Aardman Animations

Aardman Animations, Ltd.

Aardman Animations logo
Type	Private company limited by shares
Industry	Clay/stop-motion animation CGI animation
Founded	1972
Founder(s)	Peter Lord David Sproxton
Headquarters	Bristol, England, UK
Key people	Peter Lord Nick Park David Sproxton
Divisions	Aardman Features Aardman Digital Aardman Commercials Aardman Broadcast Aardman International Aardman Rights Aardman Effects Aardman 3-D Systems
Films distributed by	'Theatrical/DVD' USA/International DreamWorks/Columbia Pictures UK 20th Century Fox/Warner Bros. (on behalf of Pathé) Momentum Pictures Australia/NZ Madman Entertainment
Website	aardman.com

Aardman Animations, Ltd., also known as Aardman Studios, or simply as Aardman, is a British animation studio based in Bristol, United Kingdom. The studio is known for films made using stop-motion clay animation techniques, particularly those featuring Plasticine characters Wallace and Gromit. However, it successfully entered the computer animation market with Flushed Away (2006).

History

Before 1997

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. After creating a segment called "Greeblies" (1975) using clay animation, became what was 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. However, these two shorts were not actual Aardman productions. 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".

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 Peter Lord, one by Barry Purves, one by Richard Goleszowski and one by Nick Park.

Park's short, Creature Comforts, was the first Aardman production to win an Oscar. Park also developed the clay modelled shorts featuring the adventures of Wallace & Gromit, a comical pair of friends: Wallace being a naive English green-knitted-tank top-wearing inventor, 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.

1997–2006

In December 1997, Aardman and DreamWorks (later DreamWorks Animation) announced that their companies are teaming up to co-finance and distribute Chicken Run, the Aardman's first feature film, which had been already in pre-production for a one year. On October 27, 1999, Aardman and DreamWorks signed a $250 million deal to make an additional four films in an estimated next 12 years. With the deal was also announced the first project, titled The Tortoise and the Hare. Intended to be based on Aesop's fable and directed by Richard Goleszowski, it was put on hold two years later because of script issues. On June 23, 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 awarded Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Next year followed Flushed Away, Aardman's first computer-animated feature.

On October 1, 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 January 30, 2007. According to Aardman's spokesman Arthur Sheriff: "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, which had been announced in 2005, with John Cleese co-writing the screenplay. With the end of the partnership, the film's rights reverted back to DreamWorks.

Meanwhile, 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, scenery and awards collected by the company. 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.

From 2006-2007, 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.

2007–present

In April 2007 Aardman signed a three-year deal with Sony Pictures Entertainment to finance, co-produce and distribute feature films. Aardman co-founder Peter Lord remarked "We are all very excited by the potential and have a number of projects we are keen to bring to fruition with this new relationship." The first film, Aardman's first 3-D feature film, a computer-animated Arthur Christmas, was released in 2011. In 2012 was released The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists (known internationally as The Pirates! Band of Misfits), Aardman's first 3-D stop-motion film and Peter Lord's first film as a director since Chicken Run.

Additional two films were announced in June 2007:

• The Cat Burglars, a stop-motion directed by Steve Box, about cats that steal milk, and their plans to pull off 'the great milk float robbery'. It is touted as a 'Tarantino' cross Ocean's Eleven style picture and written by Ashley Pharoah and Matthew Graham of Life on Mars .
• Finally an untitled Nick Park project (although confirmed not a Wallace and Gromit feature).

Aardman 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 world class 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 & Gromit and Shaun the Sheep.

In 2009, Nintendo announced that Aardman would make twelve short films using only Flipnote Studio from Nintendo DSi. The films were posted on Flipnote's Hatena web service provider. The first film was called The Sandwich Twins and was released on September 16, 2009. The remaining eleven films were released on a weekly basis until Christmas, and can also be downloaded using Hatena.

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. The name comes from the Dutch word "aarde" meaning "earth". However, "aardman" is more commonly translated as "goblin".

Non-Aardman productions by Aardman directors

A number of Aardman directors have worked at other studios, taking the distinctive Aardman style with them. As a result, there are some animated films that, while not actually made by Aardman, are often mistaken for Aardman productions, and may be of interest to fans of the studio.

