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Aardman Animations is a British stop motion animation studio founded by Peter Lord and David Sproxton in 1972. Nick Park joined Aardman in 1986, bringing his creations Wallace and Gromit with him. The company is based in Bristol and is the centre of a sizeable animation and film special effects industry in the City. Because of the company's base characters with faint west country accents are also a feature. Aardman's early work was in creating inserts for Vision On, a television series aimed at deaf children. Lord and Sproxton went on to create the character of Morph for the children's art programme Take Hart, who went on to have a series of his own.
In 1983 Aardman produced a series of short films for Channel 4 that featured audio recordings from real world situations such as a Local Radio DJ that were then matched to an absurd animated scenario. This same technique was the basis for Creature Comforts.
Aardman also made the video for Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer", in which Gabriel himself was used as a stop-motion model (a process called pixilation, which was also used in the Aardman series Angry Kid, featuring an actor wearing a mask, and in the video for "Road to Nowhere" by Talking Heads which was not made by Aardman).
Three Aardman films, all directed by Nick Park, have won Oscars.
1 Aardman productions
1.1 Music videos
- Barefootin' for Robert Parker
- My Baby Just Cares For Me for Nina Simone
- Sledgehammer for Peter Gabriel (see also: SoSo is the fifth studio album by British rock musician Peter Gabriel, released in 1986 (see 1986 in music). Many of its songs reflect a more conventional pop writing style which became radio hits. Others still retained Gabriel’s dark, brooding sense of exp)
NB: Contrary to popular belief, the promo videos for Happy Hour by The Housemartins and Reet Petite by Jackie Wilson are not by Aardman. Though they share a similar visual style, these are by another animation house, GibletsGiblets are the edible viscera ( heart, gizzard, liver, etc. of a fowl. The term is culinary usage only; zoologists do not refer to the "giblets" of a bird. A whole bird from a butcher is often packaged with the giblets (sometimes sealed in a bag in the b.
1.2 Commercials
- Serta mattress commercials featuring the out-of-work counting sheep
- Fruit Pastilles based around a recording of the song "There's a moose, loose"
- PG TipsPG Tips is a popular brand of tea in the United Kingdom; its manufacturers Unilever Bestfoods say that Britons drink 35 million cups of PG Tips a day. Brand name PG Tips was first launched by Brooke Bond in 1930; at that time it was known as Digestive . featuring talking birds in a sit com situation.
- Electricity commercials based on "Creature Comforts"
- DairyleaDairylea is a brand of cheese products produced by Kraft Foods marketed mainly towards children. The range of products include cheese spread, triangles, slices, "dunkers", "lunchables" and strip cheese. The cheese is mild and comes in blue and yellow pack cows
- Lurpak Butter commercials, featuring a little butter man named Douglas and the voice of Penelope KeithPenelope Keith (born April 2, 1940) is a British actress, best known for her appearances in the BBC television sitcoms To the Manor Born and The Good Life''. Her characters are usually likeable but pompous and slightly ridiculous upper-class ladies, as in (who is continually annoyed by his attempts to play The Flight of the Bumble Bee on his tromboneNever look at the trombones. It only encourages them. Richard Strauss The trombone is a musical instrument in the brass family. It is pitched lower than the trumpet, and higher than the tuba. A person who plays the trombone is called a trombonist. A tromb)
- a long running series of ads for Cadbury' Crunchie bars, in which the chocolate covering of the confection sprang to life as various characters, often performing to The Pointer Sisters' hit "I'm So Excited".
