Aardman Animations

**Aardman Animations Ltd.**, also known as **Aardman**, is a British stop-motion clay animation studio in Bristol, England. It is known for using techniques with the characters Wallace and Gromit modelled in plasticine. It successfully entered the computer animation market with _Flushed Away_ (2006).

Their stop-motion films are among the highest-grossing stop-motion films of all time. Their debut, _Chicken Run_ (2000), is their top-grossing film. It is the highest-grossing stop-motion film of all time.

In 1991, Park's short, _Creature Comforts_, was the first Aardman production to win an Academy Award.

### 1972–1996

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 partnership provided animated sequences for the BBC series for deaf children _Vision On_. The company name originates from the name of their nerdish Superman character in that sequence. The process of using clay animation to produce a segment called "Greeblies" (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 a number of 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 1991, Park's short, _Creature Comforts_, was the first Aardman production to win an Academy Award. Park also developed the clay modelled shorts featuring the adventures of Wallace and Gromit, a comical pair of friends: Wallace being a naive English inventor with a love of cheese, and Gromit his best friend, the intelligent but silent dog. These films include _A Grand Day Out_ (1989), _The Wrong Trousers_ (1993) and _A Close Shave_ (1995), the latter two winning Academy Awards.

### 1997–2007

In December 1997, Aardman and DreamWorks (later DreamWorks Animation) announced that their companies were teaming up 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 the 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 returned in Academy Award-winning _The Curse of the Were-Rabbit_. The following year _Flushed Away_, Aardman's first computer-animated feature, was released.
Logo used from 1998 until 2022
On 1 October 2006, right before the release of _Flushed Away_, _The New York Times_ reported that due to creative differences DreamWorks Animation and Aardman would not be extending their contract. The deal was officially terminated on 30 January 2007. According to an Aardman spokesperson: "The business model of DreamWorks no longer suits Aardman and vice versa. But the split couldn't have been more amicable." Unofficial reasons for departure were weak performances of the last two movies, for which DreamWorks had to take writedowns, and citing the article, "Aardman executives chafed at the creative control DreamWorks tried to exert, particularly with _Flushed Away_..." The studio had another film in development, _Crood Awakening_ (eventually _The Croods_), which had been announced in 2005, with John Cleese co-writing the screenplay. With the end of the partnership, the film's rights reverted to DreamWorks.

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 2004 South Asia earthquake and tsunami, 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."

From 2006 to 2007, the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka, Tokyo, Japan, had an exhibit featuring the works of Aardman Studios. Sproxton and Lord visited the exhibit in May 2006 and met with animator Hayao Miyazaki during the visit. Miyazaki has long been a fan of Aardman Animations' works.

### 2007–present

In April 2007, Aardman signed and in 2010 renewed a three-year deal with Sony Pictures to finance, co-produce, and distribute feature films. The next year, Aardman released a new _Wallace and Gromit_ short film, called _A Matter of Loaf and Death_. The first film made in partnership with Sony was the computer-animated _Arthur Christmas_ (2011), which is Aardman's first 3D feature film. 2012 saw the release of _The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!_ (known internationally as _The Pirates! Band of Misfits_), Aardman's first 3D stop-motion film and Peter Lord's first film as a director since _Chicken Run_. Two additional films were announced in June 2007: _The Cat Burglars_, a stop-motion animated heist comedy film directed by Steve Box, about cat burglars that steal milk, and their plans to pull off 'the great milk float robbery'; and an untitled Nick Park project (which would later become _Early Man_).

The studio is also known to provide generous resources and training to young animators by providing awards at various animation festivals. For example, The Aardman Award at the UK's Animex Festival in Teesside provides story consultation to a promising young animator for their next film.

In 2008, Aardman joined with Channel 4 and Lupus Films to launch a user-generated content animation portal called 4mations. They also designed the BBC One Christmas Idents for that year, which featured Wallace and Gromit to tie in with the showing of the new Wallace and Gromit film called _A Matter of Loaf and Death_ on Christmas Day at 8:30pm. In April 2008, Aardman launched the Aardman YouTube channel, which is a YouTube Partner channel featuring the entire _Creature Comforts_ TV series, the Morph series, _Cracking Contraptions_ and clips from the Wallace and Gromit films. From December 2008, Aardman also started posting various flash games on Newgrounds, the majority of which are based on _Wallace and Gromit_ and _Shaun the Sheep_.

