Aardman Animations Beyond Stop-Motion (Annabelle Honess Roe)

Aardman Animations
ii
Aardman Animations
Beyond Stop-motion
Annabelle Honess Roe

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Copyright © Annabelle Honess Roe, 2020
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For Vanessa and Laurie
vi
Contents
List of Figures ix
List of Contributors x
Acknowledgements xiv
Introduction: Understanding Aardman Annabelle Honess Roe 1
Section One Identity and Brand 21
1 ‘All you do is call me, I’ll be anything you need’: Aardman

Animations, Music Videos and Commercials Malcolm Cook 23
2 Music, Sound and Northernness in the Wallace and
Gromit Films Joseph Darlington 39
3 ‘Yahoo! My last moment has come’: Peter Lord and the
Literacy of Wit and Nostalgia Paul Wells 53
4 From Europe to Hollywood and Back Again: Aardman
and Its Studio Partners Christopher Meir 71
Section Two Cultural Contexts 87
5 Aardman’s Early Shorts and the British Social Realist

Tradition Fatemeh Hosseini-Shakib 89
6 A Darker Heartland: Otherness, Dysfunction and the
Uncanny in Aardman’s Short Films Jane Batkin 105
7 Washed Up: Animating Literary Corpses in The Pearce
Sisters Nicholas Andrew Miller 119
8 Wallace and Gromit and the British Fantasy Tradition
Alexander Sergeant 139
Section Three Process and Production 153
9 Animation Storyboarding as Part of the Pre-Production Process:

An Aardman Case Study Paul Ward 155
viii Contents
10 Life’s a Treat: Shaun, Timmy, Aardman and Children’s

Television Linda Simensky 169
11 Shaun the Sheep – Buster Keaton Reborn? Richard Haynes 181
Section Four Surface and Performance 193
12 Aardman’s Neo-Baroque: The Dual Nature of Special Effects

in Aardman’s Feature Film Production Thomas Walsh 195
13 Performing Authenticity through Clay in the Wallace
and Gromit Films Laura Ivins 211
14 Between Plasticine and Pixel: Aardman’s Digital
Thumbprint Christopher Holliday 223
15 Aardman! In an Entanglement with CGI! Aylish Wood 241
Select Bibliography 257

Index 267
List of Figures
I.1 Aardman’s Annual Turnover, 2000–2017. 2

I.2 Aardman’s feature film box office takings vs. budget. 3
7.1 Edna and Lol as ‘ugly man heads composited on stop-motion
bodies’ (reprinted with permission, Luis Cook). 131
7.2 Combining 3D and 2D imagery in The Pearce Sisters (reprinted
with permission, Luis Cook). 132
7.3 Surface and depth in The Pearce Sisters (Aardman Animations,
2007). 133
14.1 Arthur’s workspace emphasizes the diligence of attentive labour
in Arthur Christmas (dir. Sarah Smith. Aardman Animations/
Sony Pictures Animation, 2011). 229
14.2 Roddy’s fall into the underground ‘London’ in Flushed Away
(dir. David Bowers and Sam Fell. Aardman Animations/
DreamWorks Animation, 2006) manipulates animated
perspective. 233
14.3 Roddy’s wardrobe brings together Aardman past and present
in Flushed Away (dir. David Bowers and Sam Fell. Aardman
Animations/DreamWorks Animation, 2006). 237
15.1 The hybrid materiality of The Pirates!: In an Adventure with
Scientists! (dir. Peter Lord. Aardman Animations/Sony Pictures
Animation, 2012) enables the remaking of space. 252
15.2 The hybrid materiality of The Pirates!: In an Adventure with
Scientists! (dir. Peter Lord. Aardman Animations/Sony Pictures
Animation, 2012) enables the remaking of space. 252
List of Contributors
Jane Batkin is Programme Leader of the BA (Hons) Animation course in

the School of Film and Media at the University of Lincoln, and her teaching
specialism is animation identity, culture and history. Her book Identity in
Animation: A Journey into Self, Difference, Culture and the Body was published
by Routledge in 2017.
Joseph Darlington is Programme Leader for BA (Hons) Digital Animation

with Illustration at Futureworks Media School in Manchester, UK. He
completed a PhD on experimental aesthetics in 2014, and his work has been
published in journals from the Cambridge Review to Comedy Studies.
Malcolm Cook is Lecturer in Film at the University of Southampton. He

has published a number of chapters and articles on animation, early cinema
and their intermedial relationships. His book, Early British Animation: From
Page and Stage to Cinema Screens, was published by Palgrave Macmillan
in 2018. His recent and forthcoming work includes research into the use of
music in Len Lye’s British films, the role of technology in defining medium
specificity and the place of singalong films in early cinema. He is co-editing
(with Kirsten Thompson) a book on the relationships between animation
and advertising.
Richard Haynes is Senior Lecturer in Animation Production at the Arts

University, Bournemouth. He also works as a professional stop-motion
animator. Credits include preschool television series, such as Little Robots, Fifi
and the Flowertots, Rupert Bear and Postman Pat (at Cosgrove Hall Films).
He is also a regular Animator at Aardman, where he has been involved with
feature films, such as The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! (2012) and
Early Man (2018) and the long-running television series Shaun the Sheep.
Christopher Holliday teaches Film Studies and Liberal Arts at King’s College
London, specializing in animation, film genre, international film history
and contemporary digital media. He has published several book chapters
and articles on animated film, including work in Animation Practice, Process
& Production and Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal. He is the author
of The Computer-Animated Film: Industry, Style and Genre (Edinburgh
List of Contributors xi
University Press, 2018), and co-editor of Fantasy/Animation: Connections

between Media, Mediums and Genres (Routledge, 2018).
Annabelle Honess Roe is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University

of Surrey. She has published on animation, documentary, British cinema
and film genre in publications including Animation: An Interdisciplinary
Journal and The Journal of British Cinema and Television. Her book
Animated Documentary was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2013 and
won the Society for Animation Studies McLaren-Lambart Award for Best
Book (2015). She is co-editor of Vocal Projections: Voices in Documentary
(Bloomsbury, 2018) and The Animation Studies Reader (Bloomsbury, 2018).
Fatemeh Hosseini-Shakib is a researcher and Assistant Professor in

Animation Studies at the Animation Department of Faculty of Cinema
and Theatre, Tehran Art University, Iran. Her PhD thesis (UCA Farnham,
UK, 2009) was on realism in Aardman’s early short films, and her current
interests include medium specificity in animation and the emerging forms
and institutions of Iranian animation.
Laura Ivins is an independent scholar and film critic. She received her PhD
from the Indiana University, and her articles have appeared in Animation: An
Interdisciplinary Journal and The Journal of Popular Culture.
Christopher Meir is a UC3M CONEX-Marie Curie Fellow at the University

of Carlos III de Madrid. He has published extensively on film and television
industries, including a monograph on Scottish Cinema (Scottish Cinema:
Texts and Contexts), a co-edited collection on the producer (Beyond the
Bottom Line: The Producer in Film and Television Studies) and numerous
journal articles, book chapters and interviews with producers. He is currently
completing a monograph on StudioCanal and its influence on the European
and global film and television industries for Bloomsbury.
Nicholas Andrew Miller is Associate Professor of English and Director

of Film Studies at Loyola University Maryland. His areas of teaching and
scholarly interest include film animation, early cinema, the intersections
between modernist print and visual cultures, and twentieth-century Irish
and British literature. He is currently at work on an interdisciplinary study of
metamorphosis in modernist visual culture. He is the author of Modernism,
Ireland, and the Erotics of Memory (Cambridge, 2002).
xii List of Contributors
Alexander Sergeant is Lecturer in Film and Media Theory at Bournemouth

University, UK. He has published work on fantasy cinema and popular
animation in numerous journals and edited collections. He is the co-editer
of Fantasy/Animation: Connections between Media, Medium and Genres
(Routledge AFI Film Reader, 2018).
Linda Simensky is Head of PBS KIDS content, the public broadcaster in the
United States. Before joining PBS, she was in charge of original animation
for Cartoon Network, where she oversaw development and series production
of The Powerpuff Girls, among others. She began her career at Nickelodeon,
where she helped build the animation department and launch the popular
series Rugrats, Doug and Rocko’s Modern Life. Simensky also teaches
Animation History at the University of Pennsylvania.
Paul Ward is Professor of Animation Studies at the Arts University

Bournemouth, UK. His main research interests are in the fields of animation
and documentary film and television, animation pedagogy, production
cultures, communities of practice and film and media historiography.
Published work includes articles for the journals Animation: An
Interdisciplinary Journal, Animation Journal and the Historical Journal for
Film, Radio and Television, as well as numerous anthology essays. He is
also Series Co-Editor (with Caroline Ruddell) for the book series Palgrave
Animation.
Thomas Walsh graduated from the European School of Classical Animation

at Ballyfermot Senior College, Dublin, in 1994. He has worked professionally
as a special effects artist for the Walt Disney Feature Animation Studio,
contributing to feature films such as The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996),
Hercules (1997) and Tarzan (1999). He subsequently gained a PhD from the
Loughborough University School of Art and Design in 2009. He is currently
Senior Lecturer in animation at the Arts University Bournemouth in the UK.
Paul Wells is Director of the Animation Academy at the Loughborough

University. He has published widely in animation and film studies, including
Understanding Animation (Routledge, 1998) and Animation, Sport and
Culture (Palgrave, 2014). He is also an established writer and director for
TV, film, radio and theatre and a scriptwriting consultant, based on his book
Basics Animation 01: Scriptwriting (Bloomsbury, 2007), working with writers
from The Simpsons and Spongebob Squarepants.
List of Contributors xiii
Aylish Wood is Professor of Animation and Film Studies at the University

of Kent. She has published articles in Screen, New Review of Film and Video,
Journal of Film and Video, Games and Culture, Film Criticism and
Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal. Her books include Technoscience
in Contemporary American Film (2002); Digital Encounters (2007) and
Software, Animation and the Moving Image: What’s in the Box (2014), a
study of intersections between software and the production of moving
images, encompassing games, animations, visual effects cinema and science
visualizations.
Acknowledgements
I owe a debt of gratitude to the contributors whose chapters make up this

