From a young age, Frank Harper – a model maker on Aardman’s latest stop motion feature film, Early Man – was fascinated with practical effects-driven films like Jim Henson’s Labyrinth and Dark Crystal, as well as the work of the legendary special effects artist Ray Harryhausen. Harper, however, doubted that work in the practical effects industry could prove a sustainable career. “So for ages I just went through the motions,” Harper tells Stop Motion Geek. “I left school, got a rubbish job (in a factory that made glasses!) and thought that that was my lot in life, sadly.” It wasn’t until this chapter in his life had gone on for several years that he came to the realization that he wanted to craft a career for himself doing something that he was truly passionate about.
This burning desire to search for a career he was passionate about led Harper to enroll at the City of Bristol College in an Access to Higher Education course. It was during this time that Harper realized that what he was truly passionate about was working with puppets, a dream he shared with an influential teacher of his at the City of Bristol College. “So she laid the groundwork for me,” says Harper, “and made me begin to sculpt things and make moving puppets etc.… I was loving it!”
Shortly after his time at the City of Bristol College, Harper enrolled in the University of the West of England to study stop motion animation, and from there the opportunity opened up to him to meet influential people in the stop motion industry such as Loyd Price, the Head of Animation at Aardman. Shortly after, Harper began his work at Aardman. “I started out as an ‘assistant animator’ but swiftly realised that the place I felt most at home was making things, not animating things,” says Harper, “so I made the switch over from animation to model making and I’ve been here ever since!”
Directed by Nick Park, Early Man tells the hilarious tale set in prehistoric times of how a courageous caveman named Dug (voiced by Eddie Redmayne) unites together the fellow members of his tribe against the leader of the mechanized world of the Bronze Age, the villainous Lord Nooth (voiced by Tom Hiddleston).
Every element of the film is simply breathtakingly beautiful and also manages to retain a heartfelt and handmade quality, a trademark of all of Aardman and Nick Park’s films, from the Wallace & Gromit short films and feature to Chicken Run. The puppets of Early Man are no exception to this special handmade charm.
Among his work on Early Man, Harper, along with several of his colleagues, were responsible for the production of the main character of the film, Dug. “I would make his hair, his belts, his silicone arms and legs, etc.,” says Harper. “There were 17 Dugs in total so he needed constant work done on him!”
Harper was also involved in the fabrication of Grubup, one of the supporting characters in Dug’s tribe, as well as of the savage football players Gonad the Gaul, Dreadlock, and Atlas. Harper and his team were also responsible for fixing damaged puppets and for making “an enormous duck bill which was used in the scene where Nooth gets picked up and shaken around towards the end! It lasts for about 2 seconds on screen but it was a really satisfying job.”
In our interview, Harper tells us about his early endeavors in puppet fabrication and model making as well as the importance of practice and repetition. He also discusses several of the model making challenges he and his associates faced on Early Man and how they solved them. Furthermore, he tells us about what playing guitar in a band called “Fever Sea” has taught him about collaboration with any kind of team working on a creative devour, whether it be making a stop motion film or playing in a self-confessed “pretty loud and noisy band.” You can read our interview in full below.
A.H.: Hello, Frank! Thank you so much for doing this! I want to start out by asking you how you got involved in the medium. How did you originally begin dabbling in model making, stop motion, and puppetry, and what made you think that it could be a career? How did you get from your early days of mere dabbling to where you’ve gotten to now – working on a big Aardman feature film, Nick Park’s Early Man, as a model maker?
Frank Harper: Hey there! It’s my pleasure! So in a nutshell, I was always in love with puppetry… in all its forms. From a young age I was obsessed with films like Labyrinth, Dark Crystal, and the films of Ray Harryhausen. Anything with monsters in it, essentially! But, I never felt like it was a real job you could actually do! So for ages I just went through the motions… I left school, got a rubbish job (in a factory that made glasses!) and thought that that was my lot in life, sadly. But after a few years of doing that I started to realise that I was wasting my life away. And that I should do something I truly wanted to do, ‘cos you only live once right!? So I enrolled in an Access to Higher Education course at the City of Bristol College and told my teacher that I had dreams of working with puppets, so she laid the groundwork for me, and made me begin to sculpt things and make moving puppets etc.… I was loving it! And knew that this was something I was fairly good at, and actually enjoyed and cared about doing. So, I took it a step further and went to U.W.E (University of the West of England) to study stop frame animation, and through the connections that course has to the industry I was able to capitalise on many opportunities and ended up meeting the right people such as Loyd Price (Head of Animation at Aardman) and making a good impression. That’s basically how I got my foot in the door! I started out as an ‘assistant animator’ but swiftly realised that the place I felt most at home was making things, not animating things, so I made the switch over from animation to model making and I’ve been here ever since!