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, the video took over 5 months to produce, considerably longer than the group's box office hit movie, Spice World. 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.Template:Citation needed

Filmography

Released films

#	Title	Release date	Budget	Gross	RT	IMDb	In partnership with
1	Chicken Run	Template:Dts	$45,000,000	$224,834,564	96%	7.2	DreamWorks Animation
2	Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit	Template:Dts	$30,000,000	$192,610,372	95%	7.7
3	Flushed Away	Template:Dts	$149,000,000	$178,120,010	72%	6.9
4	Arthur Christmas	Template:Dts	$100,000,000	$147,230,962	92%	7.2	Sony Pictures Animation
5	The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists	Template:Dts		$25,200,000	94%	7.2

Upcoming films

Title	Release date	In partnership with	Ref(s)
Shaun the Sheep	2013/2014	TBC

Films in development

Title	Ref(s)
The Cat Burglars
Untitled Nick Park project

Television series

• The Great Egg Race (opening titles) (1978)
• Rex the Runt (1998–2001)
• Creature Comforts (2003–2007)
• Planet Sketch (2005)
• Purple and Brown (2006)
• Shaun the Sheep (2007–2010)
• Chop Socky Chooks (2008)
• Timmy Time (2009-2011)
• Wallace and Gromit's World of Invention (2010)
• Ploo (TBA)

Short films

Template:Div col

• Animated Conversations: Down and Out (1977)
• Animated Conversations: Confessions of a Foyer Girl (1978)
• The Amazing Adventures of Morph (1980–1981)
• 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)
• Sledgehammer (1986)
• My Baby Just Cares for Me (1987)
• Barefootin (1987)
• Going Equipped (1987)
• Creature Comforts (1989) (Academy Award winner)
• War Story (1989)
• Ident (1989)
• Next (1989)
• A Grand Day Out (1989) (Academy Award nominee)
• Adam (1991) (Academy Award nominee)
• Rex the Runt: North by North Pole (1993)
• Loves Me, Loves Me Not (1993)
• Not Without My Handbag (1993)
• The Wrong Trousers (1993) (Academy Award winner)
• Pib and Pog (1993)
• The Morph Files (1993)
• Pop (1993)
• Wat's Pig (1993) (Academy Award nominee)
• Rex the Runt: How the Dinosaurs Became Extinct (1993)
• A Close Shave (1995) (Academy Award winner)
• The Art Box Bunch (animation) (1995)
• Owzat (1997)
• Stage Fright (1997)
• Humdrum (1998) (Academy Award nominee)
• Al Dente (1998)
• Minotaur and Little Nerkin (1999)
• Angry Kid (1999)
• The Presentators (2003–2004)
• Wallace & Gromit's Cracking Contraptions (2002)
• The Non-Voters for the BBC Election coverage (see external links) (2004)
• Pib and Pog additional episodes (2006)
• A Matter of Loaf and Death (2008) (Academy Award nominee)
• Dot (2010)
• Gulp (2011)
• So You Want to Be a Pirate! (2012)
• Batman shorts for Cartoon Network block "DC Nation" (TBA)

Template:Div col end

Commercials

• Chevron Cars
• BBC One Christmas IDs (2001)
• BBC Three idents (2003–2008)
• E4 Itchy Dog (2003)
• Watch idents (2009)

Books

• Tristan Davies, Nick Park, Nick Newman (1997); Wallace & Gromit and the Lost Slipper. Adler's Foreign Books. ISBN 978-0-8417-2026-8
• Peter Lord; Brian Sibley (1998). Cracking Animation: The Aardman Book of 3-D Animation. Thames & Hudson Ltd. ISBN 978-0-500-28168-0
• Tristan Davies; Nick Newman (1998). Wallace & Gromit in Anoraknophobia. Adler's Foreign Books. ISBN 978-0-8417-2031-2
• Tristan Davies; Nick Newman (1999). Wallace & Gromit: Crackers in Space. Hodder & Stoughton. ISBN 978-0-340-71289-4
• Andy Lane (2003). Creating Creature Comforts. Boxtree Ltd. ISBN 978-0-7522-1564-8
• Andy Lane (2004). The World of Wallace & Gromit. Boxtree Ltd. ISBN 978-0-7522-1558-7
• Andy Lane; Paul Simpson (2005). The Art of Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Titan Books Ltd. ISBN 978-1-84576-136-3

See also

• List of animated feature films
• List of stop-motion films

External links

• Template:Official website
• Template:IMDb company
• Template:YouTube
• Template:Twitter
• Aardman Animations at Newgrounds

Related information

Template:Aardman Animations Template:Wallaceandgromit Template:The Pirates Template:DreamWorks animated films Template:Sony Pictures Animation Template:Cinema of the United Kingdom Template:Animation studios

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