book. Their willingness to share their thoughts, knowledge and passion
for Aardman has sustained throughout the book’s long gestation and their
patience with the editing process and generosity with their ideas has been
integral to this book’s completion. The early stages of research on this book
were supported by a small grant from the British Academy and I appreciate
also the access given to me at the beginning of the book’s conception by Paul
Kewley and David Sproxton at Aardman. I couldn’t have completed this
book without the support and sustenance of my family, in particular Nick,
Vanessa and Laurie. Finally, thanks and admiration to all at Aardman for
making such wonderful animation that is richly deserving of the scholarly
attention I hope this book affords it.
Introduction: Understanding Aardman
Annabelle Honess Roe
In 1966, two twelve-year-old boys met at the Woking Grammar School.
New boy Peter, recently returned from Australia, sat beside David, and
started doodling in his exercise book. A few years later, Dave and Pete began
experimenting with animation on an old kitchen table, using a dusted-
off wind-up Bolex camera. Via Dave’s father, who worked at the BBC, the
pair’s experiments gained the attention of Patrick Dowling, the producer of
Vision On, a BBC television programme aimed at deaf children, to whom
they subsequently sold a film for £25 in 1971. The film featured a goofy
superhero character called Aardman, and with no better idea of what name
to put on the cheque, Aardman Animations was born.
Thus goes Aardman’s origins story.1 Many of us are familiar with what
happens next: David Sproxton and Peter Lord move to Bristol, in the South
West of England, and in 1977 create the character Morph as a foil for the
presenter Tony Hart on the BBC children’s television art programme Take
Hart (also produced by Dowling)2; the popularity of Morph led the BBC to
give him his own television show in 1980.3 During this time, Aardman, still at
this point a tiny two-man operation, receives commissions from the BBC, and
later Channel 4, to make short animated films based on recorded, overheard
conversations.4 Around the time they are working on the Channel 4 shorts
in the mid-1980s, Sproxton and Lord ‘discover’ Nick Park at the National
Film and Television School, who is struggling to finish his graduation film,
A Grand Day Out, featuring two characters called Wallace and Gromit. Nick
Park is brought into the fold, and works on Aardman’s films, including a
short as part of the Channel 4 commission: Creature Comforts (1989). The
following year that short wins the studio its first of many Academy Awards
and ignites the beginning of international recognition that eventually enables
the studio to produce its first feature film, Chicken Run (2000), directed by
Lord and Park.
Fast forward to over forty years since they banked their first cheque. During
this time Aardman’s growth and success has been both significant and celebrated.
Known as the ‘Rolls-Royce studio’ of the animation industry,5 they have won
2 Aardman Animations
four Oscars (and been nominated for seven more)6 and countless other awards,
and Chicken Run remains the most successful stop-motion animated film of
all time at the international box office.7 In 2017, the company had an annual
turnover of more than £30 million.8 This turnover has fluctuated since 2000 (see
Figure I.1),9 but shows a general pattern of growth that reflects their expansive
activities across a range of platforms, most famously in feature films and
television, but also in advertising, games, interactive content and brand licensing.
To support this activity, Aardman currently employs approximately 150 people
at their headquarters in Bristol, in the South West of England and until recently
the studio was privately owned and run by its two founders. In 2018, Lord and
Sproxton handed ownership of the company to the employees,10 a move that
reflected the company’s projected identity as one driven by integrity rather than
by profit, an identity that belies the many smart business decisions that have
enabled their longevity in the face of a fluctuating and unpredictable media
industry. So, while they are for many people synonymous with Wallace and
Gromit, the reality of Aardman goes far beyond the homespun, make-it-up-
as-you-go-along approach and cosy domesticity of that cheese-loving human–
canine odd couple, and the company now has a global multimedia cross-
platform reach that would have been hard to predict forty years ago.
Despite their status, longevity, sustained business success and significant
contribution to Britain’s national cultural identity and creative economy, there
Figure I.1 Aardman’s Annual Turnover, 2000–2017.

Introduction 3
is a surprising lack of academic writing on Aardman. Publications are for the

most part limited to that which has been put out by the studio, including their
how-to animation book Cracking Animation, two more recent retrospectives
of the studio’s history and style, and various making-of books that have
accompanied their productions.11 Third-party material is mostly limited
to features and interviews in the trade and popular press, and Aardman
has not received the sort of extended scholarly attention afforded to other
contemporary, nationally significant animation companies such as Pixar or
Studio Ghibli.12 This means that to date, Aardman’s self-representation – in
their books, but also behind-the-scenes content found on their DVDs and,
more latterly, online – and how Aardman personnel talk about the studio in
interviews and other promotional material have offered the most significant
means of understanding the studio and their work. While this material is
useful and important in many ways, as discussed below, Aardman is long
overdue the type of attention from animation studies, and film and media
studies more broadly, that this volume offers. This is perhaps even more the
case at this juncture. Despite the company’s financial health, their feature
films have successively increasingly struggled to connect with audiences, and
none of their films has managed to achieve Chicken Run’s success at the box
office (see Figure I.2).13 With Sproxton and Lord stepping back from the day-
to-day running of the studio Aardman is entering a new phase, and now
seems an apt time to assess the creative and economic contribution Aardman
has made to British animation and culture more broadly. The individually
Figure I.2 Aardman’s feature film box office takings vs. budget.
authored chapters included in this book engage with the depth and breadth
of Aardman’s work and activities in order to understand what ‘Aardman’
means, both in terms of the content it has produced and as a cultural entity
that has dominated the perception of British animation for many decades,
most notably between 1990 and the early 2010s.
In this introduction, rather than retell the already well-documented
history of the studio, I instead explore the question of what makes
Aardman Aardman. For there is undeniably an ‘Aardman-ness’ that we
might associate not only with their work and the people who have created
it, but also with the general ethos that surrounds the studio. However, this
brand singularity persists in the face of diverse activity, some of which
seems at odds with the rhetoric of the homespun approach and accidental
success that has surrounded the studio. In addition to their seven, to
date, feature films,14 they have produced many TV series and short films.
Less famously, at least to the public who know them best as the makers
of Wallace and Gromit, Shaun the Sheep and Morph, they have made
countless commercials, work that makes up a significant proportion of
the company’s activity,15 as well as music videos and video games. They
also actively exploit the licensing and marketing opportunities of their
banner brands in order to financially capitalize on their existing creative
properties – another branch of business activity that is vital to the
company’s financial stability.
One way to understand Aardman, of course, is to look at the films,
television programmes, commercials and other content they have made.
Indeed, many chapters in this book take Aardman’s productions as their focus.
However, as John Caldwell drew our attention to his 2008 book Production
Culture, it is important to consider more than just the ‘on-screen stylistic
tendencies’ of a studio in order to understand their cultural processes and
outputs.16 I would argue that consideration of Aardman’s activities beyond
their banner productions is essential to determine how ‘Aardman-ness’ is
constituted. Caldwell was one of the first people to formalize the process
of researching ‘behind the screens’ of the media industries by looking at
‘off-screen industrial activities’ as he calls it. This involves doing wide-
ranging ethnographic research with film and media workers via interviews,
for example, or looking at the processes and political economy of how
and what media content gets made. This type of research into the industrial
and practical activities involved in the creation of Aardman’s work is
evident in several of the chapters in this volume. Caldwell also points to the
importance of another area of investigation, an area in which these two poles
of off-screen industrial and on-screen activities interact. He describes this
area as viral marketing, referring to things such as the making-of specials
Introduction 5
found on DVD extras and EPKs (electronic press kits), to which we might
more latterly add other similar material found on studios’ and distributors’
YouTube channels and social media feeds. These are the means by which
a studio self-reflects on and also promotes their output and activities. In
terms of understanding Aardman, this extra-textual material, or media
‘paratexts’ as Jonathan Gray has dubbed them,17 is vital to consider because it
is a significant means by which they maintain a cohesive identity in the face
of increasingly diversified animation practice and creative output. In what
follows, I will explore Aardman’s on-screen and off-screen activity as well
as the paratextual material that surrounds it in order to demonstrate that
‘Aardman-ness’ is constituted as much in how the studio talks about itself as
in the work they produce or the way they produce it.
Aardman style
On the surface, Aardman’s output presents a cohesive creative voice for the
studio. Their stop-motion feature films Chicken Run (2000), Wallace and
Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005), The Pirates! In an Adventure
with Scientists! (2012), Shaun the Sheep Movie (2015) and Early Man
(2018), along with the Wallace and Gromit short films18 and their Shaun
the Sheep spin-off television series,19 all represent a certain idea, or ideal,
of Britishness – one that is wrapped up in a colloquial humour that
gently plays on national, regional and other stereotypes: The self-effacing
yet plucky grit of Ginger and her compatriots in Chicken Run, which is
drawn in marked comparison to American interloper Rocky’s big ego and
brash self-confidence; the eccentric propriety of the Captain and his crew
in The Pirates!; the totems of northernness and parochial English life in
Wallace and Gromit. These characteristics are amplified by the films’ us-
against-them narratives, which help create a sense of cohesive cultural
identity, seen most recently in Early Man’s underdog prehistoric sports
narrative. Central to these quintessentially Aardman stories are quirky and
eccentric characters, lovable ‘losers or incompetents’ who succeed in spite
of themselves.20 Aardman protagonists tend to be single-minded to a fault,
but unlike a typically aspirational Hollywood character, their goal is often
something charmingly unambitious: a nice piece of cheese, or success at the
local vegetable competition.
The exploits of Aardman characters are often madcap and reliant on
steampunk-esque contraptions that elide, or even reverse in the case of
Arthur Christmas, the post-industrial historical shift from the mechanical to
the digital, and this is one source of the pervasive tone of nostalgia in their
work. This is compounded by the historical looseness of the films’ narratives

which are often set in a vague past that is hard to tie to any specific time
period. This nostalgia is evident also in the Aardman milieu, one that features
both the bucolic ‘green and pleasant land’ and ‘dark satanic mills’ of a mythic
England past, seen most clearly in the Wallace and Gromit films.21 The rolling
hills of Mossy Bottom farm in Shaun the Sheep, the wood-panelled interiors
of imperial Britain in The Pirates! and the country pile in Were-Rabbit all
evoke the iconography of a certain type of British national cinema, one often
criticized for its reactionary attitude.22 While Aardman has received some
backlash against its ‘cosy Britishness’, this has by no means been to the extent
of the critique of the films that typify British ‘heritage’ cinema.23 Perhaps this
is due to the fact that animation has typically not received the same sort of
‘serious’ criticism or enquiry afforded to live-action cinema, but also because
audiences and critics alike generally love Aardman precisely for this aspect
of their work, which is frequently positively described as ‘cosy’, ‘charming’
and ‘heartwarming’.24
All of Aardman’s films, shorts and TV series mentioned above convey
a certain ‘Aardman-ness’ that has come to characterize the studio’s work,
something that may be thought of as contributing to, but as slightly
distinct from, the Aardman ‘brand’, which Andrew Spicer has suggested is
constituted by Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep.25 In addition to
the narrative characteristics described above, inherent to ‘Aardman-ness’
is the subtle observation of human behaviour, something that has been
present in their work from the very beginning. Talking about their early
Animated Conversations films Peter Lord has commented that ‘no-one else
had thought of animating those little things that people often don’t even
know they’re doing’.26 Askance looks, furrowed brows and attention to the
action of background characters have become an Aardman signature, one
that was first seen by a wide public in Nick Park’s Creature Comforts. The
delight, and particularly ‘Aardman’ sensibility, in this short comes not only
from the humorous juxtaposition of documentary sound recordings of real
people with claymation animal puppets, but also from the little visual details:
the young ‘bluebird’ standing in the background whose beak is twanged by
his neighbour while their friend discusses the differences between zoo and
circus animals, the terrapin who headers a beach ball that unexpectedly
appears from the left of the frame while his enclosure mate speaks into the
microphone, the polar bear who silently shakes his head at his younger
sibling’s daft comments. Creature Comforts later spawned the Heat Electric
commercials (1990–2) that would not only help make the company a
household name in the UK, but also begin to cement the association of cosy
warmth with the Aardman aesthetic.
Introduction 7
Diversity and cohesion

