The voices are all American but the animators, model makers and artists are predominately British. Wes Anderson’s new film is an example of the dominant role that Britain has within the creative industries worldwide.
Mark Waring who studied animation at the University for the Creative Arts in Farnham worked as the Animation Supervisor for the Fantastic Mr Fox film which stars the voices of Meryl Streep, George Clooney, Anjelica Huston, Jason Schwartzman and Bill Murray.
His role involved overseeing 21 animators and three assistants working on the film. The voices were recorded in a farm in Wisconsin, but the year long process to animate the film took place at the Three Mills Studios in Bromley by Bow.
The film has approximately 30 scenes all of differing lengths and number of shots within the scenes.
Mark explained: “Each animator would do about an average of two seconds per day and the target for each animator was 10 seconds a week. Overall when we were fully up to speed the whole team would be doing close to two minutes a week.”
The animation for the film took about a year and was completed inside a studio comprised of three large shooting stages with multiple scenes being made at any one time. Other areas on the site were devoted to puppet making, editing, visual effects and administrative offices.
The animators have had 12 full-size foxes, eight half-scale and various mini, micro and mini-micro scale versions with which to film at any one time. Each model is hand crafted and costs tens of thousands of pounds to create with the ability to move every part of their face and bodies for filming.
Mark said: said: “Working for a long period of time with a host of incredibly talented people is a very rewarding experience. You can't help but learn a huge amount, and you have the satisfaction of seeing a project develop from zero through to a fully finished feature.
“It’s a great film. Our director, Wes Anderson wanted the voices to be as realistic as possible and so recorded them outside of a studio with actors reading their lines in real farmhouses and while running around fields. The voices are so important in an animated film, they provide the timings, and let us know what each character has to be doing at any one time.”
Mark studied animation at the University for the Creative Arts in Farnham and graduated in 1989. Previously he has worked on Tim Burton’s iconic ‘Corpse Bride’ in 2005, and as an animator on Aardman Animation’s 2000 film, ‘Chicken Run’.
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Last modified at 18/10/2009 11:18 by John Baker
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