Aardman Animations
Aardman Animations Limited is a British animation studio based in Bristol, England. It is known for films and television series made using stop-motion and clay animation techniques, particularly those featuring its plasticine characters from Wallace and Gromit, 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.[2]
Formerly
1972
5
- Peter Lord
- Nick Park
- David Sproxton
- Aardman Features Limited
- Aardman Digital
- Aardman Commercials
- Aardman Broadcast
- Aardman International
- Aardman Rights
- Aardman Effects
- Aardman Nathan Love
- Wallace & Gromit Limited
Aardman's films have been consistently very well received, and their stop-motion films are among the highest-grossing produced, with their 2000 debut, Chicken Run, being their top-grossing film,[3] as well as the highest-grossing stop-motion film of all time.[4] A sequel, Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, was released in 2023.[5]
Company name[edit]
The company name is taken from one of its early characters, a superhero created for Vision On in 1972.[61] Unlike the claymation productions that the company are famous for, Aardman was cel-animated.[62] Peter Lord has stated that the most interesting thing about the company name is that it "means nothing" and is only a joke that two teenagers found funny. He has stated that the name came from a combination of "Aardvark" and "Superman" for the reason that they found aardvark to be a particularly funny word. Aardman Animations became their company name when the BBC asked them to whom they should make their first cheque out.[63] Co-founder David Sproxton has claimed that the name was a result of being unable to "find another word with more A's in it than 'aardvark'" as a schoolboy.[64]
Non-Aardman productions by Aardman directors[edit]
A number of Aardman directors have worked at other studios, taking the distinctive Aardman style with them.
Aardman's Steve Box directed the animated music video for the Spice Girls' final single as a five-piece, "Viva Forever". The video took over five months to produce, considerably longer than the group's box office hit movie, Spice World. He is also the co-creator of the Finnish-British animated series Moominvalley, based on the Moomins books.
Barry Purves, director of the Aardman short Next, also directed Hamilton Mattress for Harvest Films. The film, a half-hour special that premiered on Christmas Day 2001, was produced by Chris Moll, producer of the Wallace and Gromit short film The Wrong Trousers. The models were provided by Mackinnon & Saunders, a firm that did the same for Bob the Builder and Corpse Bride.
Similarly, Robbie the Reindeer in Hooves of Fire, a BBC Bristol/Comic Relief production, was directed by Richard Goleszowski, creator of Rex the Runt. Its sequel, Robbie the Reindeer in Legend of the Lost Tribe, was directed by Peter Peake, whose directorial credits for Aardman include Pib and Pog and Humdrum.
Aardman alumni also produced many of the claymation shorts used in the 1986–1990 American television series Pee-wee's Playhouse.[65][66]
Aardman Animations has produced a number of animated features, shorts, videos and TV series, as well as adverts. Their major feature films are:
Industry
1999
Aardman Animations
Aardman Nathan Love LLC (2006–2019)
2007
Joe Burrascano
Aardman Animations