Aardman's "Early Man" Takes You Back to the Stone Age With New Trailer and Poster

Aardman explores prehistoric times in Early Man, the studio’s new stop motion film. It is also the first solo directorial debut of Academy Award winner and Wallace and Gromit creator Nick Park, whose previous feature-length directorial outings were Chicken Run and Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, which he directed alongside Peter Lord and Steve Box, respectively.

Earlier today, the studio released a new poster for the film along with a trailer (both of which are posted below), which is the first real glimpse at the plot of the film that we’ve gotten. An official synopsis was also released, reading:

Set at the dawn of time, when prehistoric creatures and woolly mammoths roamed the earth, Early Man tells the story of Dug, along with sidekick Hognob as they unite his tribe against a mighty enemy Lord Nooth and his Bronze Age City to save their home.

Concerning the trailer, Nick Park said to the Hollywood Reporter:

“Today we get to meet Dug’s tribe, a lovable bunch of misfits voiced by some exceptional British talent,” said Park. “They’re essentially a group of inept cavemen and women, including Treebor, played by Richard Ayoade, a gentle giant scared of his own shadow; Magma, Treebor’s no-nonsense mother voiced by Selena Griffiths and Mark Williams as Barry, whose best friend is a rock. Chief Bobnar, voiced by the brilliant Timothy Spall, leads the pack as their long-suffering leader and father figure to his tribe of idiotic brutes.”

This film is in the studios’ trademark stop motion style featured in Nick Park’s previous projects, Wallace and Gromit and Shuan the Sheep. From the glimpses we’ve seen so far, Early Man looks to be quite a fun ride, and being one of two stop motion films set to premiere in 2018 – the other being Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs – it looks like a very artistically satisfying film to fans of the medium.

For an deeper look at Early Man, the official Early Man Facebook page recently uploaded some stills from the movie as well as behind-the-scenes pictures featuring some of the voice-actors and actresses from the star-studded film – Eddie Redmayne (Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, The Theory of Everything), who portrays the lead protagonist “Dug”, Tom Hiddleston (The Avengers and Thor franchises), who voices the greedy villain “Lord Nooth” and Maisie Williams (Game of Thrones), who portrays the plucky heroine “Goona”. These pictures are featured below.

You can learn more about the film and receive updates on the official website, Facebook and Twitter.

Early Man is due to roll into theaters January 2018.

You can stay tuned for the upcoming interviews and articles by subscribing to Stop Motion Geek via the “subscribe” button at the top right corner of our homepage, or by following us on Facebook @StopMotionGeek, or by visiting https://www.facebook.com/StopMotionGeek/. You can also stay up-to-date with the blog by following us on Instagram or @stop.motion.geek.blog.

Comments

Out of a Forest, The Maker & Fred!

The first wonderful film we have today is, Out of a Forest . Out of a Forest caught my eye because of were they shot the film, it appears and is evident that it was shot a night in an actual forest! - The video is about five

Read full article »

Interview with Samuel Lewis - Animator, Character Designer, and Sculptor on Stop Motion Short Film, "Lost & Found"

Knotjira, a clumsy dinosaur made of wool, as seen in Lost & Found . Photo courtesy of Andrew Goldsmith. “If I had to pick a starting point for my career as a stop motion animator I would have to say it was my obsession as a six year old with a book called ‘Playing with Plasticine’ by Barbara Reid,” Samuel Lewis – a London-based stop motion and 2D animator and director, whose most recent labor of love can be seen in his contribution to the Australian stop motion short film, Lost & Found – tells Stop Motion Geek. Upon reflection, Lewis explains that his love for the medium of stop motion began very early in life, and has merely managed to burn ever brighter in his fervor to master the craft. “I would spend countless hours fixated on sculpting tiny snails, fruit bowls and dinosaurs to the point where I would stay inside on family holidays sculpting a surfer in a beach scene rather than going to the actual beach that was only a short walk away,” Lewis recalls wistfully. “...

Read full article »

Interview with Bradley Slabe, Co-Director of Stop Motion Love Story, "Lost & Found" (Part 1/2 of Interview with "Lost & Found" Directors)

Knotjira (foreground) and Knitsune (background) in Lost & Found . Photo courtesy of Andrew Goldsmith. The true essence of art – a reflection of life itself – is very much akin to the Japanese aesthetic of “wabi-sabi”: it’s imperfect, impermanent, and, at times, profoundly...incomplete. It is both at once a fundamental truth, and, curiously, more often than not, a thing incredibly hard to acknowledge, to make peace with. Yet perhaps our resistance is justifiable, for once we admit that the world is full of unknowns – unknowns that aren’t ideal, that aren’t perfect – we are just as soon confronted with the actualization of a deep, intrinsic, and very human fear: the fear of a future full of...unknowns that aren’t ideal, that aren’t perfect. Yet it’s the confrontal of that fear that is the most terrifying reality of all, for the moment we make peace with it we have just as soon have acknowledged that our paths in life aren’t in our own hands, or something we can contro...

Read full article »

Interview with Chris Randall, Creative Director and Co-Founder of Second Home Studios

Chris Randall in the Mills & Reeve Innovation 50 list. Source: https://twitter.com/SecondHomeChris/status/904681346060230656 “I came to animation mainly from a point-of-view of blind curiosity,” Chris Randall—the creative director and co-founder of Second Home Studios, a Birmingham, United Kingdom-based, award-winning animation studio—tells Stop Motion Geek. “I’d always loved the medium but never took it seriously, or saw myself with a part to play in it. It wasn’t until after Uni that I realised I basically like tinkering and trying out new things, whilst at the same time telling stories. So, animation is a perfect fit for me.” First founded in 2004, Second Home Studios has garnered multiple BAFTA and Royal Television Society awards and nominations for many of the films in their diverse repertoire of artistic and commissioned projects, encompassing all styles of animation—from stop motion to CGI to 2D—as well as puppetry and mixed-media. In their fourteen-and-counting years...

