A Pirate Adventure With HMG Paints
The employees at HMG Paints are in a particularly swashbuckling mood this month with the DVD release of, “The Pirates! In
an Adventure with Scientists,” the latest animated film to be produced by Aardman Animations.
Over the last three years, HMG
Paints, the UK’s largest independent industrial paints manufacturer, have
worked alongside Aardman Animations
to supply them with a range of highly
specialized coatings. These were used to paint the puppet-stars of
the animated film.
The film follows the escapades of the boundlessly enthusiastic,
if somewhat less-than-successful Pirate Captain’s attempts to beat
his bitter rivals, Black Bellamy and Cutlass Liz to the much-cov-eted Pirate of the Year Award. Along the way, the Pirate Captain
and his rag-tag crew do battle with the pirate-hating Queen Victoria and team up with a young Charles Darwin, but never lose
sight of what a pirate loves best: adventure! The characters voices
are provided by an all-star cast featuring Hugh Grant, David Ten-nant, Imelda Staunton, Martin
Freeman, Jeremy Piven and other
members of Hollywood’s elite.
Production for the film began
in 2007 and HMG Paints were
involved at a very early stage in
the project supplying the necessary coatings for the puppets. A
crew of 525 people worked on
the film, including 70 model
makers that used HMG Paints’
products to bring color and life
to the 250 puppets created.
The coatings supplied by HMG
were used extensively on the heads and mouths of the puppets.
Animators use a vast number of mouths during filming, which are
interchanged to create speech between characters. These mouths
complete with teeth and tongue, are computer generated and
printed on resin via a Rapid 3D Prototyping printer. The mouths
are then manipulated and pre-posed in a number of expressions
before being masked and painted.
In order to meet these very specific and demanding requirements, HMG Paints put together a product offering that would
provide the necessary flexibility, durability, and vibrant color.
HMG’s 1K Vinyl Acrylic, PVC94, was ideal for this usage as its
flexibility and adhesion allow for quick and easy application to
plastic substrates. HMG’s LMP water-based acrylic system was
also supplied for its adhesion properties and as an alternative to
the solvent-based paints on offer.
The high quality products and service offered by HMG Paints
has attracted the attention of a number of Hollywood’s elites and
their products are currently being used on several other movie
sets across the world. CW
82 | Coatings World
www.coatingsworld.com
October 2012