Robin Robin creators radically depart from Aardman’s Wallace & Gromit style

Aardman Animations’ newest special looks significantly different from its traditional stop-motion fare, like the Wallace & Gromit shorts and Chicken RunCGI Projects, such as. Flushed Away. Robin Robin, out on Netflix now, is full of soft, fuzzy needle-felt characters — a departure from the studio’s signature clay-modeled films. But there’s a reason for that: The new special comes from two new creators, Mike Please and Dan Ojari, who pitched the story to an Aardman executive at a film festival.

Robin RobinRobin is the story of Robin (Bronte Cermichael), a young Robin who was raised in a home with mice. Robin doesn’t feel at home and can’t sneak about like her dad or siblings. Robin is introduced to Richard E. Grant (a materialistic magpie), who tells him about human traditions like wishing on Christmas stars. Robin just needs to obtain a Star and wish to become a Mouse. It should be simple, right?

Polygon interviewed the writer/director team about their story, creating the personal look that is inspired by Christmas decorations and pushing the envelope of felt animation.

Image: Aardman/Netflix

What was the inspiration for this story? What has happened to it since its conception?

Mike, please: It’s a story Dan and I have been chewing over for a very long time. The basis was first created around eight years ago. It all happened in one night at our studio. While we were brainstorming ideas for Christmas stories, The very basic story of [a bird]Raised by mice on an adventure to find a Christmas star, this was how it happened. This was very exciting.

Four years later, the story we shared changed drastically. We would gather our family members and friends around Christmas and say, Hey, we’ve got this idea for a Christmas special. It’s this, this, this and this. Then, most people tried to flee from us. But when it got to the point where we could get to the end of the story and people would still be there, we’re like, Okay, the little thing we’ve been baking is ready to serve to somebody else.

So then we took it to a Annecy Film Festival — not entirely with the intention of doing a big sort of pitch with lots of people, but we serendipitously bumped into Sarah Cox, the development executive at Aardman, in the canteen. We made this little storybook that told the story in really simple little silhouettes, and we commissioned one of our favorite illustrators to do a few paintings of Magpie’s treehouse and Robin in the rubbish, and just a few taster things.

These were shown to Sarah along with some of our songs. It’s easy to see: [Us]She sat in the corner and bent down to give her the book. She was really excited. Next, we sent it to Netflix. They were also excited. The whole process was very quick once it was pitched.

Dan Ojari: Also, at this point we had a script. We’d written a really rough first pass. It was more like a script check, where we went through what had been figured plot-wise. It didn’t really have very developed characters. When we started at Aardman, the main thing we started on was discovering who the characters were, and really making sure it was Robin’s story to tell.

Magpie is a wonderful character. He has always been strong. Because he’s such a materialist, it feels that he has a very clear character arc: He should learn that Christmas isn’t all about things, it’s about people around you. Because it was fun and clear enough, we were able to put that into writing. Sometimes that would be the central focus. As soon as Robin bumped into Magpie, it became Magpie’s story.

Image: Aardman/Netflix

We had to work hard on Robin’s identity. Finding the driving force was what made her go out and do crazy things, such as steal some crumbs or dreaming of eating a sandwich. Her journey ends in the realization that her goal is to become like them. She has to learn that she’s just fine how she is, and she should embrace herself.

It’s funny how when you have a figured-out plot, you feel like you’re in good stead to translate that into a film. When you finally make it, […]You will quickly realize that you have a mountain you need to climb. It takes a whole team of people to conquer it. Our co-writer Sam Morrison and Aardman’s fantastic story team, editor, were a great team.

Please: The story was also influenced greatly by our producers Sarah Cox, Danny Smith and Danny Smith. I think it was Sarah’s idea to put ears on Robin.

Was there anything else that inspired this character’s design?

Ojari: One of the first things I did was send some pieces of folk art we had around the studio to Matt Forsythe. He was also a character designer and Briony May Smith, the original illustrator. We’ve got two illustrated books. They were given a lot of suggestions. Robin’s idea for a bauble was one of their key ideas. The idea of having a ball was always appealing to us, as it visually would be very unbalanced.

What was interesting about viewing the world from a mouse and bird’s point of view?

Please:It was great fun to see the scale. Particularly in the kitchen set, I think that’s probably the contrast of worlds that we have in the film. Robin is so small as you explore the kitchen. And I think that’s partly because we built a double-size kitchen. This particular set has 170% normal-sized puppets, which is almost twice the size of a regular kitchen. When we went in there, we would always feel that we had suddenly shrunk, and we could actually see the world from Robin’s perspective.

Image: Aardman/Netflix

Was there anything that the actors brought to the performance that was influential on animation or surprising you?

