Inside the Making of ‘Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget’: How Aardman Battled Fire, Flooding and a Potential Clay Drought to Make the Stop Motion Sequel
variety.comK.J. Yossman The chickens in “Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget” are sweet. Not just to look at, with their wide eyes and goofy grins, but literally: if you licked the palm-sized clay and silicone bird models they’d taste like sugar.
Which makes sense, because they’re coated in it. The puppet makers at Aardman Animations, the stop motion studio behind the film, used to dust the chickens with silica powder to prevent them from looking too shiny on camera — but silica is toxic and requires protective gear while handling.
So one day, the team tried powdered sugar instead. It worked. “It just makes this perfect matte surface if you get it right,” says Aardman’s head of puppets Kate Anderson.
Co-opting a kitchen cupboard staple as a key ingredient in one of the most anticipated animated movies of the year is the kind of scrappy innovation that Aardman is known for.
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