A.H.: Early on in your model making career, before you had access to a workshop like the one at Aardman, where did you find the materials you used to create puppets (foam latex, silicone, and polyurethane can be hard to come by!) and what resources did you uncover in learning about model making? What did your early explorations of the medium of model making look like?
FH: When I first started making puppets specifically for animation, I would use a range of easily available materials, because as you say, silicones and foam latex are both hard to come by/afford and need a controlled, clean environment to use them. So I would use fairly crude wire armatures, with snipped foam over the top of them to make the right shape, and then ‘skin’ them using super thin sports bandage and regular dipping latex pigmented with acrylic paint. I’d use beads that I would find at the local market to make eyes, and buy fur fabrics from the local textiles store and yeah… smash it all together into various hideous looking puppets! The joy of it though was that it was a process you would refine each time – you would learn the restraints of all the materials and what you could and couldn’t achieve with them, and over time my puppets began to look better and better because you just slowly improve through constant practice. So, I went from making really amateur looking puppets, with horrible, out of proportioned bodies and terrible paint jobs, to fairly realistic looking things with various removable parts, much more believable skin tones and whatnot (you can make latex look amazingly like skin!). There are some great videos on YouTube by an Australian animator called Nick Hilligoss, which I basically used as gospel for a lot of things, as most of the materials were easy to find and he did these amazing animated clips showing you how to make these achievable yet elaborate puppets!
A.H.: I’m sure that, like many of us, you grew up on Aardman’s work in commercials and their short films for Channel 4, as well as Nick Park’s work with Wallace & Gromit, Creature Comforts, and, later on, Chicken Run and Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit. What was it like for you, specifically, to work at Aardman on a Nick Park film? What was that feeling like?
FH: Absolutely! I was always amazed by Aardman’s work, specifically Creature Comforts… So funny!! So yeah, when I eventually came to work here it was incredibly surreal… being in a room with Nick Park and talking about the work you’re doing and how he wants things to look, etc. was, and still is, mind boggling! It’s one of those things where you to need to take a step back every now and again and think… “Wow… I’m actually here, and I’m actually doing this!”. I still do that all the time!
A.H.: Can you describe for me the working atmosphere of working in the model making department at Aardman? You were split up into teams with team leaders and a chain-of-command hierarchy of sorts, right?
FH: That is correct! We have a ‘head of model making’ who is in charge of everything. All of it. And then beneath her there is a team of 5 or 6 ‘senior model makers’/’team leaders’ who each have a team of ‘model makers’ and ‘junior model makers’. Each team is responsible for different puppets, but most of the time each team will also know every puppet inside and out. The atmosphere, I would say, is one of lighthearted (but often intense) focus. We all work really hard to get our own work done, but will also help each other out whenever possible as at the end of the day, regardless of being in different teams, we still need those puppets to be ready for very certain deadlines otherwise the whole production can be slowed down, and none of us like having that on our collective conscience!
A.H.: Can you tell us about specifically what puppets and props you were involved with making on Early Man?
FH: My team was responsible for Dug, the main character. I would make his hair, his belts, his silicone arms and legs, etc. There were 17 Dugs in total so he needed constant work done on him! I was also responsible for the fabrication of the characters Grubup, Gonad the Gaul, Dreadlock, and Atlas (one of the savage football players). I put all of these guys together and all of these would need to be maintained. A lot of the time animators would damage parts or need tensioning on their puppets and that’s something we would do also. My favourite job was painting an enormous duck bill which was used in the scene where Nooth gets picked up and shaken around towards the end! It lasts for about 2 seconds on screen but it was a really satisfying job.
A.H.: What technical challenges did you face while working on Early Man? Can you give us a few specific problems that you ran into that you and your team had to face? For these specific problems, how did you and your team work to solve them?
FH: We had to make a huge duck foot at one point, maybe 2.5ft tall? So we moulded the sculpt but then really had trouble getting all the silicone into the mould before it started to gel. So we had to make a really, really big syringe so that we could inject the silicone into the mould in one go and not in multiple goes using small syringes! Lots of instances like that, really! You’re constantly problem solving as you go along as there is rarely any time to do research and development! We would always put our heads together as a team to discuss the best way of going about something.
A.H.: What lessons and skills did working on Early Man give you that you’ve taken away and plan on implementing in your career in the animation industry in the future?
