Tim Allen (Animation)

"I can be found locked in the darkroom with my puppet friends"

Being a lover of drawing, reading comics and making models, Tim Allen is a animator born and bred in the heart of England itself. Opting out of A-levels Tim started a 2 year art diploma in which at that stage he didn't know that animation could ever be used to pay the bills ! After years of job searching Tim finally got an animation audition for an Ealing Animation studio in London in which he got the job because he was cheap and "easy to impress". This job allowed him to work on his first piece titled El' Nombre, a popular low-
budget cartoon series by the BBC which used stop-
motion animation. After the 8 months of the job had finished, Tim went on to look for more work and has always had appreciation for Tim Burton, an indigenous writer and animator from the United States who's work includes: The Nightmare Before Christmas and Batman. When the "Corpse Bride" also by Tim Burton was soon to be made, Allen jumped at the chance to animate for it, applying for the role with his show-reel a whole three times and a grueling three day interview before he finally got accepted.

Tim Also went on to animate the "flying machine" in hit animation The Magic Piano. This required great time and practice as the contraption was very delicate. Normal televisions (usually playing back at 25 frames per second) means that animators such as Tim Allen has to create about 25 stop motion pictures per second ! Now Imagine how long it would take to animate the whole film!
The Flying Machine started off as an half-hour animated film, which started off like most animations with an animatic which was pre-visualation of the film- on the computer.

With the flying machine Tim wanted to bring a beautiful hand made feeling to this machine, almost it being a new character so this meant that as an animator he would have had to take a photo, move the model then take a new photo. An animator would have to act at a very similar speed.

 So how did Tim place in the background might you ask ? Most of the backdrops on The Flying Machine are put in place by CGI or sometimes painted. One shot called the gherkin shot, was the longest shot that took place in the whole film and in stop motion history. Planning for the shot took three months, building the set was three months, shooting the set was also three months and rota-scoping the shot which just means cleaning it up took a final two months.
The animation appeals to all ages, and The Magic Piano is an extraordinary example of Tim Allans great creations.