Our special guest today is Teresa Drilling, one of the key animators who worked on the new movie "Chicken Run" (click here to see the trailer)

Animation is everywhere--in your favorite TV shows and in many of this summer's biggest movies. Ever wonder how it works? How do animators get their ideas from their imaginations to film? Now's your chance to find out.

Read the transcript.

KidsPost: Welcome to Speak Up, a KidsPost online discussion. Today our guest is Teresa Drilling, a key animator for the hit movie "Chicken Run." We've got a lot of questions for Teresa, so let's get started!

Morehead, Kentucky: How did you get the idea for Chicken Run?

Teresa Drilling: The directors, Peter Lord and Nick Park, had the idea for Chicken Run about four years ago. They thought it would be fun to tell a story about chickens, and it built from there.

Silver Spring, Maryland: I haven't seen Chicken Run, yet but I think the claymation looks really cool! How do they make such life like chickens? And how do they make the clay chickens move without breaking them? I'd also like to know how many chickens you had to make, and did you have to make backup chickens?

Teresa Drilling: The chickens were made out of many kinds of materials: clay and silicon plastic and foam. Inside the chickens were metal armatures, that were like skeletons. When we moved the chickens, the armatures helped keep them from breaking or falling over. We made over a hundred chickens, and we had many back up chickens too!

Bethesda, Md: How long did it take the live actors to record the voices? And how long did it take to actually make the animated part of the movie?

Teresa Drilling: The live actors did most of the voice recording in about a week, though they sometimes came back to do more recording here and there when another good idea for a line came up during the filming. The animation part of the movie took about eighteen MONTHS to shoot, so you can see that it is a very time-consuming process. I think it's really worth it, because the result is almost magic.

Silver Spring, Maryland: Did you model the chickens based on real chickens, or did you base them on drawings or computer graphics?

Teresa Drilling: Nick and Peter spent a lot of time studying real chickens before they made this movie, but in the end they based how the chickens looked on drawings they and other illustrators working with them made. When you think about it, real chickens don't have teeth!

Washington DC: How did you make the rain look so real on the chickens?

Teresa Drilling: We made the rain in several different ways. We made little plastic splashes that pop up on the Chickens' skin when the raindrops hit that we had to put on and take off one by one. We put gooey spots of glycerine on the Chickens to make them look wet, or to show a drop rolling off. We also used some rain streaks after the film was shot in post production to make it look ultra real. I was really impressed by all the rain drops and splashes and bubbling water in the movie, and thought it looked really good.

Waterloo, Canada: Who among animators has had the most influence in your work? Is there anyone in particular that you really admire?

Teresa Drilling: Both of the directors, Nick and Peter, are fantastic animators. They had the most influence in guiding and inspiring all of us in our animation. It is very important when so many animators are working on a big project together that we all talk and listen to each other so our characters all work together nicely. It helps us all use a great idea someone has, or helps warn us if something someone tries doesn't work as well as we'd like. I have to say that I really admired ALL the animators I was working with. Everyone had something unique to contribute, and good ideas to share.

Silver Spring, Maryland: What was the hardest part of making all those chickens, and which chicken is your favorite?

Teresa Drilling: I was lucky because I didn't have to make all those chickens! The people who made the chickens were the designers, the armaturists, the sculptors, the modelmakers, the molders, the painters, the pressers, and the costumers. There were many, many people responsible for making each and every chicken. I think the hardest part was making so many chickens so fast. My personal favorite chicken is Fowler. I got to animate him quite a bit, and really became fond of how he moves and of his personality. What! What!

Herndon, Virginia: Do you think who did the voice parts influenced how you made the chickens look?

Teresa Drilling: The way I think of it is that the voice actors create the part of the character for your ears, the animators create the part of the character for you eyes, and with the directors both together create the part of the character for your heart. The actor's work made a huge difference in how the chickens looked, they inspired us to do the best we could in using gestures that brought the most out of their lines.

Morehead, Kentucky: Have you ever worked on a movie before Chicken Run?

