motion movie, and their work is evident in every frame of Corpse Bride. Everyone is working towards the same vision, but within that vision there is room for some creative freedom. As an animator you are trying to help the director tell the story and convey the feelings and emotions through the characters. On Corpse Bride, the day to day directing of the film fell to Mike Johnson. He was great to work with. For some shots he would have a really strong idea of what he wanted to see happen but at other times he was happy to see your interpretation. It was always a collaborative process. The great thing about stop motion animation, though, is that when you get on to that set to shoot, that shot is completely in your control. In this day and age is there any point in stop animation when, some people would say, computers can do it all? The idea that computers can do it all or somehow replicate the look of a stop motion film is a myth. Corpse Bride is a high quality hand-crafted film. There is no computer software on earth at the moment that could replicate the unique look, the subtle lighting, feel, texture, and animation nuances of Corpse Bride. You can't get round the fact that, at the end of the day, these are real life objects on a real life sets. You can't replicate the human element in stop motion films with computer graphics (CG). This is because no matter how hard you try, or how amazing you software package is, in CG films there will always be the computer sitting between the artist and the audience. Having worked on both side of the fence I can see the pro and cons of each technique. They both have their place, and both are relevant. It is just a shame that some people seem to think that because something is new it must therefore also be superior. Variety is the spice of life! Can you tell us something about the puppets? We've been told some of these will be on show during the Festival. In stop motion, the better the puppet, the better the animation. On Corpse Bride we had the best of the best. Made by McKinnon and Saunders in Manchester, these puppets were works of art not only outwardly, but also on the inside. If you get the chance to see them in the flesh you should take it. The facial mechanism contained inside the head of the main characters really helped us to achieve a subtlety to the expressions that was not possible before in this type of puppet. People of a certain age grew up watching things like Bagpuss. Do you think kids today are missing out on this sort of thing?  | | The Corpse Bride |
Yeah, I was one of them. Bagpuss, Clangers, The Flumps, The Wombles, Morph - these were all big influences on me as a youngster, and were definitely instrumental in making me choose to become an animator. We have a rich history of this type of children's programming and I think the new crop of stop motion series (The Koala Bros, Bob the Builder) carries on this tradition except now these shows have to be able to survive in a worldwide market. With your film The Census Taker you made the move into live action film and that seems to have been very well received, playing at several festivals. Do you see yourself doing both in the future? Yes, that is my hope. Live action is a refreshing change of pace to the precise and measured world of animation. I have a few projects I'm developing with Slinky Pictures in London. They also represent me as a commercials director. Commercials are great in that you are often called on to combine these two disciplines into one advert. Phil Dale will be talking about Stop Motion in the Digital Age at the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television on Friday November 18th at 1.15pm as part of the Bradford Animation Festival. A screening of The Corpse Bride follows immediately after. | 