Read full article »

Interview with Joseph Wallace, Director and Animator of Psychedelic, Cut-out Stop Motion Music Video for Canadian Artist Parker Bossley's "Chemicals"

Parker Bossley as seen in Chemicals . Photo courtesy of Joseph Wallace. “I think the thing I’ve always found wonderful about cut out animation is that it’s one of the most immediate forms of animation,” muses British stop motion animation director Joseph Wallace – currently based in Bristol, UK, where, in January of this year, he founded the stop motion studio Hangar Puppet Animation Studio – in discussion of the medium he employed in his most recent film – the surreal, psychedelic music video for Canadian artist Parker Bossley’s debut single, Chemicals , which has already won a Vimeo Staff Pick. Perhaps more than anything else – perfectly suiting the film’s subject matter –the style and medium allow to film to transcend to time itself, just as Wallace implies, undoubtedly allowing the film to become just that – immediate. Almost so much so one gets the feeling they’re clawing at air in search for a handle on reality as they fall…along with Bossley – also the film’s protagoni...

Read full article »

Interview with Mark Smith, Director and Writer of Stop Motion Short Film, "Two Balloons"

A still from Two Balloons featuring the character of Elba. Photo courtesy of Mark Smith. As I sit, listening to Peter Broderick’s moving composition for piano More Of A Composition , I close my eyes and envisage an enormous funnel cloud skimming across the crystalline face of an ocean – the skies are murky and unusually dark, lightning crackles, spider-webbing across the darkened skies before then vanishing, and still, after its gone, an electricity continues to hum in the air and I simply know that it’s going to soon strike again. And as the scene presents itself to me, I suddenly feel something similar to what director Mark C. Smith felt when he saw the same image as he sailed to a small island called Grenada along with his wife in a timeworn sailboat. For him, in that moment inspiration struck, and the idea suddenly came to him for his heartfelt stop motion film, Two Balloons . For me, I open my eyes and feel as I did the instant Two Balloons ...

Read full article »

Interview with Filmmaker Hans Weise – Part of the Team Behind National Geographic's "A Fearsome Fleet: Secrets of the Vikings"

A frame from A Fearsome Fleet: Secrets of the Vikings featuring the shipbuilder hero, Harald. Source: Vimeo. More often than not, manmade beauty, art in general, and stories themselves make very little practical sense. For art, like beauty, is subjective. More often than not, if we are truly honest with ourselves, our art, our stories will not stand the test of time. Thus, art, stories, and beauty do not provide one to leave very much of a legacy – at least an infallible one – through using it as a means. Often, manmade beauty, stories, and those daring choices we make in putting pen to paper, brush to canvas, camera to subject, more often than not can only be justified for the sake of beauty, the sake of telling a story, the sake of art, whatever “the sake” of something actually means. It seems paradoxical, though perhaps it is not: Perhaps, innately, we as humans need stories, need art, need beauty. Not for any utility they propose, but simply so that they can be, quite ...

Read full article »

Vincent & Puppet Scales

Tim Burton's Vincent is a masterpiece; the short was animated by the brilliant Stephen Chiodo . I do love that the short was shot in black and white film, ask any true film-lover and

Read full article »

Aardman Senior Model-Maker Jay Smart Reveals Aardman's Puppet Materials and Plasticine Techniques for "Early Man" to Adam Savage of Tested

Adam Savage (right) holding "The Farmer" puppet from Shaun the Sheep and Jay Smart (right). Copyright Tested. Along with the usual humdrum of press ranging from critic reviews and interviews with voice actors regarding British animation powerhouse Aardman Animation’s latest feature film – Early Man , a “prehistoric underdog sports story,” in the words of the film’s director Nick Park – has come by the way of the YouTube channel Tested something really exceptional and especially meant for stop motion enthusiasts – a deep-dive into the materials and plasticine techniques Aardman uses for their puppets presented by television personality and special effects aficionado Adam Savage and Jay Smart, a senior modeler at Aardman. During Savage’s tour of the plasticine department, Smart gives Savage a demonstration of a system Aardman began developing for Chicken Run , their first plasticine-driven feature film, to methodize a system for mixing large batches of plasticine to p...

Read full article »

Behind the Scenes of "Robocop 2" at Tippett Studios and how "Jurassic Park" Changed Special Effects Forever

A depressingly large percentage of Hollywood movies boast a gratuitous amount of potential and possibility and yet, for one reason or another, often fall far, far too short to live up to the films they seem to have the potential of being. Although it’s a shame that many of these films have a stupendous level of production value and talent but are often often overlooked, as production value and talent are seen as secondary and supplementary to a quality story – the special effects work done on such second-rate films sadly go unrecognized the most often. An immutable fact stands strong – mediocre films, no matter the level of talent and amount of time poured into producing their special effects, are seen and remembered as nothing but wasted potential…or worse. Yet few box office bombs have had special practical effects work as groundbreaking, especially in the stop motion realm, and yet unfortunately remains unrecognized in every respect than the 1990 film Robocop 2 , both an irrefutabl...

Read full article »

Stop Motion Geek

Search This Blog