Animations

By Kyle Gittings

In 1972 Peter Lord and David Sproxton founded the animation company known as Aardman.
Aardman is based in Bristol, England and is best known for its unique techniques of clay-mation in
particular, it’s series known as Wallace and Gromit.

The name Aardman was derived from a character’s name in one of their first ever productions,
Vision One. Aardman’s films are among the highest-grossing animations in the world and average
around £163 Million per film. In 1997 Aardman teamed up with DreamWorks to produce Chicken
Run, Aardman’s first-ever and most successful to-date feature film.

After the unsuccessful release of Flushed Away in 2007, Aardman’s first attempt at Computer
Generated Animation. DreamWorks and Aardman mutually agreed to cease working with one
another and terminated their contracts.

Aardman has several high-ranking officials whose job it is to manage the production and release of
their films.

Aaardman’s Directors
Andy Lavery | Åsa Lucander | Bram Ttwheam | Danny Capozzi | Darren Dubicki | Lucy Izzard |
Magdalena Osinska | Matthew Walker | Merlin Crossingham | Nigel Davies | Peter Peake | Rebecca
Manley | Rich Webber | Sam Morrison | Sarah Cox | Steve Harding-Hill | Tim Ruffle | Will Studd
Throughout the past five decades Aardman have released some of the most well-received and high
return animated feature films to date. Cementing the characters and style into many a children’s
memory, children who would grow up and introduce their own children to the content, furthering
the success of Aardman.

Name Release Year Total Money Made

Chicken Run 2000 £224 M
Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the 2005 £192 M
Were-rabbit
Flushed Away 2006 £178 M
Arthur Christmas 2011 £147 M
The Pirates 2012 £123 M
Shaun The Sheep Movie 2015 £106 M
Early Man 2018 £10.2 M

A large portion of Aardman’s Success has also come from their stint of clay-mation television shows.
Their TV shows tend to be aired on channels affiliated with the BBC, however, they have done some
on ITV, Nickelodeon and a few other channels.

Name Release Year Network

The Great Egg Race 1979 BBC
The Amazing Adventures of Morph 1980 BBC
Round the Bend 1989 ITV
The Morph Files 1996 BBC
Rex the Runt 1998 BBC
Angry Kid 1999 BBC
Wallace and Gromit’s Cracking Contraptions 2002 BBC
The Presentators 2003 Nickelodeon
Creature Comforts 2003 ITV
Planet Sketch 2005 CITV
Purple and Brown 2006 Nickelodeon
Pib and Pog 2006 BBC
Shaun the Sheep 2007 CBBC
Chop Socky Chooks 2008 Cartoon Network
A Town Called Panic 2009 Nickelodeon
Timmy Time 2009 BBC
Wallace and Gromit’s world of Inventions 2010 BBC
Canimals 2011 BRB
DC Nation Shorts 2011 Cartoon Network
Shaun the Sheep’s Championsheeps 2012 CBBC
Brand new Morph 2014 SKY
Golden Morph 2015 SKY
There are lots of elements involved with the day-to-day running of Aardman. This makes managing
such an organisation a challenging ordeal. However, this is simplified by a tier outlook, where
different people manage individual sections of the organisation, people who are in turn managed by
another person. Aardman’s Creative Director is Peter Lord, he was one of the co-founders of
Aardman, alongside David Sproxton.

Peter Lord was born on the fourth of November 1953, making

him sixty-four years old. After he and childhood friend David
Sproxton realised their dreams of being animators and created
Aardman animations, their company became more successful
than they could ever have expected when they set it up the
first time as a back-garden animation studio. As a result of
Aardman’s unparalleled success, Lord has accrued a net-worth
of £15,000,000.

In his later years, Lord has taken more of a back-seat from the
animating and now serves as executive producer on the
creative works of Aardman, occasionally dabbling in some
Directing.

Year Film Director Producer Writer

2000 Chicken Run YES YES YES
2005 Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit NO YES NO
2006 Flushed Away NO YES YES
2011 Arthur Christmas NO YES NO
2012 The Pirates YES YES NO
2015 Shaun the Sheep Movie NO YES NO
2018 Early Man NO YES NO
 Job Title Salary
Creative Director £61k p.a.
Business Affairs Executive £38k p.a.
CG Supervisor £45k p.a.
Technical Director £37k p.a.
Animator £24 per Hour
Production Assistant £23k p.a.
Junior Compositor £16 per Hour
Lighting technical Director £45k p.a.

There were more projects that Sproxton and Lord had to handle. Down and Out and
Confessions of a Foyer Girl marked the entrance of this studio in adult animation. It
made to the entrance in BBC.
Aardman Animations also produced music videos. The song of Peter Gabriel,
Sledgehammer was supplied by the animation from this studio.
It was very surprising to know that Aardman also won Oscar with Creature Comforts.
Wallace and Gromit were the most popular clay characters from the studio. Both
were best friends in the movie.
All the Wallace and Gromit movies use the same technique that brought King
Kong to life in the 1933 film.

In conclusion, for the past forty-six years Aardman has released several well-established animations.
Some were created alongside some of the biggest media outlets in the world like DreamWorks and
the BBC. This has helped cement Aardman as also being one of the most notable producers of
animated content and have influenced the way the entire world views animation, with their unique
techniques.

Aardman are set to release three more feature films over the next five years, alongside carrying on
the production of shows like Shaun the Sheep, all of which are expected to carry on pulling in profit.