Getting animated over capital's talent

Published on Thursday 23 July 2009 11:10

SPORTING Nigeria's green and white football strip and dazzling the crowds with his skills on the pitch, he couldn't be happier.

The silicone elephant, who stands at eight inches tall, uses his tiny grey feet to do a series of keepie-uppies, much to the delight of the supporters at the ground.

It is undoubtedly one of the most bizarre sights that anyone could lay eyes on, but not so for Cameron Fraser. That's because the producer of Leith-based animation company, Ko Lik Films, has been helping to create such colourful characters on a daily basis for the last five years.

Ko Lik is one of around nine animation companies in the Capital, which is also home to some 70 animators, and was set up by Cameron and company director Neil Jack in 2004.

A 90-minute programme dedicated to the multi award-winning company is set to be shown at the city's Filmhouse on Wednesday , and will feature three of its most successful films – Haunted Hogmanay, The Tree Officer and Ujbaz Izbeneki Has Lost His Soul.

Ko Lik has just finished working on an advert with Edinburgh-based advertising agency, Plum Films, for the Under-17s FIFA World Cup in Nigeria later this year, which features the football-mad elephant displaying his talents to a loud cheer, creating the effect of an audience inside a stadium. The 20-second advert took around three weeks to make and will be shown on TV in Nigeria before the World Cup competition gets under way in October.

Cameron says: "Making an elephant look athletic and jump up to do a scissors kick was quite challenging."

It took the company less than a month to produce the advertisement, but it's an entirely different story when it comes to making animated films.

Producing an imaginative storyline, creating colourful characters and adding the final digital touches to a film all takes time, as Cameron, who works with 30-year-old director Neil to write the scripts for the company's films, knows only too well.

The 50-year-old explains: "We did a couple of half-hour films for the BBC called Haunted Hogmanay and The Glendogie Bogey which were made in Edinburgh and shown on TV last year, and they took nearly three years to make.

"They were really time-consuming and a lot of effort went into the script before the characters were designed. We spent between six months and a year on each script."

After the script was finalised, a team of animators, designers and set builders from across the globe were drafted in to begin working on each film.

Ko Lik has been fortunate enough to work with a selection of Europe's finest animators over the years, whose job it is to decide on and create every single movement for the films' figures, who are invariably around eight inches tall.

"It's a really skilled job," Cameron explains.

"The work of animators includes deciding how the character will walk across the stage, when its head is going to move, that kind of thing.

"They move physical models around which are made of a mixture of resins, wood and foams, and a tiny amount of Plasticine for things like eyelids. The animators effectively move these puppets very exactly from position to position, frame by frame, breathing life into them."

The father-of-three, from Inverleith, adds: "People always assume that our characters are made out of clay and Plasticine because that's what Aardman Animations, the animation company behind Wallace & Gromit, are famous for."

A digital photograph is taken for each movement, and collectively these are used to create the effect of the model walking.

It's an incredibly complex and slow procedure for the animators, who at most produce around six seconds of film each per day.

This means that with a team of between four and five animators working for Ko Lik, producing a total of 30 seconds of film between them would be considered a good day's work.

Cameron says: "Believe me it's really difficult and you can see the difference with a really talented animator."

Among the other animation companies in Edinburgh are Am Bosca, Igloo Animation, Julia McLean – Animation, Dances for Fish Productions, Strange Company, Binary Fable, and the city's longest-running animation company, Red Kite.

There are also a number of city-based companies which include animation in their list of services, including Hot Frog, Film By Number and Sherwood Films.

Animation company Django Films was set up around 2004 on the city's George Street by Sylvain Chomet, the Oscar-nominated director of cult film Belleville Rendez-vous.

This was aired in Britain at the end of 2003 and was nominated for two Oscars – best animated feature, and best animated song.

Cameron praised the French director as "a huge talent who has attracted some fantastic animators to Edinburgh".

"Animation is a really international business but what makes Edinburgh different is that it's such a lovely place to live.

"That makes it easier for us to attract talent to come here," says Cameron.

"I think Edinburgh has a good claim for being the animation centre of Scotland."

According to Helen Jackson, an animator and co-director of Binary Fable, the Capital has the potential to could become one of Europe's leading animation centres.

The 35-year-old says: "Edinburgh is up-and-coming as an animation centre of Europe.

"We do have a lot of new and young talent, and I think it will continue to build on its position."

Binary Fable differs from Ko Lik in that it specialises in computer generated animation, creating 3D characters on the computer.

It is currently working on a project called The Lost Book.

As Helen explains, audio is a huge component of animation films and the voices are often added after filming is complete.

She says: "The challenge we have for our male actor in The Lost Book, Sean Biggerstaff – who starred in the first and second Harry Potter film – was that he had to create the voice of a dog for the character Watson.

"He tried a James Bond/Sean Connery voice which was hilarious, and then a deep growl type of voice which helps to give the little dog a big presence."

Edinburgh College of Art has provided students with an animation department since the early nineties, teaching more traditional methods including drawing and puppet animation.

Lecturer in the department, Mrten Jnmark, 36, worked as an animator for Aardman Animations, which produced Chicken Run and Wallace & Gromit, for six months in 2007.

He says: "When I moved to Edinburgh from Sweden in 1999, I was only aware of Red Kite, but now the animation scene in Edinburgh is the best it's ever been.

"Edinburgh is a great place to produce animation art in general."

SLOW-MOTION PICTURES

MADE in Edinburgh, an initiative to promote the capital's moving image sector, will host its fifth event when it showcases the work of Leith-based animation company Ko Lik Films.

There will be a 90-minute programme dedicated to the multi-award-winning company and some of its regular collaborators at the city's Filmhouse on Wednesday, 29 July, at 6pm.

The programme will show three of the company's most successful films to date. A question-and-answer session with the creators will take place after the screening.

At the heart of the programme will be Haunted Hogmanay, an animated comedy that was commissioned by BBC Scotland and first screened on New Year's Eve in 2006.

The story, inspired by Edinburgh's haunted underground vaults, follows two unlikely friends who disturb a vengeful ghost buried under the streets of the Capital's Old Town.