Aardman Animations are a British film company that created new waves with their movies and animation style.
By using stop motion animation with plasticine, they have won a wide range of awards.
The company’s story started in the 1970s.
Peter Lord and David Sproxton were schoolmates who had one dream: making an animated movie together.
When they decided to partner, they chose clay as their preferred animated style.
Still teenagers at the time, they asked the BBC to make short sketches for the children’s show Vision On.
In 1972, they published their first sketch featuring a character named Morph.
The sketch was titled Aardman which led to the company’s name and inception.
Four years later, they moved operations to Bristol where they ran full steam ahead.
Aardman participated in Peter Gabriel’s music videos, created Douglas for a TV advert for Lurpak Butter and made television shorts.
By the late 1980s, Lord and Sproxton’s company grew and more animators got hired.
In 1989, Channel 4 hired Aardman to create Lip Synch, a series of five-minute shorts.
One of the shorts was Creature Comforts directed by Nick Park, focusing on zoo animals talking about their homes.
The short won an Oscar and Park was an immediate superstar at Aardman.
He created the company’s two primary ambassadors, Wallace and Gromit.
Wallace is an eccentric and cheese loving inventor whilst Gromit is a silent but a loyally intelligent dog.
The Wigan pair starred in three short movies released between 1989 and 1997 for the BBC.
These were A Grand Day Out, The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave with the last two winning an Oscar.
Aardman made their first animated series in 1998 with Rex The Runt running for two seasons.
2000 was a significant year as they signed a deal with Dreamworks to develop and release their first feature-length movie.
Chicken Run was released in June and directed by Peter Lord and Nick Park.
The story of the chickens’ plan to escape their farm was a parody of The Great Escape and a critical and financial success.
Dreamworks and Aardman continued their relationship with Wallace and Gromit’s return.
Their own movie The Curse of the Were-Rabbit was released in 2005 and led to an Oscar win for Best Animated Movie.
Just a year later, they released their first computer animated movie, Flushed Away.
The movie is an underrated gem but it was also a box office failure leading to Dreamworks ending its relationship with the company.
Aardman signed a deal with Sony Pictures shortly after and more productions got underway.
It started with a Wallace and Gromit short titled A Matter of Loaf and Death in 2008, a murder mystery that won a BAFTA.
Two more movies followed, Arthur Christmas and The Pirates Band of Misfits, the first being CGI and the latter stop motion in 2011 and 2012.
Early Man and two Shaun the Sheep movies followed suit with the Wallace and Gromit spin off having its own television series beforehand.
Their newest movie and sequel to Chicken Run, Dawn of the Nugget is set to hit Netflix on December 15th.
Aardman’s stop motion clay animation has changed the industry.
Behind the scenes, a lot happens with scripts and a rough animated storyboard timing the visuals and sounds.
The sets are then built alongside the puppets and scaffolding which are all hand made.
Lighting and camera placement are crucial before the animation and shooting process gets the green light.
It takes months and even close to a year to film stop motion movies like Aardman’s.
From the puppets’ choreography, to the designs, filming and editing process.
Have you seen Aardman’s movies?
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