Production - Stop Motion: Passion, Process and Performance - page 255

Why stop motion? - Charlie Hopkins, animator at Cosgrove Hall
Stop motion animation as a style never appealed to me. Larry the Lamb , Trumpton , Postman Pat and Bagpuss
on Saturday mornings were gap fi llers for the 'real cartoons', which for me were the Warner Bros cartoons.
Only two stop motion shows could match these cartoons, and they were Chorlton and the Wheelies and
Morph . These had the inventiveness and dynamism of any Chuck Jones cartoon, but I was unaware of the
technique being different to cartoons. Aged ten I imagined I'd like to work for the Beano one day. I loved 2D
animation. I watched and drew Danger Mouse, taping episodes on an old Betamax. My mum told me that
Danger Mouse , Cockleshell Bay and Pied Piper were made by Cosgrove Hall, and based in Chorlton, 'over the
way'. So, then, I wanted to do Danger Mouse and go and work at this Cosgrove Hall …
… Then Return of the Jedi came out and I became a Star Wars nut overnight! (And it's a passion that's
stayed with me.) I collected the toys and played out many stories of my own with them. I'd build shoddy
settings in my front garden using abandoned tiles, stones and twigs, trying to re-create the actual sets
from the fi lms in miniature …
I began writing my own stories, getting gold stars for them as well as reprimands for bad spelling and
terrible punctuation (which has also stayed with me!).
Rolf Harris and Rolf's Cartoon Club and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? turned me back to animation. I was
getting earache from my careers advisor to choose a vocation … so, thrilled at the thought of actually
getting paid to draw cartoons and work on fi lms like Roger Rabbit , I decided I was going to become an
animator. I was fourteen with no real fl are for art or any idea of how to become an animator. My art
teacher laughed at my plans. My career advisor frowned and told me about the interesting benefi ts
of becoming a warehouse man … or an HGV driver. I took this on board and, spurred on by negative
reactions, pursued my dream … and kept hitting brick walls every step of the way!
At college I began building models. I had a fi ne art education so every project I did leant towards the
inner workings of one's mind and the internal suffering of oneself. Itching to do my animations I bought a
super 8 camera and began my own little fi lms, with the help of the very few animation topics around
at the time.
The fi rst stop motion was with a bendy Mickey Mouse toy. I was amazed by the immediate feedback it
offered me, it was somehow less complex and more instructive than drawing thousands of drawings for
a 2D fi lm. I experimented more with stop motion, and with paper cut-outs; I got excited at how I'd gather
inanimate objects and move them around … giving them a life of their own. I began a more in-depth study of
stop motion, researching companies, artists, fi lm-makers and fi lms, and found myself hooked and wanting to
do more serious stuff. The Nightmare Before Christmas came out … and then I knew what I wanted to do.
Whilst I was on the interactive arts course at university and after being shown around Cosgrove Hall,
I had the time, space and know-how to be able to get into this line of work properly.
The thrill of writing, drawing, storyboarding, building your own sets, creating something that was just
in your own head, seeing every element come together and watching your fi rst rushes of your crudely
built puppet wobbling across a set is a thrill that is still with me to this day, there is no feeling like it. The
physical aspects of bringing something to life, a mere model moving, seeing the results … it's incredible,
nothing can match it, and it was this passion, this fun of experimenting and getting results that swung it
for me … maybe I would get lucky …. Throughout university, I developed my fi lm knowledge, and built
upon my experience, and got more and more ambitious, always mucking up along the way, and that thrill
stayed with me … still does to this day.