Teresa Drilling: Chicken Run was the first movie theater movie that I've worked on. Before Chicken Run, I worked many many years doing television commercials and TV specials. I did a lot of work for Sesame Street when I worked on Cecille the Ball.

Frederick, Maryland: Is stop-animation a stressful or boring job?

Teresa Drilling: Sometimes stop-motion animation is a little stressful, but most other jobs are too. It really helps if you can stay calm under pressure, and can concentrate without letting distractions bother you. But the BIG payoff is the magic of seeing something that you saw in your imagination actually come to life in front of your eyes. I sometimes get tired when I work a long, long time, but I very rarely get bored. I'm always wondering what will happen next!

Gaithersburg, Maryland: How did you get into the field of claymation? what could one do to get into the same area?

Teresa Drilling: I became a clay animator almost by accident. I went to college to be a commercial artist, and because I have always been fascinated by any kind of movement, I took a class there in animation. Then another. And another. I made a couple student films that were successful, and eventually got a job in an animation house in NYC doing very basic things, like going to the store for more styrofoam. Eventually I worked up to a chance to animate more, and just kept going. My advice to becoming a good clay animator is to practice sculpting and drawing, to learn how to move your body in sports or in dancing, and to become a good watcher. There are many colleges that teach basic animation classes. It would be good to check one out to see if you like it.

Alexandria, Virginia: I'm 15 and I want to buy a camera to start doing my own little claymation shorts what kind would you recomend? I've been using my family's camcorder but with out an animation feature the movies are very choppy. Please keep in mind I'm on a VERY limited budget.

Teresa Drilling: Hmmm. The tricky thing about clay animation is that you have to have a camera that will work for you, and this always makes it more expensive than animation drawn on paper. A lot of my animator friends started out using 8mm cameras years ago. I used a 16mm Bolex with a special motor attached to take pictures frame by frame. These days there are devices called Quick Action Recorders, or Video Lunchbox systems that will capture images frame by frame. You could try calling your local university, or even the art department at your school, to see if there is one of these systems in your town that you could go experiment with.

Washington: How did you get the stop motion to work with things that were mid air?? (Like the drips of water, or when anything was flying?)

Teresa Drilling: We did several things to get the Chickens to fly through the air. I worked a lot on the big mud fight scene where there were lots of flying chickens, so I used them all! Sometimes we would suspend the chickens on fishing line which was clear and you couldn't see it on film. Sometimes we had supporting rods coming out of the backs or sides of them, so they looked like chicken's on a stick. Afterwards in the computerized post production stage we painted them out so you wouldn't see them. Sometimes we would move a chicken in such a way that you THOUGHT you saw it up in the air, when really it always had at least one food down someplace. Being an animator is a lot like being a magician sometimes, we use sleight of hand whenever we can!

Washington: How do you plan out the movements so smoothly? I would think it would be hard not to make things not move jerky or too quickly or slowly.

Teresa Drilling: Practice, practice, practice. The way I do it, is I think about an action in SLOW MOTION. As slow as a glacier. Sometimes I even act it out. After awhile you just get a sense of how much something should move, and how to keep it smooth. You just have to let go at some point and trust your instinct.

Alexandria, Virginia: Do you plan on working with Nick Park and Peter Lord on any other films?

Teresa Drilling: Both Peter and Nick are wonderful people who have exciting creative ideas, and are good at laughing. I would be very happy to work with them again.

Fairfax,Va: Do you know if there's gonna be a "Chicken Run 2"?

Teresa Drilling: I suppose anything is possible!

Great Falls, Virginia: What was your reaction the first time you saw the movie? Did you think all the hard animation paid off?

Teresa Drilling: I was really very happy. It was a suprise for me too, even though I worked on the movie, because I didn't know how everyone else's work would come together at the end. I knew it would be great, and was really proud of how all the love and hard work that everyone put into it really showed. I think it was definarely worth it, without question!

KidsPost: That's all the time we have for today. Thanks to Teresa for joining us--and thanks to our audience for all of the great questions!