In terms of their off-screen industrial activities, Aardman are most closely
identified with claymation, a 3D stop-motion animation process. Their
visually distinctive models, or puppets, are satisfyingly physically tangible and
possess the ‘coat hanger’ mouths and heavy brows that have become a signature
of the studio’s style. Originally made out of plasticine, a medium Lord and
Sproxton started working in after becoming frustrated with their fledgling
attempts in 2D drawn animation, in terms of both the production process
and the final product, which they have described as ‘rather bad animation’.27
When they started working in plasticine, enjoying the spontaneity of stop-
motion filmmaking,28 suddenly they were ‘doing something that nobody else
was’.29 In fact, Brian Sibley has credited Aardman’s early work with catalysing
a ‘renaissance in claymation’.30 The studio has remained closely identified
with the handmade aesthetic and process of claymation since that time, even
though their models are now more likely to be constructed from latex and
silicone, with multiple replacement mouth parts and metal armatures to help
maintain rigidity.
However, if one explores beyond their highly visible feature films and
well-known shorts, then a wide diversity of practices is revealed, much of
which is not immediately identifiable as being in a typically Aardman style,
either visually or tonally. In fact, this stylistic diversity has been present
since Aardman’s earliest days. For example, 1989’s Lip Synch series includes
four creative voices that don’t seem to have much in common. While Peter
Lord and Nick Park both made claymation films, Park’s humorous Creature
Comforts is distinct from Lord’s two shorts, War Story and Going Equipped,
that are more ensconced in a realist tradition concerned with sociopolitical
issues. Neither Ident (Richard Starzak, then Goleszowski) nor Next (Barry
Purves) used recorded, documentary soundtracks, and both films are tonally
and visually divergent from the shorts made by Lord and Park. Starzak’s
quasi-surrealist, dystopian contribution eschews intelligible dialogue
altogether.31 In Next Purves, who had already established his stop-motion
credentials as an animator on Cosgrove Hall’s Wind in the Willows (1983),
uses fabric puppets in a style that has more in common with his previous
work than the other Lip Synch films.
While films such as Steve Box’s Stage Fright (1997) are in a clearly
identifiable Aardman style, in particular the character design and, even
more specifically, the ‘coat hanger’ shape of their mouths, a look at the rest
of Aardman’s short films made in the intervening years further undermines
any sense of homogeneity in their style or tone, and many of these films
feel a long way from the world of Wallace and Gromit. Shorts such as Mark
Brierley and David Sproxton’s Owzat (1997), the studio’s first foray into
computer-generated imagery (CGI) character animation, and the dark
literary adaptation The Pearce Sisters (Luis Cook, 2007) do not conform to the
visual aesthetic or the cosy atmosphere of the better-known work with which
they are most commonly identified. The creative and stylistic heterogeneity
of Aardman’s short films reflects, as much as anything else, the creative
forces behind them – relatively few of their short films have been directed
by the marquee names who are most readily associated with the Aardman
style (Peter Lord and Nick Park, but also Steve Box and Richard Starzak). In
addition, and as with many animation studios, Aardman has used shorts as
a testing ground for experimenting with new techniques, styles and ideas.
However, despite Aardman’s protestations that they ‘don’t think we should
be defined by our most successful craft of stop-motion’,32 the true variety of
Aardman’s catalogue is for the most part mitigated by the consistency of their
more prominently promoted and well-known headline work. Their feature
film forays beyond their signature claymation with the CGI films made under
their deals with DreamWorks and Sony, Flushed Away (2006) and Arthur
Christmas (2011), were short-lived. Additionally, while the progeny of some
of Aardman’s lesser-known early work can be seen in some of their more
unconventional output (or the ‘darkside’ as they have sometimes labelled it),
such as Angry Kid (2009–16) and Rex the Runt (1998–2001),33 Aardman’s
offbeat tendencies are overshadowed by their more prominent output that is
consistent with their brand identity.
Where Aardman have most greatly, and most successfully, diverged from
their signature process and style is in their commercials and website work.
This is work that is less visible or less clearly identified with the studio to
the general public, but is in fact an area in which they have been highly and
consistently prolific, and was what facilitated their initial expansion from
a two-man operation. Between 1982 and 1985, the company only worked
on one project that wasn’t a commercial (the fifteen-minute short Babylon,
directed by Lord and Sproxton, broadcast on Channel 4 in 1986), and it was
during this period that they expanded their animation ‘staff ’, first hiring
Richard Starzak (who joined the company as Richard Goleszowski in 1983)
and then Nick Park (1985). While early advertising and promotional work,
such as the music video for Peter Gabriel’s hit song ‘Sledgehammer’ (1986)
and the Heat Electric campaign, led on from their successful claymation
shorts, their portfolio subsequently developed to include a very wide
range of digital and traditional animation and filmmaking techniques
such as Flash, live-action and puppeteering. More recently, Aardman has
continued to diversify through exploiting the potential of online activity.
As well as establishing an online and digital presence for their own
Introduction 9
characters and properties, for example the Shaun the Sheep – VR Movie
Barn downloadable virtual-reality content and the Morph YouTube
channel launched in 2014, Aardman also makes original content for
online and interactive platforms – for example, 2015’s Twit or Miss iOS
and Android app based on Roald Dahl’s The Twits for publisher Penguin
Random House and 2018’s well-received 11–11 Memories Retold narrative
video game set during the First World War. Aardman’s commitment to
production activities beyond their brand-identifiable material is indicated
by fact that the studio’s ‘apps, games and interactive’ division, one of five
that make up the company,34 ‘has been earmarked for sustained growth in
the company’s overall strategy’.35
The conscious and strategic diversification of Aardman’s on-screen stylistic
tendencies and off-screen industrial practices was in part necessitated by
the changing financial landscape of television in the 1990s. While Aardman
had caught their first break through commissions from British terrestrial
broadcasters – the BBC and Channel 4, these broadcasters subsequently
stopped funding independent animation to the extent that had allowed
Aardman to first experiment with, and later establish, their animation style.
Even when they were commissioning animation, television budgets had
shrunk to the extent that they rarely covered the costs of production.36 This
led to Aardman expanding into advertising, an activity that continues to
provide the company’s ‘financial backbone’ and generates a significant part
of their annual turnover.37 This diversification and the company’s core brand
have, however, a mutually reinforcing relationship. Early advertising work
was gained through the success of their claymation shorts, and their feature
film work lends the company a certain cultural prestige that attracts clients.
Similarly, while feature films are not the company’s only output, they remain
at its core, both creatively and financially, in particular through maximizing
the merchandising opportunities of their most popular characters.38 The
company’s energetic exploitation of the licensing and franchising potential
of the characters and properties most closely associated with their brand
has also helped develop the perception of homogeneity among their work,
despite its actual diversity.39
Aardman on Aardman
In Cracking Animation Brian Sibley’s summary of the studio’s history
embraces their divergent activities, yet also states that ‘even as Aardman
explore new areas of entertainment, they have consistently held onto the
hallmark qualities that have set them apart from other animation studios and
first brought them international acclaim’.40 This sense of coherence in the face
of disparate and diverse creative outputs and working practices is conveyed
through the studio’s self-reflexive engagement with their on-screen work
and off-screen practice. While Sibley does not specify in Cracking Animation
what these ‘hallmark qualities’ are, we can infer from Aardman’s other self-
reflexive outputs that their work is unified by a creativity integrity that means
they stay true to a shared and engrained working practice and ethos that is
not driven by a desire for financial gain, which in turn enables them to retain
their own creative identity in any context. This is something subtly claimed
in the ‘Behind the Scenes of The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!’ clip
available on YouTube,41 when it is pointed out that even though the film is a
collaboration with the US studio Sony Pictures Animation, the film is ‘unlike
anything made in Hollywood’. Aardman’s non-Hollywood sensibility is
covertly self-reflected in other ways too. In ‘A Matter of Loaf and Death: How
They Donut’, David Sproxton seems to imply Aardman’s lack of commercial
drive when he points out that their films’ merchandising strategy, which is
in fact both extensive and highly profitable, is not something that drives the
creative process. This commercial disavowal is reinforced by the notion of
accidental success that often underlies the studio’s self-written history as
one propelled by talent, willing mutual commitment to core values and, to
a certain extent, good fortune rather than a financially driven commercial
strategy.42 While this was undoubtedly the case in Aardman’s very early
years, this narrative belies the more strategic piloting of the company in its
more recent history.
Instead of commercial gain, Aardman self-presents as being driven by a
commitment to a working practice that encompasses both innovation and
artistry, stays true to the handmade artisanal methods of their earliest work
and also echoes the inventiveness and resourcefulness that characterizes
Wallace and Gromit’s escapades. Aardman’s association with the handmade
has prevailed in the face of the studio’s adoption of developments in craft and
technology that have made their stop-motion animation process more time-
and cost-effective and, importantly, scalable to feature film production.43 In
part, this synonymy of Aardman with the handmade has been perpetuated
through subtle visual cues in their films and shorts, such as the addition
of fingerprints to digitally produced characters or physical models made
out of materials (such as silicone and latex) that no longer bear the trace
of the labour of their construction and animation. In behind-the-scenes
material, attention is frequently drawn to the labour involved in Aardman’s
productions and how the studio consistently overcomes technical challenges
to achieve their creative goals while at the same time taking pains to point
out how time-consuming such processes are.
Introduction 11
For example, in ‘Making of the Were-Rabbit’ viewers are told of the

lengths to which the studio went to create the titular character, from building
and testing the wire armature to importing the fur from a specialist maker
in the United States. An eight-minute extra on The Pirates! DVD details the
effort and ingenuity required to create the film’s ‘bath chase sequence’ in
which members of the pirate crew careen down the stairs of Darwin’s house
in a bathtub – a thirty-one-frame sequence that took a week to animate, and
much longer in terms of planning, set design, lighting and so on. Similarly,
in ‘A Matter of Loaf and Death: How They Donut’, the intricacies of the
animation process are revealed. Viewers are given insight into the stages
involved, the cameras used and the challenges of rigging lighting and set
dressing. The tenor of this behind-the-scenes material is that this work is
technically very difficult and takes a long time but that no challenge is too
great and there is no limit to Aardman’s painstaking attention to creative
detail. Caldwell describes this kind of DVD industrial function as cultivating
an ‘explicit consciousness of aesthetic distinction’ that in effect canonizes
the primary on-screen output.44 Similarly, Jonathan Gray talks about how
‘paratextual frames’ such as these types of making-ofs ‘prove remarkably
important for how they assign value to a text, situating it as a product
and/or as a work of art’.45 In the case of Aardman’s making-ofs, more than
situating the films in question as ‘works of art’, they are celebrating, and thus
validating, the processes by which they were created, casting the animators,
directors and other crew as artists united in their deep commitment to their
craft and the quality of the end product – the film.
It is interesting to note, therefore, the differences in the behind-the-
scenes and making-of material available for Aardman’s two non-stop-
motion feature films, Flushed Away and Arthur Christmas, made under
short-lived deals with Hollywood animation studios DreamWorks and
Sony, respectively. Much of the discourse surrounding their forays into
Hollywood acknowledges the difficulties of marrying Aardman’s aesthetic
and sensibility with the Hollywood approach and creative processes,
described as ‘culturally incompatible’.46 As such, it is no surprise that the
promotional paratextual material offered on the computer-animated films’
DVDs is quite different from that accompanying Aardman’s stop-motion
films. Instead of behind-the-scenes material revealing the painstaking yet
fun processes of animation sustained by the camaraderie of those who work
at Aardman’s Bristol headquarters, the Arthur Christmas DVD includes a
rather slick ‘Un-wrapping Arthur Christmas’ featurette that focuses on the
cast and the story of the film. Additional ‘progression reels’ that break down
the different stages of computer-animating some of the film’s key scenes
lack the intimate insight offered into the laborious processes required to
create Aardman’s stop-motion, a process that is characterized as a labour

of love of a group of individuals for whom ‘it’s not about the money’,47
compared to the instrumentalist presentation of the computer animation
process involved in making Arthur Christmas. On the Flushed Away DVD,
none of the making-of material engages with the animation process,
instead providing interviews with the cast and information about the film’s
musical score. As such, the making-of material for Aardman’s Hollywood-
led computer-animated films fails to cultivate the same sort of ‘explicit
consciousness of aesthetic distinction’ that surrounds their stop-motion
films. It also reflects Peter Lord’s observation of the difficulties of working
with Hollywood when he says of DreamWorks that ‘their way of making
films, their studio ethos, didn’t really fit with ours’,48 and helps indicate why
the business partnerships with Hollywood animation studios were short-
lived.
It is, therefore, via paratextual material that we are prompted to
read the industrial practices that fall outside the core brand activity
of the Wallace and Gromit shorts and their stop-motion feature films
as typifying Aardman-ness, or not. For example, the making-ofs for
the Nokia promotional short films Dot (2010) and Gulp (2011) and
the Swedbank commercial Under the Oak Tree (2011) manage to
acknowledge the diversity of Aardman’s activities while at the same time
work to characterize these activities as being undertaken, unlike the
computer-animated features, in a typically Aardman way. Dot, a short
made in collaboration with the University of Bristol to promote the
Nokia N8 phone by making an animated film using its camera, is ‘the
world’s smallest stop-motion animation’ – a one-and-a-half-minute film
featuring a 9-mm titular character. The making-of is three times longer
than the film itself and emphasizes the film’s production as a site where
ingenuity, inventiveness and patience enable the intersection of art and
technology.49 For example, attention is drawn to how the production
team built a microscopic lens to attach to the camera, and each frame of
the film, which was made using the replacement animation technique,
required an individual model to be 3D printed and painted by hand. In
The Making of Gulp (2011), a short which also used the Nokia N8 camera,
this time to shoot the pixilation animation of a vast sand drawing on a
beach in Wales, one of the film’s directors observes the ‘wonderful thing
about this – we’re attempting something that shouldn’t really be possible’,50
thus inviting viewers to marvel at the techno-creative achievement
exemplified by the film. Achieving the impossible via human labour is
also an underlying theme of the behind the scenes of the Swedbank Under
the Oak Tree commercial.51 The making-of makes much of how the studio
Introduction 13
reverted to older methods of matte painting and model making in order