Please: If you can hear the movements and the iterations and the character in the voice, it’s a gift for the animators. Certainly we have Richard E. Grant, Gillian Anderson, Adeel Akhtar, and Bronte Carmichael, but then we have fantastic mice kids, who often we don’t talk about, so I’ve got to give a shout out to Amira Macey-Michael, who plays the youngest mouse, Dink. It was her very first casting. She gave a warm and affectionate voice to our youngest mouse. She would add in fantastic little… I don’t know if spoonerisms is the right word, but just little different takes over the lines.

We love the scene where she eats a Christmas pudding. I don’t know if you have Christmas puddings in the States. They’re like a big, round sort of fruitcake, but they often set it on fire with some brandy. She was the creator of this line. A coin can be taken from the middle sticky brown goo.. She instead goes. Take a coin out of the sticky brown poo.. We decided to keep it because we loved how funny the idea was. It fit perfectly in line with Dink’s character, who happens to love all things moldy. She’s singing about slime and toenails all the way through the film. That was quite a charming little scene.

Ojari: Mikey and me would frequently do the scratch audio before recording the song to ensure the timing is correct. So sometimes you have something really specific, and that’s a different way of working, because you’re really honing in on the intonation of a certain line. Every stage is a chance to hear the first impressions of actors. Richard’s versions were definitely his most generous. He’s just a lot of fun. Magpie, he’s the comic relief of the film. Richard was a great addition to this film. Magpie had so much fun recording with Richard.

The characters have this very fuzzy and soft look, which is different from other Aardman movies — why go for this approach?

Please: It was always our idea to make it needlefelt before we sent it off to Sarah. It’s possible, and the characters may be. Because there’s something very endearing about characters rendered in needle felt. In the UK, there’s a thing growing from tradition, which is needle-felted decorations. And often they’re little mice and elves and things. Even though they may have simple design features, their characters and personalities add life to the world. This is what we decided to do. That would make a great resource!. It lights up beautifully too. We actually brought in small Christmas decorations to Aardman’s second pitch, and gave them to everybody. Everyone was open to the idea of rendering this way from that point on.

We did do a lot of experiments, thinking perhaps the whole world should be needle-felted — every part of the set and scenery. There was a lot of trial and error, research, and testing of the various uses of it. It obviously isn’t a completely needle-felted film. But what we found is that with having the characters all felted — it’s a very kind of tactile, physical material — being in the center of the screen the whole time, it gives the whole film… I dunno, I think there’s a sort of intimacy. It makes you sort of endear to the film and characters a little bit more, because you know what it’s made out of. This was a huge asset to storytelling.

Image: Aardman/Netflix

Was there anything more difficult than working with a needle?

Please:The characters at the centre were made from needle felt. We also decided to use needle felt for all abstract and elemental animation. This way, even though the entire world may be made up of many materials, it would feel like it had needle felt through it. All of the elements we wanted to film, including flames, smoke and snowflakes, were shot on classic multiplane glass. This was a difficult task. The first attempts, I think, felt quite like a con artist: They’re just pasted on top and not really integrated with the world. But our VFX supervisor, John Biggins, found this quite novel approach, which I don’t think has been used elsewhere in stop-motion production, which was to shoot a lot of the film in stereoscopic.

Both the right and left sides were taken. We have a little slider on the camera that will take two photos from each side. This gave us the full depth information. These elements, which are glass-based, could be used to place them in the scene. We could see snow falling behind trees and smoke rising from somewhere, with one character in front. We wouldn’t have to green-screen behind those characters, or rotoscope out each individual element, because the stereoscopic gave us the information.

John took 3D scans on the sets in order to assist us in all this integration. And so the final result, we think, is really satisfying, and it almost feels more physical, even though there’s a lot of VFX involved. All of the elements used in the VFX were real and we were able push this feeling throughout the globe.

What small detail doesn’t seem like it would be difficult, but was hard to get exactly right?

Ojari: All parts!

Please: The faces are probably the most important.

Ojari: Yeah, one thing I think you take for granted when you watch it is that every… like the eyelids, they’re not like mechanical things, or wired things you can move around. Hand-positioning every eyelid or eye shape is necessary, as well as the fitting of replacement lids. The nature of the eyes — we wanted this sort of graphic 2D language of the eyes, which looks fantastic. Sometimes they can create this weird optical illusion, where they don’t do what you want them to do. If you asked animators about the most difficult thing, I would say the eyes.

Please: John Biggins, VFX effects director, would probably agree. The eyes were the part he was most focused on throughout the film.

Robin RobinIt is now available on Netflix