AARDMAN are back. Sorry, that’s a little misleading – the creators of Morph have never really been away.

The animation studio has spent some five years producing their 2012 release, Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists. Yes, you read that correctly. FIVE YEARS – from idea inception to the final piece of post-production (two years scripting, one and a half years storyboarding, designing and building puppets and sets, one and a half years shooting and around three months post).

Having just released CG feature Arthur Christmas, they’ve going back to what they’re really known for – stop-frame animation.

Working in a 30,000 sq ft building, which they moved into in 1996, and involving a crew of 320 and 41 separate sets, Pirates! is their biggest production to date. And it’s easy to see why. The set is massive.

Based on Gideon Defoe’s hilarious book of the same name, Pirates! is the tale of The Pirate Captain, a man whose main aim in life is to win the ‘pirate of the year’ award.

Following the successes of Chicken Run and Flushed Away – both topped the US Box Office on opening week – they’re going back to their roots despite the popularity of Pixar and Dreamworks films.

During a recent set-visit to their base in Bristol, we got a sneak peak at what’s involved behind the scenes of such a big production – and we got a look at some of the impressive sequences in 3D (in which the film has been shot). It has to be said, even at that stage it looked great.

Aardman oracle, and Pirates! director, Peter Lord is understandably excited about what the men and women of the production team have brought to life.

He said: “We pitched our idea to Sony after reading the book and after holding a development meeting. It had originally been earmarked as a TV series, but we found it laugh-out-loud hilarious and thought it would work as a film.

“The scale of Pirates! is ambitious. Using some CG we’ve managed to populate the world with more background characters than would have been possible had we attempted it with puppets.”

It’s understandable why they’ve gone down this road. The least expensive puppets cost around £6000 to create from scratch, while the important characters such as Pirate Captain and Pirate with a Scarf cost up to £15,000 each. That’s a costly mini-cast.

If you’re asking whether that’s the real names of the characters in Pirates! – the answer is “yes”. Apart from Black Bellamy (Jeremy Piven), none of them have actual names, which adds a bit of humour and charm to the story.

Seeing the scale of the models is truly remarkable – from the pirate ship that’s too tall to fit in the building without removing the top of the masts to the intricate details of Blood Island (little touches of humour added to posters and signs of pubs and shops are impressive… and very funny).

The model build starts at least a year before shooting to allow time to design and make enough puppets. It can be a lengthy process to perfect an important character. In fact it took six months of development including sculpting, moulding and painting before the first Pirate Captain was ready to animate. His beard alone took a year to develop.

On the crew there are 70 model makers who made 250 puppets. These comprise of nine main pirate crew, 23 background Pirates, 18 background scientists characters and 55 special characters – that was a total of 112 characters…and they were still shooting!

This has been a production where everyone involved has clearly had a ball. You have to see Charles Darwin’s house to really see the work put in. There are little things you’ll catch on repeat viewing.

An impressive voice cast, including Hugh Grant, David Tennant, Martin Freeman, Ashley Jensen and Hollywood beauty Salma Hayek, join the production relatively early. They record their lines – it’s then up to the animators to ensure the characters mouths are shaped to the words. And it’s done phonetically!

Revealing just what goes into piecing things together, Lord admits: “Matching the animation to the recordings is an exact talent down to the last syllable.

“The actors get to see the storyboard to help them set the scenes in their own head. Then they record their parts.

“Some of the voices were done almost two years ago.

“Once back at the studio I listens to all the recorded takes of each line (usually 20+) and select the take that works best with the storyboard and the other actors.

“Once chosen, the line is then sent on to our dope editor, who breaks down the line phonetically into the 24 frames per seconds that we shoot to.”

Basically, if the character is saying HELLO the animator will be able to see exactly when the mouth shape needs to change ‘Heh – l – uh – w’.

Pete added: “Hugh (Grant)’s PA told us after seeing a piece of footage that we had managed to get some of his mannerisms into the character. It wasn’t intended but when you listen back to what he has recorded, you can tell where he has firmed up his jaw or when he’s smiling.”

The shoot was definitely time-consuming – animators averaged just four seconds of animation each week. Coming across one of the animators as he was finishing part of his shoot was an eye-opener. He had  around one and a half minutes of footage… which he had been shooting since FEBRUARY! Seven months for 90 seconds of film!

Production Designer Norman Garwood (having designed on films including Brazil and Princess Bride) commenced concept work in 2007 and later returned in 2008 to design interior and exterior sets and locations.

Once concept designs are approved, it’s up to the Art Director to translate them into the miniature model world via mock up – both as a 1:5 foam board model and as a computer generated model.

The CG model and mock up drawings are used to create models and scenes for Aardman’s CG Previs process. Once Peter is happy the set will house the choreography and action required by the characters, the Art Directors start work on the detailed technical drawings ensuring the set works both practically and aesthetically.

From here the drawings are sent off-site to Cod Steaks, the studio’s Bristol-based set builders.

Sets typically take six weeks to build and the team of 26 could have up to six sets in construction at any one time. Cod Steaks work to the Art Director’s brief to provide the stunning sets, cleverly crafted by using a vast range of techniques and materials.

Pirates! is an incredibly prop-heavy film.  On completion this will total 220,000. The ship comprises 44,569 individual parts!  Over 400,000 gold coins have been made to dress the piles of treasure in Queen Victoria’s Treasure Room. There has even been over a quarter of a mile of rope used to wind around animation wire – used for rigging the Pirate ship and decks!

It may have been a long time coming, and the production crew may have spent long hours getting Pirates! shot, but with the shoot now complete, the next release from Aardman won’t be in cinemas until March 19, 2012.

Having seen first hand exactly what’s gone into such a shoot, it’s going to be a long wait. But it’s definitely going to be worth it!