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Aardman Animations
Aardman Animations Limited, known simply as Aardman, is a British animation studio based in Bristol, England, United Kingdom. It is known for films and television series made using stop-motion and clay animation techniques, particularly those featuring its plasticine characters from Wallace & Gromit, Chicken Run, Shaun the Sheep, and Morph. After some experimental computer-animated short films during the late 1990s, beginning with Owzat (1997), Aardman entered the computer animation market with Flushed Away (2006). As of February 2020, it had earned $1.1 billion worldwide, with an average $135.6 million per film. Between 2000 and 2006, Aardman collaborated with DreamWorks Animation.
Aardman's films have been consistently well-received. Their stop-motion films are among the highest-grossing produced, with their 2000 debut, Chicken Run, being their top-grossing film, as well as the highest-grossing stop-motion film of all time. A sequel, Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, was released in 2023.
Aardman was founded in 1972 as a low-budget project by Peter Lord and David Sproxton, who wanted to realise their dream of producing an animated motion picture. The collaboration provided animated sequences for the BBC series for deaf children Vision On. The company name originates from the name of their nerdy Superman character in that series. The process of using clay animation to produce a segment called "Gleebees" (1975) became the inspiration for creating Morph, a simple clay character. Around the same time, Lord and Sproxton made their first foray into adult animation with the shorts Down and Out and Confessions of a Foyer Girl, entries in the BBC's Animated Conversations series using real-life conversations as soundtracks.
Aardman also created the title sequence for The Great Egg Race and supplied animation for the multiple award-winning music video of Peter Gabriel's song "Sledgehammer". They produced the music video for the song "My Baby Just Cares For Me" by Nina Simone in 1987. Also in the 1980s, they created the trombone-playing character Douglas in a television commercial for Lurpak butter.
Later, Aardman produced several shorts for Channel 4, including the Conversation Pieces series. These five shorts worked in the same area as the Animated Conversations pieces, but were more sophisticated. Lord and Sproxton began hiring more animators at this point; three of the newcomers made their directorial debut at Aardman with the Lip Synch series. Of the five Lip Synch shorts, two were directed by Lord, one by Barry Purves, one by Richard Goleszowski and one by Nick Park.
In 1990, Park's short, Creature Comforts, was the first Aardman Animations film to win an Academy Award. Park also developed the clay modelled shorts featuring the adventures of Wallace & Gromit, a comical pair of friends: Wallace being a naive English inventor with a love of cheese, and Gromit, his best friend, the intelligent, muted dog. These films include A Grand Day Out (1989), The Wrong Trousers (1993) and A Close Shave (1995), the latter two winning Academy Awards.
In December 1997, Aardman, DreamWorks (now known as DreamWorks Animation) and Pathé announced that their companies were collaborating to co-finance and distribute Chicken Run, Aardman's first feature film, which had already been in pre-production for a year. On 27 October 1999, Aardman and DreamWorks signed a $250 million deal to make an additional four films that were estimated to be completed during the next 12 years. Along with the deal their first project was announced, titled The Tortoise and the Hare. Intended to be based on Aesop's fable and directed by Richard Goleszowski, it was paused two years later because of script problems. On 23 June 2000, Chicken Run was released to a great critical and financial success. In 2005, after ten years of absence, Wallace and Gromit are back in Academy Award-winning The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. The following year Flushed Away, Aardman's first computer-animated feature, was released.
On 10 October 2005, a serious fire at a storage facility used by Aardman and other Bristol-based companies destroyed over 30 years of props, models, and scenery often built by the Bristol-based Cod Steaks. This warehouse was used for storage of past projects and so did not prevent the production of their current projects at the time. In addition, the company's library of finished films was stored elsewhere and was undamaged. An electrical fault was determined to be the cause of the blaze. Referring to the 2005 Kashmir earthquake, Park was quoted as saying, "Even though it is a precious and nostalgic collection and valuable to the company, in light of other tragedies, today isn't a big deal."