to achieve the client’s desired look. There is a strong sense of Aardman
staying true to their creative voice and working ethos by patiently and
skilfully utilizing artisanal methods that have gone out of fashion. Instead
of valuing modern tenets such as efficiency and cost-effectiveness,
Aardman is represented as a ‘company that favours creativity above all
and actively seeks to be a place where artistic endeavour can flourish’
through its celebration of the craftspeople and highly skilled techniques
required to produce quality material.52
What these making-ofs covertly suggest is that Aardman’s creative,
technological and work ethic extends beyond the ‘core’ activity of their stop-
motion features and shorts to their other in-house activity. And also, that
these are values that are upheld by everyone who works within the company.
In this way, Aardman’s self-reflexive output draws together disparate activity
through suggesting it is made according to the same ethos. In addition,
Aardman’s paratexts help determine what of their output they consider to be
true to this ethos. By reflecting in a quite specific and unified way on their
off-screen industrial practices, Aardman maintains a unified identity in the
face of diverse on-screen work. However, the question remains as to whether
this has now become a limiting factor for the studio. While their advertising
work continues to be lucrative, audiences seem increasingly less interested
in their more public-facing work – their feature films. This suggests that the
‘Aardman-ness’ that has become a hallmark for the type of work they create
and the way they create it might now be more of a hindrance than a help to
the company’s longevity. This is implied in the studio’s recently published
anecdotal history, Aardman: An Epic Journey Taken One Frame at a Time, in
which Sean Clarke, previous Head of Rights and Brand Development at the
studio and the recently-named successor to Sproxton as Managing Director,
emphatically states that ‘we do not want to be known just as the creators of
Wallace and Gromit’.53 While acknowledging the importance of Wallace and
Gromit to the company’s history, Clarke states that it ‘shouldn’t necessarily
define our future’ and he seems keen to shed the ‘sense that still lingers
today that we’re this quirky British company, determined to carry on with
what people think of as this antiquated, labour-intensive process, making
stop-motion films’.54 This perception is one that has been perpetuated by
the paratexts that surround Aardman’s work, as much as by the work itself.
Clarke’s words suggest that this is a perception the studio is now seeking to
move beyond as it evolves in the post-Lord-and-Sproxton era. Whether or
not Aardman can leave behind the characteristics and working practices that
have for so long been so closely aligned with its identity and have constituted
its ‘Aardman-ness’ remains to be seen.
Beyond stop-motion film

Questions of Aardman’s identity that have been addressed in this introduction
are picked up and expanded upon in the book’s first section, ‘Identity and
Brand’, which addresses the way Aardman has established its own brand
identity and also how it has conveyed a sense of national and cultural identity
in its work. Through putting Aardman’s advertising activity in the context of
the developments that took place in the advertising industry and advertising
theory in the 1980s and 1990s, Malcolm Cook explores how the functional
qualities (clay-based animation) and non-functional attributes (handmade,
intimate working practices) of Aardman’s work made them particularly well
placed to capitalize on this growing area of potential income. Cook argues
for the significance of Aardman’s advertising work in terms of the studio’s
financial stability and that Aardman not only contributed to a sense of brand
identity for its clients but also developed its own brand as a studio through
its advertising work. Joseph Darlington’s chapter looks at another aspect of
identity in Aardman’s work, in particular, how ideas of northernness are
communicated and complicated through the use of music in the Wallace and
Gromit films. Darlington argues that the commonly perceived idea that these
films are ‘quintessentially’ British is complicated by their northern identity, one
that is itself not straightforwardly yoked to a specific locale. This is amplified
by the franchise’s use of music, which with its basis in traditional northern
brass bands instrumentation and orchestration combined with the tropes of
Hollywood soundtracks, compounds and complicates Wallace and Gromit’s
embodiment of national and local identity. In a chapter on Aardman co-
founder Peter Lord, Paul Wells explores Lord’s identity as Aardman’s Creative
Director and reassesses his significance to the Aardman brand through
considering Lord’s creative influences, in particularly the importance of wit
and the literary origins of his comedic tendencies. Wells offers an alternative
perspective on Lord’s work that counters the way Aardman’s work is typically
thought of as privileging the visual. In the final chapter in this section, Chris
Meir looks at the studio’s business practices and reflects on the studio’s identity
via their various partnerships with the Hollywood and European studios that
have funded and distributed their feature films. Meir argues that the failure of
Aardman’s Hollywood partnerships and their ultimate alliance with European
distributor Studiocanal is a reflection of Aardman’s search for a partner that
would allow them to stay true to their core values and working practice.
The four chapters in the book’s second section, ‘Cultural Contexts’, explore
how Aardman’s work engages with the broader cultural traditions and contexts
in which it can be placed. Fatemeh Hosseini-Shakib’s chapter looks at some
of Aardman’s earliest work: the animated shorts based on documentary
Introduction 15
recordings of overheard conversations and interviews the studio made in

the 1970s and ’80s. Hosseini-Shakib argues that these films can be situated
in the tradition of British social realist filmmaking, not only through their
commitment to social issues and representing real people, but also through the
films’ later flights of fancy that can be considered a type of poetic realism. Jane
Batkin also explores some of Aardman’s lesser-known work, which she groups
under the description ‘their darker heartland’. She argues that four films,
Babylon, Going Equipped, Stage Fright and The Pearce Sisters, offer an alternative
to Aardman’s more cosy output through a disruption of familiarity and sense of
belonging that, in the particular case of the earlier films of this group, reflects
the social and political context in which they were made. Aardman’s darker
side is further explored by Nicholas Miller, who provides a detailed analysis of
Luis Cook’s 2007 ‘beautifully ugly’ and bleakly comic film The Pearce Sisters and
its relationship to its literary source material. Here Miller argues that the film
exemplifies a return to Aardman’s roots of formal experimentation through
short film and while the film may feel tonally anomalous, it in fact aligns with
the company’s self-confessed tradition of technical innovation and narrative
craft. To bring this section to a close, Alexander Sergeant’s chapter places
Aardman’s work in another tradition – that of British fantasy. In particular,
Sergeant makes the case for Wallace and Gromit as a ‘fantasy franchise’ that
simultaneously celebrates and lampoons British national identity in a way that
is typical of the British literary fantasy tradition.
The way Aardman’s productions get from idea to screen is explored in
the three chapters that make up the third section, ‘Process and Production’.
Paul Ward considers Aardman’s storyboarding process and places Aardman’s
practice in the context of the history of storyboarding and the way
storyboarding has been more recently understood. He suggests that Aardman’s
process allows us to understand that storyboards are not merely ‘blueprints’
but operate in a more meaningful way to negotiate the complexities of stop-
motion production. In the second chapter in this section, Linda Simensky
explores Aardman’s forays into children’s television programming with Shaun
the Sheep and Timmy Time and the particular challenges this format presented
for Aardman’s working practices. To bring this section to a close, Richard
Haynes considers his own performance in the process of animating silent
character Shaun the Sheep and argues that while Shaun, as a silent ‘star’, draws
much from early silent film comedians such as Buster Keaton and Charlie
Chaplin and as such can be thought of as a figurative character, the process of
animating him requires an embodied performance by the animator.
The final section of the book, ‘Surface and Performance’, explores
further ideas around performance in and of Aardman’s work and also the
significance of the surface and materiality of their work. Tom Walsh offers
a phenomenological reading of the animation of stop-motion effects in

Aardman’s feature films as a way of understanding how effects can convey
emotional states and, as such, be considered as performance. Laura Ivins’s
chapter thinks about the relationship between performance and authenticity
in Aardman’s films through an examination of the materiality in the Wallace
and Gromit films. In particular, Ivins argues that the visible fingerprints on
Wallace, Gromit and other Aardman models ‘work performatively to construct
Aardman films as authentic, personal, artistic creations’. Christopher Holliday
also explores the significance of visible fingerprints on Aardman characters,
but in the context of their two fully CGI features: Flushed Away and Arthur
Christmas. He argues that visible fingerprints were constructed in their CGI
work in order to construct a ‘compromise aesthetic’ that both exploited
the potential of computer-animated filmmaking and also celebrated the
‘imperfect’, handmade aesthetic central to Aardman’s identity. Finally, Aylish
Wood further explores Aardman’s negotiation between computer animation
and stop-motion techniques through an examination of The Pirates! In an
Adventure with Scientists! Here Wood utilizes the concept of entanglement
to understand the significance of how Aardman disguises the digital
interventions in this film and yet, at the same time, the publicity material
surrounding the film highlights the hybridity of the images. In this way, The
Pirates! is a key example in understanding how Aardman has negotiated the
interplay of traditional handmade craft and digital innovation in their work.
Through engaging with the richness and diversity of Aardman’s work, their
working practices and the discourse surrounding both these things, Aardman
Animations: Beyond Stop-Motion endeavours to enrich our understanding
of this most prolific and enduring of British animation studios. Managing
to project a sense of tradition and innovation, intimacy and expansiveness,
craft and technology, commercial savvy and accidental success, Aardman’s
overriding unified identity in the face of such contradictions is part of its
appeal and also what makes it so interesting to study. This book offers the
first extensive exploration of the studio and their work. Given their longevity
and significance, in terms of not only the British cultural industries, but also
animation and media production more widely, we hope that this will be the
spearhead for further scholarship on Aardman.
Notes
1 Aardman’s history is well known and widely told. See, for example,
https://www.aardman.com/the-studio/history/ (accessed 12 July 2018);
https://www.aardman.com/aardocs/ (accessed 12 July 2018); Andy Lane,
Introduction 17
Creating Creature Comforts (London: Boxtree, 2003), pp. 46–57; Aardman,