In 2009, Nintendo announced that Aardman would make twelve short films using only Flipnote Studio. The films were posted on Flipnote's Hatena web service provider. The first film was called _The Sandwich Twins_ and was released on 16 September 2009. The remaining eleven films were released on a weekly basis until Christmas, and can also be downloaded using Hatena. In the same year, the headquarters of the studio moved into a new building, designed by Alec French architects, in Gas Ferry Road, Bristol, although work needing large-scale sets is still carried out in sheds in Aztec West and Bedminster. In April 2009, Aardman Animations edited the existing Watch identity by UKTV to make the inflatable eyeball (called "Blinky") in the idents blink.

In October 2013, Peter Lord (co-founder of Aardman Animations) created a fundraising project on the crowdfunding site Kickstarter. The campaign has a target of £75,000 which will be used to fund 12 new one-minute episodes of Morph. Lord was hoping to start production in January 2014 using the original stop-frame animation. Backers of the project will receive a variety of rewards, including early access to the new animations and a small box of clay used in the production, depending on the individual's level of funding.

In 2015, the studio bought a majority share in New York-based animation studio Nathan Love, announcing the merger with a short film called _Introducing: Aardman Nathan Love_ on 25 September of the same year of that being that the British stop-motion animated series _Digby Dragon_ debuted on Nick Jr. UK in 2016.

In advance of Aardman's fortieth anniversary, BBC One aired the one-hour television documentary _A Grand Night In: The Story of Aardman_, first broadcast in December 2015. Narrated by Julie Walters, this career retrospective includes commentary by the company's founders and staff, as well as various friends, fans and colleagues including Terry Gilliam, John Lasseter, and Matt Groening.

From 29 June 2017 to 29 October 2017, an exhibition entitled "Wallace and Gromit and Friends" was shown at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) in Melbourne. A report on this exhibition was shown on Australian _ABC News Breakfast_ on Wednesday, 28 June, featuring an 8-minute interview with producers Peter Lord and David Sproxton. The exhibition revealed that in Nick Park's very early sketches, Gromit was originally a cat, but Park soon changed him into a dog, since it was generally agreed that a dog was clearly more suitable as a loyal pet/companion than a cat and also because a dog would be easier to make and animate in Plasticine. Embedded in the ABC News article is a video interview with Lord and Sproxton, which gives information not only on Wallace and Gromit, but also Shaun the Sheep and others.

On 9 November 2018, Aardman Animations announced that Peter Lord and David Sproxton would be transferring majority ownership of the company to its employees in order to keep the studio independent. In January 2019, Lord and Sproxton released a book detailing the history of the studio, called _A Grand Success! The Aardman Journey, One Frame at a Time._

In December 2020, Netflix announced an Aardman Christmas musical special entitled _Robin Robin_. The 30-minute short, starring Bronte Carmichael, Richard E. Grant, Gillian Anderson and Adeel Akhtar, was released on the platform on November 24, 2021.

On 20 January 2022, Netflix announced a sequel to _Chicken Run_ entitled _Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget_. The film, starring Thandiwe Newton and Zachary Levi, is slated to premiere on the platform in 2023. A new, untitled _Wallace and Gromit_ film was also confirmed to be 'in the works', and is currently slated for a 2024 release, as well as a logo change after over 23 years.

## Company name

The company name is taken from one of its early characters, a superhero created for _Vision On_ in 1972. Unlike the claymation productions that the company are famous for, Aardman was cel-animated. 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. 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.

## Non-Aardman productions by Aardman directors

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". Widely regarded as the Spice Girls' most critically acclaimed song,<sup>[_citation needed_]</sup> 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_.

## Filmography

Aardman Animation has produced a number of animated features, shorts, videos and TV series, as well as adverts.

