Trevor Hardy
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Amazing!
Movie Gets 70,000 Views in Less Than 24 Hours on the aniBoom Channel on YouTube!Interview with Animator
Trevor Hardy,
Creator of
"OOPS"
Watch it now!
We were blown away when we saw what a hit stop motion cartoon short "Oops" was on our
YouTube Channel. The cute comedy attracted thousands of views in less than a day. The owner of Fool Hardy Films in the UK took some time to talk to us about what he does and his amazing viewer success.
BACKGROUND: I first became interested in animation after I had seen a fantastic short by Mark Baker called the "Ill Farm". It was amazing to me how such simple things could be so fascinating to watch.
I first started by going to my careers advice centre who at the time had never heard of animation, let alone stop frame. They found me a media course and I enrolled onto it making little Super 8 films.
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TRAINING:
I have an animation degree from Farnham university and from there I enrolled onto the Bristol animation course set up and run by Aardman Animations. After that I worked down at
Aardman Animations as a runner working on various things including a "Wallace and Gromit" advert for a Japanese TV commercial.
WHY ANIMATION?
I really do love every stage of animation but there is nothing more satisfying than when all the scenes come together and the story I had in my head starts to become a reality.
INFLUENCES: Many really, I tend to watch far more
live action films than I do animation. I think this is because I love watching how storylines are shaped and characters develop. But I guess my influences would have to be certainly Aardman, they have produced so much fantastic work. I really love all Mark Baker's stuff...loads of stuff.
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I find all kinds of animation inspring but I guess the most inspiring animation for me would be Mark Baker's, "The Village" or Snowden and Fines, "Bobs Birthday". Both are really amazing visually and the storylines are fantastic...I wish I could do something half as good as them!
INSPIRATION: I had watched a TV advert years ago, it was for Thomas Cook travel agents I think? Where a horse is galloping along with a knight on his back, and it kind of inspired "
"Oops."
TECHNIQUES: It was animated stop frame using a digital SLR camera, a Nikon D90 the frames were capture through
Stop Motion Pro and the whole lot was edited and made into a movie through Adobe Premier.
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TIME REQUIRED: It actually only took a day to animate - it was a very long day but it was a continuous running shot so I had to spend about 3 weeks making all the backgrounds and other characters - in fact, everything that was needed, so I could literally just keep animating and animating. I couldn't turn off the lights or camera because I was afraid if I did the whole thing might jump or shift when I came back to it. So I just animated it in one whole go, from about 7am in the morning till about 12'ish at night with lots of quick snacks and coffee breaks along the way.
CHALLENGES? Yes, all of the above and snapping wire armatures and stuff that I thought would be ok but ended up needing tweaking there and then on the spot.
HOW HE FEELS ABOUT THE 70,000 VIEWS: Thanks for this, it is fantastic news. WOW!!!!! I can't believe that many people watched my film in such a short time! That really is truly amazing and I am so pleased!
Watch "OOPS"
Go to Trevor's BOOMZONE