Insideaard (Southwold, Suffolk: ScreenPress Books, 2000) [booklet
accompanying the 2000 DVD Aardman Classics]; Peter Lord and David
Sproxton, Aardman: An Epic Journey Taken One Frame at a Time (London:
Simon & Schuster, 2018).
2 Morph appeared alongside Tony Hart in Take Hart from 1977 to 1983
and on Hartbeat from 1984 to 1993. He also appeared in the subsequent
Children’s BBC series (not featuring Hart), SMart (1994–2009).
3 The Amazing Adventures of Morph was broadcast on BBC from 1980
to 1981. In 2013 Peter Lord launched a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign
to produce further Morph episodes, which appeared on a dedicated
YouTube channel from 2014.
4 The Animated Conversations series films, which were broadcast on the
BBC in 1978, include Down and Out and Confessions of a Foyer Girl.
Conversation Pieces (BBC, 1983) included On Probation, Sales Pitch,
Palmy Days, Early Bird and Late Edition. The later Lip Synch series which
was broadcast on Channel 4 in 1989 included three films, Going Equipped,
War Story and Creature Comforts that used recorded conversations.
For more discussion of these films, see Hosseini-Shakib in this volume
(Chapter 6).
5 Andrew Spicer, ‘“It’s Our Property and Our Passion”: Managing Creativity
in a Successful Company – Aardman Animations’, in E. Bakøy, R. Puijk
and A. Spicer (eds), Building Successful and Sustainable Film and Television
Businesses (London: Intellect, 2017), p. 313.
6 Wins for best animated short for: Creature Comforts (1990), The Wrong
Trousers (1993), A Close Shave (1995) and for best animated feature for
Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2006). Nominations in
best animated short category for: A Grand Day Out (1990), Adam (1992),
Wat’s Pig (1996), Humdrum (1999) and A Matter of Loaf and Death (2009).
Nominations in best animated feature category for The Pirates! In an
Adventure with Scientists (2013) and Shaun the Sheep Movie (2016).
7 Aardman is also responsible for two of the other top-five highest grossing
stop-motion animated feature films: Wallace and Gromit and the Curse of
the Were-Rabbit (number 2) and The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists
(number 4). The other two films are Coraline (dir. Henry Selick, 2009) at
number 3 and Corpse Bride (dir. Tim Burton and Mike Johnson, 2005) at
number 5.
8 Aardman Holdings Ltd, ‘Directors Report and Financial Statements
for the Year Ended 31 December 2017’, filed with Companies
House, 7 October 2018. Available at: https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/
company/02672880/filing-history?page=1 (accessed 15 July 2019).
9 Company turnover and other financial information is publicly available
from Aardman’s annual reports, which are filed on the Companies House
website (the website of the UK’s registrar of companies). Company
number: 02672880. Available at: https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/

company/02672880/filing-history?page=1 (last accessed 15 July 2019).
10 In November 2018, Peter Lord and David Sproxton transferred ownership
to the company’s employees, staying on as members of the newly formed
Executive Board. According to Aardman, this strategy was part of Lord and
Sproxton’s legacy planning to ensure the company ‘remains independent’
and true to its creative vision. See https://www.aardman.com/oscar-
winning-studio-aardman-determines-its-own-future-through-employee-
ownership/ (accessed 10 March 2019).
11 Cracking Animation is now in its fourth edition. More recently, Aardman
published The Art of Aardman (Simon and Schuster, 2016) and Aardman:
An Epic Journey Taken One Frame at a Time (Simon and Schuster, 2018) to
coincide with their fortieth anniversary. Making-of books have accompanied
all of their major television and film productions, including, for example, The
Making of The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists (Bloomsbury, 2012)
and Chicken Run: Hatching the Movie (Harry N. Abrams, 2000).
12 There are some notable exceptions. For example, Marian Quigley,
‘Glocalisation versus Globalization: The Work of Nick Park and Peter Lord’,
Animation Journal 10 (2002), pp. 85–95 and, more recently, Spicer, ‘It’s Our
Property and Our passion’.
13 Chicken Run made $225 million at the international box office against a
$45 million budget. Their most recent offering, 2018’s Nick Park-directed
Early Man, struggled to recoup its $50 million budget.
14 Chicken Run (dir. Peter Lord and Nick Park, 2000), Wallace & Gromit:
The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (dir. Nick Park and Steve Box, 2005),
Flushed Away (dir. David Bowers and Sam Fell, 2006), Arthur Christmas
(dir. Sarah Smith, 2011), The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists (dir.
Peter Lord, 2012), Shaun the Sheep Movie (dir. Mark Burton and Richard
Starzak, 2015) and Early Man (dir. Nick Park, 2018).
15 According to their annual report, in 2017 Aardman’s UK commercials
division delivered over 100 projects, the majority of which were made using
stop-motion techniques.
16 John Caldwell, Production Culture: Industrial Reflexivity and Critical
Practice in Film and Television (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008),
p. 274.
17 Jonathan Gray, Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers and Other Media
Paratexts (New York: New York University Press, 2010).
18 A Grand Day Out (1989), The Wrong Trousers (1993), A Close Shave (1995)
and A Matter of Loaf and Death (2008).
19 Shaun the Sheep (2007–16) and Timmy Time (2009–12).
20 Spicer, ‘It’s Our Property and Our Passion’, p. 299.
21 The significance of the natural world in Aardman’s work was emphasized
in the ‘Aardman: Art That Takes Shape’ exhibition that took place at the Art
Ludique museum in Paris in the summer of 2015, which devoted a section
Introduction 19
of the exhibition to ‘Nature’ – ‘a common theme’ in their work. See Art

Ludique, Aardman: L’art Qui Prend Forme/Art That Takes Shape [exhibition
catalogue], p. 132. This exhibition has subsequently travelled to locations
including the German Filmmuseum, Frankfurt (2016) and ACMI,
Melbourne (2017).
22 Aardman have also been criticized for the lack of diversity, in particular
in terms of race and ethnicity, in their representations of Britain. See
Charles C.H. daCosta, ‘Racial Stereotyping and Selecting Positioning
in Contemporary British Animation.’ [PhD thesis] (UCA Farnham,
UK, 2007).
23 See Xan Brooks, ‘I Hate Aardman’, The Guardian, 31 January 2007.
Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2007/jan/31/
post6 (accessed 13 July 2018). For an analysis of the critiques of British
heritage cinema, see Claire Monk, ‘The British “Heritage Film” and Its
Critics’, Critical Survey 7, no. 2 (1995), pp. 116–24.
24 See, for example, Donald Clarke, ‘Fast-Moving and Cosy Charm from the
Wallace and Gromit Crew’, The Irish Times, 26 January 2018. Available at:
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/film/fast-moving-and-cosy-charm-
from-the-wallace-and-gromit-crew-1.3365869 (accessed 13 July 2018);
Charles Solomon, ‘In “Chicken Run” a Charming New Art Form Takes
Shape’, Los Angeles Times, 3 July 2000. Available at: http://articles.latimes.
com/2000/jul/03/entertainment/ca-47274 (accessed 10 July 2018);
Scott Mendleson, ‘Review: “Shaun the Sheep” Is a Wordless Comic
Gem’, Forbes.com, 4 August 2015. Available at: https://www.forbes.
com/sites/scottmendelson/2015/08/04/review-shaun-the-sheep-is-a-
wordless-comic-gem/#f40877ab3bc0 (accessed 13 July 2018); Hannah
Dixon, ‘5 Steps to Making the Perfect Aardman Movie #EarlyMan’,
Cineworld Blog, 10 January 2018. Available at: h ttps://www.cineworld.
co.uk/blog/early-man-aardman-best-movies-iflr-hannah-dixon
(accessed 15 July 2018).
26 Lane, Creating Creature Comforts, p. 51.
27 Ibid., p. 48.
28 David Sproxton, ‘Aardman and the Bristol Connection’, talk given for
Bristol Museum and Art Gallery at the University of Bristol, 12 November
2015.
29 Lane, Creating Creature Comforts, p. 48.
30 Brian Sibley, ‘The Medium’, in P. Lord and B. Sibley (eds), Cracking
Animation: The Aardman Book of 3-D Animation, Second Edition (London:
Thames and Hudson, 2010), p. 53.
31 It also features the first appearance of Rex the Runt, the titular character of
Aardman’s later series for BBC 2 (1998 & 2001).
32 Sean Clarke, ‘Head of Rights and Development’ quoted in An Epic Journey,
p. 329.
33 The Aardboiled YouTube channel, which launched in 2017, provides a

showcase for this ‘off-beat animated comedy’, as well as new work from
independent animation producers.
34 The studio’s other four divisions are feature films; series, specials and shorts;
advertising; and rights, branding and development.
36 See ibid., p. 301.
37 Ibid., p. 302.
38 Much of which is available through the online shop, or ‘Aardstore’ on
Aardman’s website: https://www.aardstore.com. Aardman also maximize
their characters’ popularity for charitable causes, for example Wallace &
Gromit’s Grand Appeal. https://www.grandappeal.org.uk (accessed 24
October 2019).
39 For example, the Wallace & Gromit ‘Thrill-O-Matic’ rollercoaster ride
at Blackpool Pleasure Beach in the UK and the Shaun the Sheep ‘mixed
reality’ cinema experience launched in Shanghai in 2018.
40 Sibley, ‘The Medium’, p. 62.
41 Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLh1WuMkCPs&inde
x=12&list=PLBFBA92D412B90A08 (accessed 10 July 2018).
42 See, for example, An Epic Journey.
43 See Andrea Comiskey, ‘(Stop)Motion Control: Special Effects in
Contemporary Puppet Animation’, in D. North, B. Rehak and M.S. Duffy
(eds), Special Effects: New Histories, Theories, Contexts (London: BFI, 2015),
pp. 45–61.
44 Caldwell, Production Culture, p. 302.
45 Gray, Show Sold Separately, p. 81. Emphasis in original.
46 Tim Robey, ‘The Strained Marriage between Aardman and DreamWorks’,
The Telegraph, 1 February 2007. Available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/
news/uknews/1541254/The-strained-marriage-between-Aardman-and-
DreamWorks.html (accessed 15 July 2019).
47 Sproxton and Lord quoted in An Epic Journey, p. 15.
48 Peter Lord quoted in An Epic Journey, p. 223.
49 This can currently be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=iaRecV3IgiI (accessed 10 July 2018).
50 This making-of is no longer available on Aardman’s channel, but can be
found elsewhere on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45-
IBvpd7aQ (accessed 10 July 2018).
51 Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFe3atwfgJQ
(accessed 10 July 2018).
52 An Epic Journey, p. 15.
53 Clarke quoted in An Epic Journey, p. 329.
54 Ibid.
Section One
Identity and Brand

22
1
‘All you do is call me, I’ll be anything you

need’: Aardman Animations, Music Videos
and Commercials
Malcolm Cook
Commercials, including music videos, have been vital to the formation

and continued success of Aardman Animations, both economically as a
studio and conceptually as a recognizable ‘brand’.1 Characters such as
Douglas the Lurpak butter man, Mr Cuprinol and the Chevron Cars are
widely recognizable by viewers and have played a central role in Aardman’s
development, while characters from television and film, such as Wallace and
Gromit, and Shaun the Sheep, have been licensed to promote other brands.
Yet Aardman’s advertising output is frequently diminished in comparison
to its other work for television and cinema. One indicator of this is the
prominence of Wallace and Gromit, Shaun the Sheep and characters from
Chicken Run (2000), alongside Angry Kid, Morph and Rex the Runt, on
the covers of consecutive editions of the company’s authorized history and
practical manual Cracking Animation: The Aardman Book of 3-D Animation,
contrasting with the absence of any advertising work.2 Likewise, the 2015
BBC documentary A Grand Night In: The Story of Aardman offered only
a brief mention of this aspect of Aardman’s work, structured as a break in
the main flow of the programme. However, by reassessing the importance
of advertising and music videos to Aardman in the three areas of media
expansion, advertising psychology and the development of Aardman’s own
brand, we can understand its growth as a studio in the context of wider
cultural and social developments that shaped the studio’s work and our
perception of it.
Animation has been intimately connected with selling and promotion
throughout its history, so Aardman’s economic dependence on advertising
is not unique.3 Nevertheless, the studio’s commercials in the 1980s and 1990s
are the product of a specific historical moment in which both broadcasting
and the advertising industry were undergoing significant changes. An
expansion of broadcast television supported Aardman’s early breakthrough
successes with television programmes and music videos. Furthermore, the

dependence of new commercial channels on advertising revenue expanded
the marketplace for television commercials, which Aardman was well placed
to fulfil. This occurred at a time when the advertising industry was developing
a new understanding of the function and operation of advertising. While
concepts of ‘brand image’ had been acknowledged throughout the twentieth
century, the late 1970s and 1980s saw a significant growth in the academic
study of consumer psychology. This was allied with changes in the consumer
goods manufacturing industries, such as conglomeration, that were heavily
dependent upon advertising to differentiate their goods in a saturated
market. This led to a new emphasis upon the importance of emotional
and ephemeral aspects of advertising and its effects on consumers, an area
in which animation, and Aardman’s work in particular, could especially
contribute to building brand image and influencing consumer choices.
This period in the 1980s and 1990s not only saw Aardman contribute to
the creation and enhancement of other companies’ brands, but also saw it
become a recognizable brand in its own right. Aardman’s brand was in part
built on functional qualities such as the use of clay animation. Yet it also
increasingly reflected the changing understanding of brand image within
advertising and marketing by evoking non-functional attributes such as ‘the
handmade, the intimate and the human’.4
‘Spread a Little Happiness’: Aardman’s early advertising