FH: I learnt so much about mould-making on this project it’s crazy… I learnt to do press moulds, fibreglass moulds, silicone injection moulds, carousel moulds, seamless moulds… you name it! It was a super intense learning curve but I loved every second of it! To be more general though, I just learned so much about the process of puppet making. Seeing a character through from design sculpt to production sculpt to armature to fully functioning puppet you can’t help but learn a lot. And to be surrounded by such talented people with such a wealth of knowledge between them… yeah, you learn so much, so fast!
A.H.: I get the impression from your website that beyond model making you’re just a generally creative person. I also read on your website that you also play guitar in a band. Can you tell us a little bit about your practice of playing guitar and in a band? Furthermore, what skills and/or practices has playing in a band taught you about collaborating with others in the stop motion and model making industry?
FH: Yeah, that’s right! I play in a pretty loud and noisy band called ‘Fever Sea’. I love music so much, and it’s such a release being able to get in a room with friends and play loud music! Playing in a band certainly solidifies your idea of compromise. When you write music as a group, you take on board people’s critiques and criticisms in an effort to make a collective, collaborative sound… and yeah, I guess model making is very similar in that sense. Even when working with the director himself it’s a group of people trying to get an idea out into the real world. It may well be the director’s vision but he is always open to compromise on the best course of action and the constraints that may present themselves from a practical perspective.
A.H.: On your website you confess to being a hardcore film fanatic. Have you seen any films, television shows, commercials, or short films recently where the model making really stood out to you? If so, could you tell us a little about what made the model making so great?
FH: Well obviously there was Kubo and The Two Strings… Those puppets were just beautiful. I was lucky enough to meet Travis Knight and hold some of those puppets last year and they are just mind blowing. They’re so technically impressive, with every detail given so much attention. Many, many animatable parts. Very inspiring stuff.
Honourable mention to (not really a stop motion film) but Blade Runner 2049… the world building in that film is just incredible! A lot of the cityscape scenes and sets were ‘bigatures’, and they just look amazing and give that tactile feel to the environments. Absolutely loved that film. And, I guess from a similar perspective Game of Thrones is pretty mind blowing! Although I’m not a massive CG fan… I’m definitely a practical effects guy! Most of the things I love are from the past! I recently got recommended a film called The Gate which is an 80’s cheesy horror film but it has a ton of AMAZING practical perspective effects and make-up, as well as a smattering of stop motion too.
This has been fun!
Thanks so much!
If you’re interested in exploring more of Frank Harper’s work, you can do so by visiting his YouTube, Instagram, and website.
Aardman’s Early Man is currently in theaters. You can learn more about the film and find showtimes near you by visiting the film’s website, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
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.
 |
| Hobnob and Dug (Eddie Redmayne) in Early Man. Photo courtesy of Aardman. |
This burning desire to search for a career he was passionate about led Harper to enroll at the City of Bristol College in an Access to Higher Education course. It was during this time that Harper realized that what he was truly passionate about was working with puppets, a dream he shared with an influential teacher of his at the City of Bristol College. “So she laid the groundwork for me,” says Harper, “and made me begin to sculpt things and make moving puppets etc.… I was loving it!”
Shortly after his time at the City of Bristol College, Harper enrolled in the University of the West of England to study stop motion animation, and from there the opportunity opened up to him to meet influential people in the stop motion industry such as Loyd Price, the Head of Animation at Aardman. Shortly after, Harper began his work at Aardman. “I started out as an ‘assistant animator’ but swiftly realised that the place I felt most at home was making things, not animating things,” says Harper, “so I made the switch over from animation to model making and I’ve been here ever since!”
 |
| Gonna, Dug and friends in Early Man. Photo courtesy of Aardman. |
Directed by Nick Park, Early Man tells the hilarious tale set in prehistoric times of how a courageous caveman named Dug (voiced by Eddie Redmayne) unites together the fellow members of his tribe against the leader of the mechanized world of the Bronze Age, the villainous Lord Nooth (voiced by Tom Hiddleston).
Every element of the film is simply breathtakingly beautiful and also manages to retain a heartfelt and handmade quality, a trademark of all of Aardman and Nick Park’s films, from the Wallace & Gromit short films and feature to Chicken Run. The puppets of Early Man are no exception to this special handmade charm.
Among his work on Early Man, Harper, along with several of his colleagues, were responsible for the production of the main character of the film, Dug. “I would make his hair, his belts, his silicone arms and legs, etc.,” says Harper. “There were 17 Dugs in total so he needed constant work done on him!”
Harper was also involved in the fabrication of Grubup, one of the supporting characters in Dug’s tribe, as well as of the savage football players Gonad the Gaul, Dreadlock, and Atlas. Harper and his team were also responsible for fixing damaged puppets and for making “an enormous duck bill which was used in the scene where Nooth gets picked up and shaken around towards the end! It lasts for about 2 seconds on screen but it was a really satisfying job.”
