CHICKEN RUN - FLUSHED AWAY: NO FEAT OF CLAY

FLUSHED AWAY: NO FEAT OF CLAY

Although numerous reports have referred to the upcoming Flushed Away from Aardman Features as a "claymation" movie -- that is, one using Plasticene figures and stop-frame photography like the company's previous Chicken Run and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit -- it now turns out that the characters in the feature were all created with computers. Today's (Thursday) Los Angeles Times reported that the filmmakers wanted to keep "the same distinctive design aesthetic" of the original Aardman movies, but that they also wanted to open up the movie (to show the Paris sewer system, for example). Aardman director David Bowers told the newspaper, "If we had to do it in stop-frame, it would have been a much smaller and much dryer film, that's for sure."

02/11/2006