Aardman may have existed in some form and spirit from the 1970s, but it
only became recognized legally and, importantly, as a brand in the mid-
1980s when they became involved and dependent upon advertising. Several
of Aardman’s early successes were indirectly the product of advertising. Both
Channel 4 (launched in Britain in November 1982) and MTV (launched in
the United States in August 1981) were the result of technological expansion
of broadcasting, along with concomitant political and regulatory reform.5
The existence of both channels was predicated on funding from advertising,
albeit in unique ways.6 In both cases, these commercial channels stimulated
inventive moving image material, and especially supported animation
production.7 Aardman’s Conversation Pieces (1983) and the music video for
Peter Gabriel’s ‘Sledgehammer’ (1986) were the product of this new market
for innovative animation. These works also demonstrated Aardman’s astute
insight into selling and persuasion. Sales Pitch, one of the Conversation
Pieces, depicts a door-to-door salesman and his keen awareness of the
importance of emotion in selling his product, a characteristic that would be
Aardman Animations, Music Videos and Commercials 25
central to Aardman’s later advertising. As a music video ‘Sledgehammer’ may

be considered a direct form of advertising, but equally the video depicts a
protagonist looking to persuade the object of their desire, encapsulated in
the lyric ‘all you do is call me, I’ll be anything you need’. Aardman embraced
this sentiment and took the opportunity to create a calling card for future
commercial success. Both these early works brought the studio considerable
attention and acclaim in industry circles, including an award for Peter Lord
at 1987 MTV Video Music Awards.8 Such accolades would prove critical to
attracting advertising commissions to Aardman in the following years, with
the music video frequently being cited in advertising trade press.9
With Aardman having demonstrated its innovative approach in the
‘Sledgehammer’ music video and Conversation Pieces there was a clear
attraction in commissioning advertising work from the studio. Furthermore,
there was a straightforward economic benefit to the studio in accepting
advertising commissions, as they offered an additional income stream
allowing stable employment and growth of the business.10 However, this does
not fully explain why Aardman’s particular form of animation should prove
so successful, or why advertisers should have embraced it so wholeheartedly
at this particular time. If the primary goal of advertising seems self-evident,
that is to increase sales and thereby profits, the mechanisms by which this
is achieved and the ways in which they can be most efficiently exploited are
both ambiguous and historically contingent. Through a detailed examination
of Aardman’s commercial work and an exploration of the changes in
advertising theory and psychology in the 1980s we can better understand
why this animation studio became entwined with advertising at this moment.
One of Aardman’s earliest commissions, and one of the most influential
in attracting further work, was a series of advertisements for the Danish
Dairy Board, for whom they created and animated Douglas the Lurpak
butter man. The first commercial ‘Scuba Diver’ was originally transmitted
in February 1986.11 Like any ‘fast-moving consumer goods’ (FMCG), butter
is heavily dependent upon advertising to differentiate its product from
other similar offerings.12 Furthermore, pure butter has a very small number
of functional qualities that can be promoted: price, salt content, origin
and production methods. Aardman’s Lurpak advertising does put forward
a functional argument: that other butters ‘taste much saltier than Galway
Bay’ whereas Lurpak contains less salt, resulting in a creamy taste. However
this rational argument for choosing Lurpak is made primarily linguistically,
through the lyrics of the song, a pastiche of the 1929 musical number ‘Spread
a Little Happiness’, and the onscreen tagline ‘Lurpak’d with creamy taste’.
In contrast, Aardman’s animation may be understood as adding a primarily
emotional appeal to the advertising. Aardman’s character animation, drawing
on the experience of producing Morph for many years, allowed the studio
to create an engaging animated spokesperson for the Lurpak brand. This
in itself was not unique, even when executed with such skill, as character-
based advertising had been in practice at least since Michelin’s Bibendum
had appeared in the late nineteenth century.13 The use of clay animation also
allowed Aardman to make Douglas appear to be made from butter, with a
pale, yellow tinge and thus imbue the very substance of the product with
character and a life of its own. Again, this is not in itself a unique or historically
specific development. Animation has often been used to bring products to
life and, as Esther Leslie writes, ‘animation’s animatedness can be seen as
a rendition of the apparent liveliness of commodity-fetishized objects. This
is why advertisers loved cartoons from the start’.14 More than these long-
standing functions of animated advertising, it is the way Aardman’s use of
clay animation communicated affective qualities of the product, such as the
character’s ability to rapidly transform and especially the melting consistency
of the butter, that engaged the consumer with a feeling for the product, rather
than just information.
There is little discussion in the trade press of the direct effectiveness of
these advertisements, in terms of measurable changes in sales of the product.
Nevertheless, the commercials were deemed to be a success, with the first
entry ‘Scuba Diver’ being awarded a Silver Lion at the Cannes Advertising
Awards Festival in 1986. Several profiles of the studio in the advertising trade
press drew direct attention to the Lurpak advert as highly successful, whether
‘memorable’, ‘has a lot of charm’ or being ‘jovial’ and having ‘character’.15 This
enthusiasm for Aardman’s work within the advertising business can be traced
to changing understandings of the purpose and workings of advertising.
Consumer psychology and advertising in the 1980s

Prior to the 1980s the advertising industry was dominated by a paradigm of
advertising that was both product-centric and posited a rational consumer. A
high-profile example of this was the work of advertising legend David Ogilvy,
whose two books Confessions of an Advertising Man (1963) and Ogilvy on
Advertising (1983) reflected and reinforced the current thinking about
how advertising worked.16 Ogilvy placed emphases on the product and its
functional qualities, foregrounding factual information about the item being
sold.17 While he did include ‘emotion’ as one way of making an effective
television commercial, he relegated it to the bottom of his list.18
A crucial tool in justifying Ogilvy’s product-centric position was his
use of empirical research about both the products and the effects of their
advertising.19 Ironically, the growth of academic research into advertising

in the 1970s, and its influence upon industry practice in the 1980s, would
see a major shift away from the model Ogilvy helped establish and lay the
foundations for Aardman’s entry and contribution to the field. A key indicator
of that growth was the expansion of the number of journals publishing such
research.20 The growth in turn resulted in research into consumer psychology,
leading to an increase in empirical knowledge and appreciation of the non-
rational and affective functions of advertising.
The importance within advertising of emotions and the fulfilment
of psychological needs was, however, not completely new to the field in
the 1980s. Michael Cowan has recently identified similar concerns in Walter
Ruttmann’s animated advertising from the 1930s.21 Industry discussions
from the 1950s show some attention to the ‘personal and social meanings’
of advertising.22 Perhaps most famously, Vance Packard’s 1957 book The
Hidden Persuaders explored the use of psychoanalysis and motivational
research within advertising, becoming a bestseller through its ‘exposé’ of
the manipulation of non-rational, subconscious desires, which remained
a concern into the 1970s.23 The growth of academic studies of advertising
arising out of the field of psychology, and the use of empirical, experimental
research in the 1980s, helped dispel the simple negative light Packard had
cast on the emotional and affective aspects of advertising. Furthermore, an
understanding of these new theories is central to understanding the growth
and function of Aardman’s contribution to animation in the 1980s. In
particular, the dominant theory of this period was the Elaboration Limitation
Model (ELM), proposed by Richard Petty and John Cacioppo in the 1970s,
which was first applied to advertising in 1983.24
The ELM relies upon a distinction between central and peripheral routes
to attitude change. The central route depends upon a rational consideration
of factual information, while the peripheral route depends upon simple
positive or negative inferences, such as emotional response.25 Petty and
Cacioppo suggest that both routes are important, and the predominance
of one or the other in any situation depends upon the ‘involvement’ of
the subject, or specifically the consumer in relation to advertising. In one
sense the ELM simply offers a theorization of a common-sense observation:
when something has immediate or significant implications we will apply
considerable rational thought to it, whereas when it has no major or direct
application we will allow simple or emotional cues to guide our viewpoint.
Yet when applied to advertising and substantiated by rigorous, scientifically
conducted experiments, as in Petty and Cacioppo’s work, this model proved
hugely influential. In particular, while reinforcing the importance of product-
relevant attributes in advertising, such as factual data, it also suggested
the significance of non-functional qualities to the appeal and effectiveness

of the message being delivered.
The intention of this chapter is not to directly evaluate this theory or
the huge volume of work that followed in refining or challenging it. Rather,
its importance here is in the changing historical context, providing in
the 1980s a new way of thinking about advertising that opened up a space
for Aardman’s work. There is evidence within the advertising trade press
of the principles of the ELM being disseminated in less structured form.
For example, a 1986 article in Campaign argues for the incorporation into
branding and advertising of both:
[F]unctional needs, such as what the product actually does or where

it is used, and psychological needs, which determine which of the
consumer’s basic human demands a product meets. Brand leaders
manage to integrate those needs into a single, positive statement, in that
they bridge function and psychology.26
This increasing incorporation of psychological models into advertising

and branding practice is evident in Aardman’s advertising and trade press
discussion of it in the 1980s.
‘Creature Comforts’: The emotional appeal

of Aardman’s advertising
Throughout its advertising work in the 1980s Aardman can be seen to
be building the peripheral, non-functional or emotional elements of the
campaigns they contributed to. This is present not only in the commercials,
but also in the discussion of the studio in trade press, where the principles
of the psychological research discussed above were increasingly used to
construct campaigns that would communicate through both central and
peripheral routes and thereby reach consumers with differing levels of
involvement. The campaign for Access credit cards that Aardman contributed
to in 1990 is a leading example of this. As with butter, credit cards have
very limited functional parameters to distinguish them from competitors:
primarily interest rates and the number of outlets that accept it as payment.
Nevertheless, the Access commercials would initially appear to be directed
at persuasion through the central route, using rational characteristics of
the card. The advertising agency commented in Campaign ‘Access has an
identifiable personality as a practical tool, not a symbol’.27 The commercials
are structured around the line: ‘Does you does or does you don’t take Access’,
again using a pastiche of a popular song, alongside the use of the tagline ‘The
World Does [Take Access]’. In both cases, these elements emphasize a rational
argument for adopting an Access credit card: its worldwide acceptance.
Yet the Campaign story also indicates that the commercials would target
the peripheral route, to produce an affective, emotional engagement with
consumers. An account manager stated: ‘our competitive advantage is not
going to be factually based, it’s going to be emotional’,28 and this is the area
that Aardman’s animation particularly contributes to. The commercials were
primarily filmed as live-action footage in which male consumers are shown
utilizing their credit card to purchase high-value aspirational products such
as lobster in a restaurant, opera tickets while in a hotel or travel services
in a hotel while abroad. Aardman contributed stop-motion animation
of these purchases that was incorporated into the live-action footage. In
the first commercial the lobster and a platter of fruits-de-mer come to life
to sing along with the jingle in typical Aardman style, with wide, toothy
grins and white glass bead eyes. In the second commercial a pair of opera
glasses and white dress gloves come to life and sing, again with typical wide
toothy grins. In the final commercial, both the hotel concierge’s telephone
and the traveller’s luggage similarly come to life. This animation contributes
nothing to the rational message described above, but rather shows the way
the Access credit card can literally and metaphorically ‘bring to life’ luxury
goods and an aspirational lifestyle. The commercials were again judged to be
highly successful, being nominated for industry awards, and commentators
declared the ‘the campaign came to life’ thanks to Aardman’s contribution.29
Perhaps the most widely recognized advertising Aardman produced
in this early period, and the one that instigated the next major phase of
its history, was the ‘Creature Comforts’ series for the Heat Electric brand
of the Electricity Association. The adverts were inspired by Nick Park’s
contribution to the Lip Synch series of films for Channel 4: the 1989 short
Creature Comforts, which would go on to win the 1990 Oscar for Animated
Short Film.30 The Heat Electric (and subsequent Cook Electric and Dishwash
Electric) commercials achieved considerable success, winning many
advertising and marketing industry awards and gaining popular attention
with catchphrases such as Frank the Tortoise describing the ‘easily turn off
and on-able’ heating.31 As with the earlier examples discussed, Aardman’s
contribution may be understood as communicating non-functional and
emotional qualities of the brand, giving a seemingly faceless product
(electricity) a recognizable and appealing presence. This was directly in-line
with the brief from the advertising agency GGK London, who were looking
to ‘develop the emotional values of electricity as well as stress the benefits of
the product’. This was a very explicit acknowledgement of the psychological
principles that had become dominant in advertising by the late 1980s. Yet,

