figure: Chicken Run: Ginger with Tunnel Digger and Fence Cutter

Filmmakers were the first to use Plasticine, a non-drying, non-toxic, malleable clay, developed by art teacher William Harbutt in 1897, to sculpt and mold objects for their animated films. The style, referred to as claymation, requires the animator to arrange the clay objects on a background, expose the film frame, and then move the object ever so slightly by hand. The animator continues the cycle until the film is completed. Edwin Porter and Thomas Edison released the first stop-motion claymation film, The Sculptor����_��s Welsh Rarebit Dream, in 1908. Within a decade, artists Helena Smith Dayton and animator Willie Hopkins produced claymation films on a variety of subjects, and the style became a fad.

Claymation techniques prove time-consuming and laborious. A 30-minute claymation film requires approximately 21,600 composition changes, and the filmmaker must ensure that objects are not distorted by smudges, a stray hair, or bits of dust����_��a task many filmmakers consider tedious. Popular claymation from the past three decades includes the California Raisins, ����_�The Nightmare Before Christmas,����_�_ Wallace and Gromit, and ����_�Chicken Run,����_�_ among others.

Released in 2000, ����_�Chicken Run����_�_ told the story of Mrs. And Mr. Tweedy����_��s egg farm in Yorkshire. At Tweedy����_��s Egg Farm, any chicken that fails to lay enough eggs was slaughtered for dinner. Mrs. Tweedy, frustrated by the minuscule profits generated by the farm, conceived of the idea of converting the farm into an automated production of chicken pot pies. ����_�Chicken Run����_��s����_�_ dark humor, cleverness, and visual inventiveness proved an immediate hit with children and adults. One critic noted that the movie was ����_�tender and touching����__it����_��s a movie made by men, not machines, and at the end you don����_��t feel wrung out or manipulated.����_�_