They say they're compositing this through lots of layers of physical objects. Have a look at the fire-shaped cut-outs at around 7m11s. It seems like they are emulating the CG-animated look in a very roundabout way? Cause that's what kids are used to and want, or what?
Edit: Just scrubbed through the actual short movie (Robin Robin; https://www.netflix.com/title/81058433). It has a more typical Aardman-look than what those clips in this video show.
I take their point: all the material used in compositing was filmed/shot. Digital compositing, while it feels a bit like cheating seems like an acceptable nod to modern tech in order to have additional atmosphere (rain, fire, snow) that would be nearly impossible otherwise (or if possible, wildly ballooning the budget).
And other recent films using 3-d printing to create the many varied faces and posed hands of the "puppetoons" is acceptable as well.
When I watch the old "Rudolph" animated films I cringe a bit when they add the rotoscoped snow on top of the otherwise 3D animated figures/sets. Aardman seems to have struck the right balance.
While watching Kubo and the Two Strings I thought it was a bit odd how persistently they tried to make this 3d movie look like stop motion. I was blown away when most of it turned out to be actual stop motion. There is some 3d though.
Personally I don't much care for the purist stance. Making things in the most challenging way possible does not automatically make them better.
Modern puppetry cannot do away with CGI. The sets and the movement is too complex, the effects are too complex, too.
In the very first seconds of the report you see a complex animatronic cat moving across a blue ackground that will be used to cut away scaffolding, stitch together different parts of the movie etc.
What they mean to say, I believe is "we want to do as much in camera as possible, and use CGI as the last resort". That's why they specifically mention that snowflakes are hand-animated in-camera.
I wouldn’t necessarily call digital compositing, retouching or VFX in general CGI. The result is of course a computer generated image strictly speaking, but the term is usually used for images that are completely computer generated, i.e. have no optical source in the physical worls.
The fire/explosion effects look very CG though.
They say they're compositing this through lots of layers of physical objects. Have a look at the fire-shaped cut-outs at around 7m11s. It seems like they are emulating the CG-animated look in a very roundabout way? Cause that's what kids are used to and want, or what?
Edit: Just scrubbed through the actual short movie (Robin Robin; https://www.netflix.com/title/81058433). It has a more typical Aardman-look than what those clips in this video show.