despite its apparent success, these commercials raise a number of tensions,
especially relating to Aardman’s own developing brand.
Some advertising industry commentators did voice critical opinions of
the Heat Electric Creature Comfort commercials, suggesting ‘the ads were
too derivative’ in using pre-existing characters.32 Certainly there are reports
that the commercials were not strongly associated with electricity, and there
are examples within the advertising trade press of the series being wrongly
attributed as ‘British Gas’ Creature Comforts’ ads.33 Clare Kitson notes that
because they were frequently mistaken for gas advertisements they were
subsequently edited to reinforce the electricity message.34 British Gas would
later sponsor the Creature Comforts television show Aardman produced for
the ITV channel, perhaps capitalizing on this confusion and appropriating the
brand association. Regardless of the effectiveness of these commercials for
the client brand, Heat Electric, in shifting to the use of characters created
for other purposes, the ‘Creature Comfort’ commercials start to assert the
Aardman studio’s distinctive authorial voice and style as the dominant feature
of its work at the expense of the brand being promoted. It may even be argued
the brand the ‘Creature Comforts’ commercials most effectively promoted
was Aardman itself. The Oscar win for Creature Comforts (and subsequent
win in 1993 for The Wrong Trousers) marked an important development in
the studio’s brand recognition in moving beyond the advertising industry
and raising the general public’s awareness of its work.
The Aardman brand

Alongside contributing to the advertising of other companies’ brands, through
the 1980s and 1990s Aardman was also becoming a brand in its own right.
Prior to 1983, and the Conversation Pieces films for Channel 4, Aardman
cannot be considered to have existed as a brand in any sense.35 There was,
however, sufficient awareness for the studio to win work on the Lurpak butter
account and produce the Peter Gabriel ‘Sledgehammer’ video, both of which
appeared in the first half of 1986, and the combined impact of them resulted
in a clear shift in awareness within industry circles.36 Coinciding with the
incorporation of the Aardman Animations Limited company, trade press
references became more frequent and discernible brand qualities started to
become attached to the company, at this stage restricted to the context of the
advertising industry. In this initial phase of Aardman’s development as a brand
we can see a tension or negotiation between functional aspects of its work and
the increasing attempt to articulate its brand in less tangible terms, in the
light of the new models of advertising that they were working within and had
allowed the studio entry into the field. In particular, during this period the
studio’s brand was centred on questions of technique and innovation.
From the earliest incorporation and publicity of the Aardman name
there was a tension evident in the brand between the functional association
of its work with stop-motion animation, and especially clay or plasticine
animation, and the more indeterminate idea of technical innovation, allied
with a personal, artisanal method. Following the success of the Conversation
Pieces films and the video for Peter Gabriel’s ‘Sledgehammer’, the period
between 1986 and the early 1990s saw Aardman’s brand centred on technique
and technology. Both of those works were deemed to be pioneering in their
use of stop-motion animation. Entertainment trade paper The Stage described
the Channel 4 shows as ‘innovative’ and ‘unconventional’ while music paper
Billboard described the ‘Sledgehammer’ video as ‘a groundbreaking video
causing those interested to sit up and take notice’.37 At this stage Aardman’s
predominant use of stop-motion animation was congruent with the values of
innovation and the handmade.
This discourse continued in advertising trade press discussions of
Aardman’s television commercials. Trade press descriptions of the Lurpak
advertisements discussed earlier explicitly highlighted the use of vegetable
oil sprayed onto the models to achieve a shiny quality, and how the spreading,
melting butter effect was achieved ‘by softening the wax with a hairdryer’.38
These techniques are simultaneously innovative and domestically mundane,
characteristics that Aardman would foreground in later work. A 1988
Duracell ad is described as ‘ingenious’ by trade paper Creative Review,
a quality that is attributed to the techniques Dave Sproxton explains for
creating spider webs: ‘we made all the cobwebs ourselves – some out of
nylon and some out of stringy glue’.39 Here Sproxton is again promoting
the brand values of Aardman, allying technical innovation with homespun
inventiveness. A similar account is given for another 1988 advert, for Hamlet
cigars. Discussion of Aardman’s contribution initially dwells on the use of a
lubricant normally associated with sexual intercourse in its production (‘the
KY Gel, in case you were wondering, will look like unshed tears on film’).40
Such methods led Dave Sproxton to comment later in the article ‘We’re pretty
low-tech on the whole’, yet he then emphasizes the use of ‘a little black box’
that adjusts the camera and lights to allow the creation of a chequerboard
matte at the same time as the stop-motion animation.41 The combination of
technical innovation and artisanal simplicity is thus further evident in this
discussion of the Hamlet commercials.
These discourses are present in other discussions in this period, such as

the use of an animated hand constructed from ‘latex with a metal ball-and-
socket jointed armature’ that Nick Park praises over a plasticine equivalent
for an advertisement for French crisp brand Isseo.42 Likewise, the washed
out vintage look for another crisp advertisement in 1990, in this case for
KP Discos, was achieved by ‘fluke’ as ‘the wrong speed film was accidentally
loaded into the camera and the result was exactly what was wanted’.43 The
association of Aardman with the innovative techniques showcased in the
‘Sledgehammer’ video influenced the use of a pixilation technique in a 1987
advertisement for PG Tips tea bags.44
In this first period of its branding, which was limited to the advertising
industry, Aardman was able to simultaneously sell its work in practical terms,
becoming the ‘go to’ production company for stop-motion animation, while
also projecting the values of innovation and simplicity. Even at this stage
tensions arose in combining these functional and non-functional attributes
and their potential contradiction. Innovation only remains fresh when it is
not repeated, yet the success of its earlier work, especially ‘Sledgehammer’,
meant that the studio was frequently asked simply to repeat the same
formula. As early as January 1987 a profile of the studio noted, ‘Aardman
has had to turn down quite a few agency scripts which were basically
copies of the [Sledgehammer] promo’.45 Later in 1987 Aardman producer
Sarah Mullock, referring to an advertisement for Trimspoon, stated, ‘after
you’ve broken barriers, as we did on Sledgehammer, you don’t want to stay
in one place’.46 Despite Mullock’s claims, Aardman did make a number of
commercials that were largely derivative of its most famous work, including
one for the NutraSweet sugar substitute Trimspoon. This advertisement uses
fruit to create an animated singing head strongly reminiscent of the Giuseppe
Arcimboldo sequence of the ‘Sledgehammer’ video. Perhaps the only truly
original aspect of this commercial was the ironic synergy between the brand,
an artificially manufactured copy of a natural product, and the advert,
a mechanical retreading of an earlier creative idea: both product and ad are a
pastiche of what is really desired.
We can see in Aardman’s early brand strong parallels with the way
products were being marketed in the advertisements Aardman were
producing for external clients, and the psychological model being adopted
in them. There was clearly good economic sense in Aardman offering
rational, functional brand characteristics, such as the direct association
with stop-motion animation, that delivered what advertising agencies were
looking for at this time. Although advertising agencies are not individuals,
we could nevertheless understand this as a rational appeal through a ‘central
route’ for persuasion. This could even extend to reusing creative ideas and
standardizing its work, not least because if Aardman didn’t do it, someone
else would simply copy its work, or ex-employees would start their own
animation studios producing work indistinguishable from Aardman’s own.47
Yet, like an actor being typecast, such a position threatened to curtail the
studio’s long-term ambitions. In particular, the advertisers and advertising
agencies’ real need could be understood not as a functional need for
stop-motion animation, but rather the emotional need for innovation or
‘creativity’, a buzz word within the advertising industry, and thus a way for
Aardman to win work through a ‘peripheral route’.48
Viewed in this light, the immediate commercial success of Creature
Comforts, discussed earlier, masked a narrowing of the Aardman brand, and
especially the foregrounding of functional qualities over conceptual ones.
In directly reusing the creative material from Nick Park’s Lip Synch film for
the electricity advertisements, the studio allowed its association with stop-
motion clay animation to dominate over its reputation as innovative. The
success of Creature Comforts after 1989 also marks the point at which the
Aardman brand began to be recognized widely outside of trade circles, be
it advertising, or film and television. The Oscar and other awards Creature
Comforts won, along with the subsequent awards for The Wrong Trousers
and A Close Shave, in one sense mark a public recognition of the innovation
seen in these films and undoubtedly helped attract further advertising work
to the studio.49 Yet that public critical acclaim also marked an increasing
understanding of its work through the ‘central route’ as Nick Park’s style of
clay animation became synonymous with Aardman in popular imagination,
while non-functional values the studio was associated with, such as
innovation, were marginalized.
Conclusion
Advertising has been central to establishing Aardman economically.
In practical terms ‘the workload has helped Aardman equip its studio
and it’s given the shop the financial wherewithal to develop its feature
films’, as Dave Sproxton stated in 1991.50 The new ways of thinking about
advertising that arose from academia in the 1980s were also reflected in the
studio’s own brand, which communicated both functional and emotional
qualities. The importance of advertising to Aardman in economic, artistic
and branding terms continued into the 1990s. As a number of chapters in
this collection indicate, the Aardman brand became further nuanced by
popular success with characters, such as Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the
Sheep, and its feature film work. As Aardman became a household name,
the tension between the practical identification of the studio with clay
animation and the conceptual association with innovation became bound
up with other characteristics such as its Britishness, humour and adoption
of new technologies. Just as the brands the studio helped advertise became
globalized, so Aardman also increasingly operated in the global economy.
This is most recently evident in the purchase of a majority stake in New
York advertising animation company Nathan Love in 2015. The press release
for this purchase states it ‘further establishes the company’s commitment
to its advertising business’, with ‘building a new business in New York for
American agencies’ at the heart of the decision.51 Whereas other companies
who benefitted from a growth in advertising in the 1980s, most prominently
Pixar, have since abandoned this field of activity, it remains at the core of
Aardman Animations. A greater recognition of this not only provides greater
insight into Aardman and its films than has previously been allowed, but also
points towards the importance of a more wide-ranging reconsideration of
the relationship between animation and advertising.
Notes
1 For the purposes of this chapter, music videos are considered to be a
sub-category of advertising, as implied by description of them as ‘promo
films’ or ‘promo videos’, especially in the 1980s when Aardman were
becoming established. Melody Maker, 24 September 1983, p. 5; Melody
Maker, 17 October 1981, p. 21. See also Goodwin on the ‘essentially
promotional rhetoric of the music video clip’, in Andrew Goodwin,
Dancing in the Distraction Factory: Music Television and Popular Culture
(Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), p. xviii.
2 The main body of this book does acknowledge Aardman’s work in
advertising, albeit as peripheral to other work. Peter Lord and Brian Sibley,
Cracking Animation: The Aardman Book of 3-D Animation (London:
Thames & Hudson, 1998); Peter Lord and Brian Sibley, Cracking Animation:
The Aardman Book of 3-D Animation, Revised Edition (London: Thames
& Hudson, 2004); Peter Lord and Brian Sibley, Cracking Animation: The
Aardman Book of 3-D Animation, Third Edition (London: Thames &
Hudson, 2010); Peter Lord and Brian Sibley, Cracking Animation: The
Aardman Book of 3-D Animation, Fourth Edition (London: Thames &
Hudson, 2015).
3 Malcolm Cook, ‘Advertising and Public Service Films’, in Nichola Dobson,
et al. (eds), The Animation Studies Reader ed. Nichola Dobson et al.
(London: Bloomsbury, 2018, pp. 157–167).
4 Peter Lord, ‘On the Creative Floor: Aardman Animations’, Campaign,
9 March 2012, p. 25.
5 ‘Broadcasting Act’ (UK 1981), pp. 13–14; Goodwin, Dancing in the