### Short movies

- _Animated Conversations: Down and Out_ (1977)
    - _Animated Conversations: Confessions of a Foyer Girl_ (1978)
    - _Conversation Pieces: On Probation_ (1983)
    - _Conversation Pieces: Sales Pitch_ (1983)
    - _Conversation Pieces: Palmy Days_ (1983)
    - _Conversation Pieces: Early Bird_ (1983)
    - _Conversation Pieces: Late Edition_ (1983)
    - _Sweet Disaster: Babylon_ (1986)
    - _Wallace & Gromit: A Grand Day Out_ (1989)
    - _Creature Comforts_ (1989)
    - _War Story_ (1989)
    - _Going Equipped_ (1990)
    - _Ident_ (1990)
    - _Next_ (1990)
    - _Rex the Runt: How Dinosaurs Became Extinct_ (1991)
    - _Rex the Runt: Dreams_ (1991)
    - _Adam_ (1992)
    - _Never Say Pink Furry Die_ (1992)
    - _Loves Me, Loves Me Not_ (1993)
    - _Not Without My Handbag_ (1993)
    - _Wallace & Gromit: The Wrong Trousers_ (1993)
    - _Pib and Pog_ (1995)
    - _Wallace & Gromit: A Close Shave_ (1995)
    - _Rex the Runt: North by North Pole_ (1996)
    - _Pop_ (1996)
    - _Wat's Pig_ (1996)
    - _Owzat_ (1997)
    - _Stage Fright_ (1997)
    - _Al Dente_ (1998)
    - _Humdrum_ (1999)
    - _Minotaur and Little Nerkin_ (1999)
    - _The Deadline_ (2001)
    - _Len's Lens_ (2002)
    - _Vacation_ (2002)
    - _The Non-Voters_ (for the BBC Election coverage) (2004)
    - _The Adventures of Jeffrey_ (2005)
    - _Angry Kid: Who do you think you are?_ (2004)
    - _The Pearce Sisters_ (2007)
    - _Wallace & Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death_ (2008)
    - _Gulp_ (2011)
    - _The Itch of The Golden Nit_ (2011)
    - _Pythagasaurus_ (2011)
    - _Fly_ (2011)
    - _DC's World Funnest_ ("DC Nation Shorts") (2012–2014)
    - _Timmy Time – Timmy's Christmas Surprise_ (2011)
    - _Timmy Time – Timmy's Seaside Rescue_ (2012)
    - _Wallace & Gromit's Jubilee Bunt-a-thon_ (2012)
    - _The Pirates! So You Want to Be a Pirate!_ (2012)
    - _Wallace & Gromit's Musical Marvels_ (2012)
    - _Darkside_ (2013)
    - _Sphere_ (2013)
    - _Zombie Fairy_ (2014)
    - _Ray's Big Idea_ (2014)
    - _Special Delivery_ (2015)
    - _Full ANL_ (2015)
    - _Shaun the Sheep: The Farmer's Llamas_ (2015)
    - _Aardman Nathan Love_ (2015)
    - _Mac_ (2016)
    - _NSPCC_ (2016)
    - _Visualise This_ (2017)
    - _Robin Robin_ (2021)
    - _Shaun the Sheep: The Flight Before Christmas_ (2021)
    - _Star Wars: Visions: I Am Your Mother_ (2023)