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Aardman Animations
Aardman Animations Limited, known simply as Aardman, is a British animation studio based in Bristol, England, United Kingdom. It is known for films and television series made using stop-motion and clay animation techniques, particularly those featuring its plasticine characters from Wallace & Gromit, Chicken Run, Shaun the Sheep, and Morph. After some experimental computer-animated short films during the late 1990s, beginning with Owzat (1997), Aardman entered the computer animation market with Flushed Away (2006). As of February 2020, it had earned $1.1 billion worldwide, with an average $135.6 million per film. Between 2000 and 2006, Aardman collaborated with DreamWorks Animation.
Aardman's films have been consistently well-received. Their stop-motion films are among the highest-grossing produced, with their 2000 debut, Chicken Run, being their top-grossing film, as well as the highest-grossing stop-motion film of all time. A sequel, Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, was released in 2023.
Aardman was founded in 1972 as a low-budget project by Peter Lord and David Sproxton, who wanted to realise their dream of producing an animated motion picture. The collaboration provided animated sequences for the BBC series for deaf children Vision On. The company name originates from the name of their nerdy Superman character in that series. The process of using clay animation to produce a segment called "Gleebees" (1975) became the inspiration for creating Morph, a simple clay character. Around the same time, Lord and Sproxton made their first foray into adult animation with the shorts Down and Out and Confessions of a Foyer Girl, entries in the BBC's Animated Conversations series using real-life conversations as soundtracks.
Aardman also created the title sequence for The Great Egg Race and supplied animation for the multiple award-winning music video of Peter Gabriel's song "Sledgehammer". They produced the music video for the song "My Baby Just Cares For Me" by Nina Simone in 1987. Also in the 1980s, they created the trombone-playing character Douglas in a television commercial for Lurpak butter.
Later, Aardman produced several shorts for Channel 4, including the Conversation Pieces series. These five shorts worked in the same area as the Animated Conversations pieces, but were more sophisticated. Lord and Sproxton began hiring more animators at this point; three of the newcomers made their directorial debut at Aardman with the Lip Synch series. Of the five Lip Synch shorts, two were directed by Lord, one by Barry Purves, one by Richard Goleszowski and one by Nick Park.
In 1990, Park's short, Creature Comforts, was the first Aardman Animations film to win an Academy Award. Park also developed the clay modelled shorts featuring the adventures of Wallace & Gromit, a comical pair of friends: Wallace being a naive English inventor with a love of cheese, and Gromit, his best friend, the intelligent, muted dog. These films include A Grand Day Out (1989), The Wrong Trousers (1993) and A Close Shave (1995), the latter two winning Academy Awards.
In December 1997, Aardman, DreamWorks (now known as DreamWorks Animation) and Pathé announced that their companies were collaborating to co-finance and distribute Chicken Run, Aardman's first feature film, which had already been in pre-production for a year. On 27 October 1999, Aardman and DreamWorks signed a $250 million deal to make an additional four films that were estimated to be completed during the next 12 years. Along with the deal their first project was announced, titled The Tortoise and the Hare. Intended to be based on Aesop's fable and directed by Richard Goleszowski, it was paused two years later because of script problems. On 23 June 2000, Chicken Run was released to a great critical and financial success. In 2005, after ten years of absence, Wallace and Gromit are back in Academy Award-winning The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. The following year Flushed Away, Aardman's first computer-animated feature, was released.
On 10 October 2005, a serious fire at a storage facility used by Aardman and other Bristol-based companies destroyed over 30 years of props, models, and scenery often built by the Bristol-based Cod Steaks. This warehouse was used for storage of past projects and so did not prevent the production of their current projects at the time. In addition, the company's library of finished films was stored elsewhere and was undamaged. An electrical fault was determined to be the cause of the blaze. Referring to the 2005 Kashmir earthquake, Park was quoted as saying, "Even though it is a precious and nostalgic collection and valuable to the company, in light of other tragedies, today isn't a big deal."