In our interview, Harper tells us about his early endeavors in puppet fabrication and model making as well as the importance of practice and repetition. He also discusses several of the model making challenges he and his associates faced on Early Man and how they solved them. Furthermore, he tells us about what playing guitar in a band called “Fever Sea” has taught him about collaboration with any kind of team working on a creative devour, whether it be making a stop motion film or playing in a self-confessed “pretty loud and noisy band.” You can read our interview in full below.
A.H.: Hello, Frank! Thank you so much for doing this! I want to start out by asking you how you got involved in the medium. How did you originally begin dabbling in model making, stop motion, and puppetry, and what made you think that it could be a career? How did you get from your early days of mere dabbling to where you’ve gotten to now – working on a big Aardman feature film, Nick Park’s Early Man, as a model maker?
Frank Harper: Hey there! It’s my pleasure! So in a nutshell, I was always in love with puppetry… in all its forms. From a young age I was obsessed with films like Labyrinth, Dark Crystal, and the films of Ray Harryhausen. Anything with monsters in it, essentially! But, I never felt like it was a real job you could actually do! So for ages I just went through the motions… I left school, got a rubbish job (in a factory that made glasses!) and thought that that was my lot in life, sadly. But after a few years of doing that I started to realise that I was wasting my life away. And that I should do something I truly wanted to do, ‘cos you only live once right!? So I enrolled in an Access to Higher Education course at the City of Bristol College and told my teacher that I had dreams of working with puppets, so she laid the groundwork for me, and made me begin to sculpt things and make moving puppets etc.… I was loving it! And knew that this was something I was fairly good at, and actually enjoyed and cared about doing. So, I took it a step further and went to U.W.E (University of the West of England) to study stop frame animation, and through the connections that course has to the industry I was able to capitalise on many opportunities and ended up meeting the right people such as Loyd Price (Head of Animation at Aardman) and making a good impression. That’s basically how I got my foot in the door! I started out as an ‘assistant animator’ but swiftly realised that the place I felt most at home was making things, not animating things, so I made the switch over from animation to model making and I’ve been here ever since!
A.H.: Early on in your model making career, before you had access to a workshop like the one at Aardman, where did you find the materials you used to create puppets (foam latex, silicone, and polyurethane can be hard to come by!) and what resources did you uncover in learning about model making? What did your early explorations of the medium of model making look like?
FH: When I first started making puppets specifically for animation, I would use a range of easily available materials, because as you say, silicones and foam latex are both hard to come by/afford and need a controlled, clean environment to use them. So I would use fairly crude wire armatures, with snipped foam over the top of them to make the right shape, and then ‘skin’ them using super thin sports bandage and regular dipping latex pigmented with acrylic paint. I’d use beads that I would find at the local market to make eyes, and buy fur fabrics from the local textiles store and yeah… smash it all together into various hideous looking puppets! The joy of it though was that it was a process you would refine each time – you would learn the restraints of all the materials and what you could and couldn’t achieve with them, and over time my puppets began to look better and better because you just slowly improve through constant practice. So, I went from making really amateur looking puppets, with horrible, out of proportioned bodies and terrible paint jobs, to fairly realistic looking things with various removable parts, much more believable skin tones and whatnot (you can make latex look amazingly like skin!). There are some great videos on YouTube by an Australian animator called Nick Hilligoss, which I basically used as gospel for a lot of things, as most of the materials were easy to find and he did these amazing animated clips showing you how to make these achievable yet elaborate puppets!
A.H.: I’m sure that, like many of us, you grew up on Aardman’s work in commercials and their short films for Channel 4, as well as Nick Park’s work with Wallace & Gromit, Creature Comforts, and, later on, Chicken Run and Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit. What was it like for you, specifically, to work at Aardman on a Nick Park film? What was that feeling like?
FH: Absolutely! I was always amazed by Aardman’s work, specifically Creature Comforts… So funny!! So yeah, when I eventually came to work here it was incredibly surreal… being in a room with Nick Park and talking about the work you’re doing and how he wants things to look, etc. was, and still is, mind boggling! It’s one of those things where you to need to take a step back every now and again and think… “Wow… I’m actually here, and I’m actually doing this!”. I still do that all the time!
A.H.: Can you describe for me the working atmosphere of working in the model making department at Aardman? You were split up into teams with team leaders and a chain-of-command hierarchy of sorts, right?