### Television Series

|Title|Premiere date|End date|Co-production with|Network||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
|_Vision On_ (segments)|1972|1976||rowspan="7"|BBC|
|_Aard-Man_|1972|1973||||
|_Greeblies_|1974|1975||||
|_Take Hart_ (segments)|1977|1982||||
|_The Great Egg Race_(opening titles)|1979|1986||||
|_The Amazing Adventures of Morph_|October 13, 1980|1981||||
|_Hartbeat_ (segments)|1984|1993||||
|_Round the Bend_ (segments)|January 6, 1989|July 1, 1991||ITV||
|_The Art Box Bunch_|1995|1995||rowspan="2"|BBC|
|_The Morph Files_|January 4, 1996|March 29, 1996||||
|_Rex the Runt_|December 21, 1998|December 16, 2001||BBC Two||
|_Smart Hart_|1999|2000||BBC||
|_Angry Kid_ (original run)|1999|2007||Channel 4 BBC Three||
|_Wallace & Gromit's Cracking Contraptions_|colspan="2"|October 15, 2002||BBC One||
|_The Presentators_|2003|2004||Nickelodeon||
|_Creature Comforts_|October 1, 2003|June 18, 2007||ITV||
|_Planet Sketch_|||Decode Entertainment|CITV||
|_Purple and Brown_|2006|2007||Nickelodeon||
|_Pib and Pog_|2006|2006||BBC||
|_Shaun the Sheep_|March 5, 2007|present||CBBC Netflix (series 6)||
|_Creature Comforts America_|June 4, 2007|June 18, 2007||CBS||
|_Chop Socky Chooks_|March 17, 2008|November 28, 2008|Decode Enterprises|Cartoon Network Teletoon||
|_A Town Called Panic_|January 2009|January 2009||Nickelodeon||
|_Timmy Time_|April 6, 2009|July 13, 2012||CBeebies (series 1-3)||
|_Wallace and Gromit's World of Invention_|November 3, 2010|December 8, 2010||BBC||
|_Canimals_|March 19, 2011|November 24, 2015|Ragdoll Production|MoonScoop Telegael||
|_DC Nation Shorts_ ("DC's World Funnest" shorts)|November 11, 2011|July 27, 2014||Cartoon Network||
|_Shaun the Sheep 3D_|March 7, 2012|June 13, 2012||Nintendo Video||
|_Shaun the Sheep Championsheeps_|July 2, 2012|July 13, 2012||CBBC||
|_Brand New Morph/The Epic Adventures of Morph_|July 4, 2014|present||YouTube (series 1) Sky Kids (series 2-present)||
|_Angry Kid_ (revival series)|July 3, 2015|November 8, 2019||Mr Morris Productions||
|_Golden Morph_|August 7, 2015|present||YouTube||
|_Morph: The Lost Tapes_|November 6, 2015|January 7, 2016||YouTube||
|_Meet David Attenborough_|May 6, 2016|May 8, 2016||BBC One||
|_Counterfeit Cat_|May 12, 2016|January 22, 2017||Disney XD||
|_Lloyd of the Flies_|September 20, 2022|present|Cyber Group Studios|CITV||
|_The Very Small Creatures_|March 4, 2022|present|Sky Kids|Sky Kids||
|_Adventures of ArachnoFly_|October 6, 2023|present||YouTube||
|_Things We Love_|March 8, 2024|present||BBC One||

#### Released movies

|#|Title|Release date|In partnership with|Distributor|Budget|Gross|Rotten Tomatoes|Metacritic|||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
|1|_Chicken Run_|June 30, 2000|rowspan="3"|DreamWorks Animation|DreamWorks Pictures (International (except for Europe)) Pathé (Europe)|$45 million|$224.8 million|97%|88||
|2|_Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit_|October 14, 2005|DreamWorks Pictures|$30 million|$192.6 million|95%|87||||
|3|_Flushed Away_|December 1, 2006|Paramount Pictures|$149 million|$178 million|73%|74||||
|4|_Arthur Christmas_|November 11, 2011|rowspan="2"|Sony Pictures Animation|rowspan="2"|Columbia Pictures (via Sony Pictures Releasing)|$100 million|$147 million|92%|69|
|5|_The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!_|March 28, 2012|$55 million|$123 million|86%|73|||||
|6|_Shaun the Sheep Movie_|February 6, 2015|rowspan="3"|StudioCanal|rowspan="2"|StudioCanal Lionsgate (USA)|$25 million|$106.2 million|99%|81|
|7|_Early Man_|January 26, 2018|$50 million|$54.6 million|82%|68|||||
|8|_A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon_|October 18, 2019|StudioCanal Netflix (USA and Latin America)|N/Y|$43 million|96%|79||||
|9|Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget|December 15, 2023|colspan="2"|Netflix|$75 million|$385.4 million|94%|94|||
|10|_Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl_|December 25, 2024|BBC Film|Netflix|||||||

### Upcoming

||Title|Release Date|In partnership with|Distributor|
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
|11|_Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom_|2026|||
Note: Rights to the Aardman films produced with DreamWorks Animation are now owned by Universal Pictures, following NBCUniversal's purchase of DreamWorks in 2016.

## Franchises

|Title|Release Date|
| --- | --- |
|_Morph_|1977–present|
|_Creature Comforts_|1989–2011|
|_Wallace and Gromit_|1989–present|
|_Angry Kid_|1998–2019|
|_Chicken Run_|2000–present|
|_Shaun the Sheep_|2007–present|

## Associated Studios

- Pathé
- DreamWorks Animation
- Sony Pictures Animation
- StudioCanal

## Creative people

The leading members of the company have got recognition from the British award system. They are (alphabetical order):

- Peter Lord CBE
- Nick Park CBE
- Barry Purves CBE
- David Sproxton CBE

## Other websites

- Aardman Animations  at Newgrounds