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Those Other Animation Studios (5)
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Those Other Animation Studios
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In our esteemed country, Disney and PIXAR are regularly the only two animation studios most people can name. A few more can cough up Warner Bros. and DreamWorks, but outside of that, it's usually, "You know, they made that...thing." If this describes you, this feature is made with you in mind. We'll examine elements and trivia about animation studios you may not recognize by name, and why you should.
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Aardman Animations
Founded: 1972
You Know Them For: Creature Comforts, the adventures of Wallace & Gromit, Chicken Run
You May Not Know:
Founders Peter Lord and David Sproxton met in grammar school. Using cutouts, chalk drawings, and a 16mm camera, they created their first animated short, which got the attention of a children's television producer at the BBC. The pair created shorts for the program Vision On part-time through college. The first short created for the series was a cel-animated short about a bumbling superhero, named Aardman.
After graduating in 1976, Lord and Sproxton went into full-time filmmaking. From the start, they wrote, produced, directed, and animated a number of clay animated films for the BBC, many featuring their popular initial character, Morph.
Aardman was commissioned by the BBC to create two short films intended more for an adult audience, Down And Out and Confessions Of A Foyer Girl, innovative in that the audio was recordings of actual conversations. The films were not actually broadcast for several years, but became the inspiration for Lord and Sproxton's next series, Conversation Pieces.
Aardman would later expand into commercials and music videos, including a collaboration with director Stephen Johnson and the Brothers Quay which would become Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer.
During this era, animator/writer Nick Park joined Aardman, where he completed the short he had begun while attending Sheffield Hallam University's Art School. The short, A Grand Day Out, featured characters created by Park, Wallace & Gromit, a cheese-loving inventor and his intelligent dog.
The studio proceeded to produce animation for advertisements and programs on both sides of the Atlantic, including American Express, Little Caesars, Mita Copiers, Scotch, Pee-Wee's Playhouse, and Spitting Image.
Aardman's first Academy Award-winning short was Creature Comforts, written and directed by Nick Park. It was around 1986 that Peter Lord began co-producing the runaway hit Wallace & Gromit series of shorts with Park. David Sproxton and Richard Goleszowski shared in directing duties.
In 2000, Lord co-produced and co-directed Aardman's first full-length feature along with DreamWorks. Chicken Run was a "runaway" hit, grossing over $223 million worldwide and earning a nomination for a Hollywood "Annie" award for "Outstanding Individual Achievement for Directing an Animated Feature Production." Five years later, Aardman would claim the Oscar for Best Animated Feature with Wallace & Gromit: The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit, the comedy pair's feature film debut.
Fun Facts:
Lord and Sproxton produced another innovative "vox pop" series, like the successful Conversation Pieces, for Channel 4 in Britain. The five-part Lip Synch included Lord's BAFTA-nominated War Story and Park's Creature Comforts. Creature Comforts would become its own series in 2003.
Nick Park's Wallace and Gromit figures were once stolen from his suitcase during a trip. Akin to a federal manhunt, the staff at Aardman distributed posters of the clay-animated pair, which declared that there would be "no more Wallace & Gromit shorts ever" if they were not returned. The figures reappeared on Park's doorstep unharmed two days later.
1. Who's Who In Animated Cartoons by Jeff Lenburg (Hal Leonard Corp.)
2. http://www.wallaceandgromit.com/
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