FH: That is correct! We have a ‘head of model making’ who is in charge of everything. All of it. And then beneath her there is a team of 5 or 6 ‘senior model makers’/’team leaders’ who each have a team of ‘model makers’ and ‘junior model makers’. Each team is responsible for different puppets, but most of the time each team will also know every puppet inside and out. The atmosphere, I would say, is one of lighthearted (but often intense) focus. We all work really hard to get our own work done, but will also help each other out whenever possible as at the end of the day, regardless of being in different teams, we still need those puppets to be ready for very certain deadlines otherwise the whole production can be slowed down, and none of us like having that on our collective conscience!
A.H.: Can you tell us about specifically what puppets and props you were involved with making on Early Man?
FH: My team was responsible for Dug, the main character. I would make his hair, his belts, his silicone arms and legs, etc. There were 17 Dugs in total so he needed constant work done on him! I was also responsible for the fabrication of the characters Grubup, Gonad the Gaul, Dreadlock, and Atlas (one of the savage football players). I put all of these guys together and all of these would need to be maintained. A lot of the time animators would damage parts or need tensioning on their puppets and that’s something we would do also. My favourite job was painting an enormous duck bill which was used in the scene where Nooth gets picked up and shaken around towards the end! It lasts for about 2 seconds on screen but it was a really satisfying job.
A.H.: What technical challenges did you face while working on Early Man? Can you give us a few specific problems that you ran into that you and your team had to face? For these specific problems, how did you and your team work to solve them?
FH: We had to make a huge duck foot at one point, maybe 2.5ft tall? So we moulded the sculpt but then really had trouble getting all the silicone into the mould before it started to gel. So we had to make a really, really big syringe so that we could inject the silicone into the mould in one go and not in multiple goes using small syringes! Lots of instances like that, really! You’re constantly problem solving as you go along as there is rarely any time to do research and development! We would always put our heads together as a team to discuss the best way of going about something.
A.H.: What lessons and skills did working on Early Man give you that you’ve taken away and plan on implementing in your career in the animation industry in the future?
FH: I learnt so much about mould-making on this project it’s crazy… I learnt to do press moulds, fibreglass moulds, silicone injection moulds, carousel moulds, seamless moulds… you name it! It was a super intense learning curve but I loved every second of it! To be more general though, I just learned so much about the process of puppet making. Seeing a character through from design sculpt to production sculpt to armature to fully functioning puppet you can’t help but learn a lot. And to be surrounded by such talented people with such a wealth of knowledge between them… yeah, you learn so much, so fast!
A.H.: I get the impression from your website that beyond model making you’re just a generally creative person. I also read on your website that you also play guitar in a band. Can you tell us a little bit about your practice of playing guitar and in a band? Furthermore, what skills and/or practices has playing in a band taught you about collaborating with others in the stop motion and model making industry?
FH: Yeah, that’s right! I play in a pretty loud and noisy band called ‘Fever Sea’. I love music so much, and it’s such a release being able to get in a room with friends and play loud music! Playing in a band certainly solidifies your idea of compromise. When you write music as a group, you take on board people’s critiques and criticisms in an effort to make a collective, collaborative sound… and yeah, I guess model making is very similar in that sense. Even when working with the director himself it’s a group of people trying to get an idea out into the real world. It may well be the director’s vision but he is always open to compromise on the best course of action and the constraints that may present themselves from a practical perspective.
A.H.: On your website you confess to being a hardcore film fanatic. Have you seen any films, television shows, commercials, or short films recently where the model making really stood out to you? If so, could you tell us a little about what made the model making so great?
FH: Well obviously there was Kubo and The Two Strings… Those puppets were just beautiful. I was lucky enough to meet Travis Knight and hold some of those puppets last year and they are just mind blowing. They’re so technically impressive, with every detail given so much attention. Many, many animatable parts. Very inspiring stuff.
Honourable mention to (not really a stop motion film) but Blade Runner 2049… the world building in that film is just incredible! A lot of the cityscape scenes and sets were ‘bigatures’, and they just look amazing and give that tactile feel to the environments. Absolutely loved that film. And, I guess from a similar perspective Game of Thrones is pretty mind blowing! Although I’m not a massive CG fan… I’m definitely a practical effects guy! Most of the things I love are from the past! I recently got recommended a film called The Gate which is an 80’s cheesy horror film but it has a ton of AMAZING practical perspective effects and make-up, as well as a smattering of stop motion too.
This has been fun!
Thanks so much!
 |
| Early Man final poster. Photo courtesy of Aardman. |
If you’re interested in exploring more of Frank Harper’s work, you can do so by visiting his YouTube, Instagram, and website.
Aardman’s Early Man is currently in theaters. You can learn more about the film and find showtimes near you by visiting the film’s website, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
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.
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