Distraction Factory: Music Television and Popular Culture, p. xvii,
pp. 29–30.
6 John Ellis, Seeing Things: Television in the Age of Uncertainty, p. 152;
Goodwin, Dancing in the Distraction Factory: Music Television and Popular
Culture, p. xvi and p. 38.
7 Clare Kitson, British Animation: The Channel 4 Factor (London: Parliament
Hill, 2008); K.J. Donnelly, ‘Experimental Music Video and Television’, in
L. Mulvey and J. Sexton (eds), Experimental British Television (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 2007), pp. 166–79. The launch of an
Animators Consortium in New York featuring experimental animators
such as Robert Breer, George Griffin and Susan Pitt, which was directly
targeted at the production of music videos, is a further indication of this
interaction. Billboard, 20 September 1986, p. 56.
8 The Stage and Television Today, 10 November 1983, p. 19; Variety,
16 September 1987, p. 107.
9 Creative Review, 1 January 1987, p. 13, p. 44; Creative Review, 1 June 1987,
p. 11; Broadcast, 11 September 1987, p. 25.
10 Adweek, 1 April 1991, p. 4.
11 Campaign, 31 March 1986, p. 12.
12 ‘Fast-Moving Consumer Goods’, in J. Law (ed.), A Dictionary of Business
and Management (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), p. 240.
13 See, for instance, the many earlier examples in Warren Dotz and Masud
Husain, Meet Mr Product: The Graphic Art of the Advertising Character,
vol. 1 (San Rafael, CA: Insight Editions, 2015).
14 Esther Leslie, ‘Animation and History’, in K. Beckman (ed.), Animating Film
Theory (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), p. 34.
15 Creative Review, 1 January 1987, p. 44; Creative Review, 31 March 1986,
p. 12; Campaign, 20 November, 1987.
16 David Ogilvy, Confessions of an Advertising Man (New York: Athaneum,
1963); David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising (London: Pan Books, 1983).
Ogilvy is often offered as one model for the character Don Draper in the
US television show Mad Men (Lionsgate Television/AMC, 2007–15).
17 Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising, p. 11, p. 18.
18 Ibid., p. 109.
19 Ibid., pp. 158–66.
20 Kyongseok Kim et al., ‘Trends in Advertising Research: A Longitudinal
Analysis of Leading Advertising, Marketing, and Communication
Journals, 1980 to 2010’, Journal of Advertising 43, no. 3 (2014), p. 298; James
A. Muncy and Jacqueline K. Eastman, ‘The Journal of Advertising: Twenty-
Five Years and Beyond’, Journal of Advertising 27, no. 4 (1998), pp. 1–8;
Tony L. Henthorne, Michael S. Latour, and Tina Loraas, ‘Publication
Productivity in the Three Leading U.S. Advertising Journals: 1989
through 1996’, Journal of Advertising 27, no. 2, pp. 53–63; John B. Ford
and Altaf Merchant, ‘A Ten-Year Retrospective of Advertising Research

Productivity, 1997–2006’, Journal of Advertising 37, no. 3 (2008), pp. 69–94;
Laura Yale and Mary C. Gilly, ‘Trends in Advertising Research: A Look at
the Content of Marketing-Oriented Journals from 1976 to 1985’, Journal of
Advertising 17, no. 1 (1988), pp. 12–22.
21 Michael Cowan, ‘Absolute Advertising: Walter Ruttmann and the Weimar
Advertising Film’, Cinema Journal 52, no. 4 (2013), pp. 49–73.
22 Sidney Levy, ‘Symbols for Sale’, Harvard Business Review 37, no. 4 (1959),
p. 119; Irving S. White, ‘The Functions of Advertising in Our Culture’, The
Journal of Marketing 24, no. 1 (1959), pp. 117–24.
23 Vance Packard, The Hidden Persuaders (New York: David McKay, 1957);
Ivan L. Preston, The Great American Blowup: Puffery in Advertising and
Selling (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1975).
24 Richard E. Petty and John T. Cacioppo, Communication and Persuasion:
Central and Peripheral Routes to Attitude Change (New York:
Springer, 1986); Richard E. Petty, John T. Cacioppo, and David Schumann,
‘Central and Peripheral Routes to Advertising Effectiveness: The
Moderating Role of Involvement’, Journal of Consumer Research 10, no. 2
(1983), pp. 135–46.
25 Petty, Cacioppo, and Schumann, ‘Central and Peripheral Routes to
Advertising Effectiveness: The Moderating Role of Involvement’, pp. 135–6.
26 Gerry Alcock, ‘New Product Development: Blinkered Thinking
That Could Abort the Next Big New Brand’, Campaign, 2 May 1986.
Available at: https://www.nexis.com/results/enhdocview.
do?docLinkInd=true&ersKey=23_T27388860684&format=GNBFI&startD
ocNo=0&resultsUrlKey=0_T27388860693&backKey=20_T27388860694&c
si=235906&docNo=1 (accessed 10 April 2018).
27 Campaign, 8 December 1989, p. 52.
28 Ibid.
29 Marketing Week, 4 May 1990, p. 53.
30 Campaign, 29 March 1991, p. 3.
31 Marketing Week, 19 April 1991, p. 38.
32 Ibid.
33 Campaign, 16 November 2007, 46.
34 Kitson, British Animation: The Channel 4 Factor, p. 111.
35 Advertising and music trade papers such as Campaign and Billboard contain
no identifiable references to the Aardman name prior to 1986. Film industry
press offer only very brief mentions of Aardman: Variety, 13 January 1982,
p. 192; The Stage and Television Today, 10 November 1983, p. 19.
36 Melody Maker, 12 April 1986, p. 4; Creative Review, 31 March 1986, p. 12.
37 The Stage and Television Today, 10 November 1983, p. 19; Billboard,
27 December 1986, p. Y-53.
38 Campaign, 1 April 1990, p. 8.
39 Creative Review, 2 June 1988, p. 10.
40 Creative Review, 1 February 1988, p. 41.

41 Ibid.
42 Creative Review, 1 February 1990, p. 9.
43 Ibid., p. 11.
44 Creative Review, 1 January 1987, p. 13.
45 Ibid., p. 44.
46 Creative Review, 2 June 1987, p. 11.
47 Marketing, 25 April 1996, p. 7.
48 On creativity as a buzz word, see a two-page article by Peter Lord titled ‘On
the Creative Floor: Aardman Animations’ aimed at the advertising industry
in Campaign, 9 March 2012, pp. 24–5.
49 Adweek, 1 April 1991, p. 4.
50 Ibid.
51 Aardman Animations, ‘Aardman and Nathan Love Announce the Creation
Of ‘Aardman Nathan Love’ [Press Release], 22 September 2015. Available
at: http://www.aardman.com/aardman-and-nathan-love-announce-the-
creation-of-aardman-nathan-love/ (accessed 9 April 2018).
38
2
Music, Sound and Northernness in the

Wallace and Gromit Films
Joseph Darlington
Introduction: Wallace and Gromit and the ‘glocal’

It has often been remarked that Aardman’s Wallace and Gromit stand for
something quintessentially British, with an emphasis on ‘quintessential’.
Nick Park himself describes them as ‘so quintessentially British … I don’t
think [they] could have come from anywhere else’, while Stephen Cavalier,1
in his World History of Animation, celebrates the survival of the duo’s
‘quintessentially British charm’ even after they broke Hollywood.2 Beyond the
UK, Icon magazine has suggested that Wallace and Gromit have done ‘more
to improve the image of the English world-wide than any officially appointed
ambassadors’,3 while at home they have starred in adverts promoting such
British institutions as the National Trust, Visit England, the Proms and the
Royal Diamond Jubilee of 2012. There is certainly something very British
about the franchise, that is undeniable, but – writing as a Lancastrian – I
find it fascinating that Wallace and Gromit’s particular brand of Britishness
is also on some level ‘quintessential’ because much of what is characterized
as ‘British’ in these judgements is more clearly identifiable as a regional
aspect of Britishness, that being ‘the Northern’. Wallace and Gromit’s music
and sound in particular, which will be the main focus of this chapter, draws
from the instrumentation of Northern brass bands, and the theme tune
has become a classic of marching bands across the North. The tapestries of
nostalgic Northern sound accompanying Wallace and Gromit foreground its
regional specificity.
Northern identity is at once English and other. It marks its territories
through an ever-shifting arrangement of high-spirited antagonisms. Wallace
and Gromit might drink tea, or rather ‘tay’, but they certainly wouldn’t
take it the same way as Southerners would their ‘tii’. They would even drop
their Lancastrian brand, PG Tips, to form a brief marketing alliance with
Yorkshire Tea, their rivals across the Pennines, before restoring the county
rivalry as Gromit throws a bomb at the Yorkshire border in A Matter of Loaf

and Death (2008). Perhaps there is nothing more British than these shifting
allegiances. Aardman is, after all, based in the South West, a region even less
visible than the North West in the national discourse.
Marian Quigley has made a convincing case for Aardman’s geographical
and cultural particularity being its strongest asset internationally. The
process she describes as ‘glocalisation involve[s] the generation of wider
audiences for previously marginalised and/or localised media forms’.4 The
local has a global appeal, especially when contrasted with globalized culture
which has come to represent an anonymous homogeneity. White and Mundy
have described how ‘the work of Nick Park contains comedic elements which
work at a variety of levels’ in terms of maturity,5 but the same could be said
of its geographic specificity. The origins of A Grand Day Out (1989) contain
this range. Nick Park, born in Preston and raised in Lancashire, took these
experiences with him to university at Sheffield Hallam, Yorkshire, where
he ‘sketched out [the initial] ideas’.6 It took Park moving to the southeast of
England, to the National Film and Television School just outside London, to
see these ideas honed into a saleable form, and a further move to Aardman
in Bristol to see them come to fruition. In terms of authorship, the Wallace
and Gromit films are not therefore simply Lancastrian, or even Northern, but
an amalgamation of perspectives on Northernness both national and, by the
later films, international.
This chapter engages with those questions – what is Lancastrian here?
What Northern? What British? What international? – which are embedded
in the lasting appeal of Wallace and Gromit. On the one side, there is the
tradition of British film in which ‘dialect speakers […] are presented as simple,
likeable and authentic people with a pronounced sense of humour’.7 This is
true of our plasticine protagonists and would locate them as descendants of
comedians like George Formby or Lee Mack. On the other side is the insular
Northern comedy identified by Nuttall and Carmichael wherein audiences
‘will not only respond to a figure who admits common fallibility but will
also hack down mercilessly anyone who pretends to greater sophistication’.8
The triumph of our homely heroes over their various evil nemeses, always
depicted as intellectually superior (to Wallace if not Gromit), is equally
satisfying on this account, placing them in the comedic vicinity of stand-up
comedians Les Dawson or Peter Kay. Ultimately, we laugh at Wallace in an
affectionate way. On a local level, it is a laugh of recognition; from a universal
perspective, there is a pleasure of surprise, and a sympathy for the underdog.9
It is in pursuit of Wallace and Gromit’s animated Lancastrianism that this
chapter engages with the music and sound of the films and, most iconically,
the Wallace and Gromit theme tune. James Weirzbicki has argued that ‘few
Music, Sound and Northernness 41
films demonstrate […] their maker’s sonic style because very few filmmakers,
past or present, have a sonic style’.10 I contend that Nick Park’s work with
composer Julian Nott and the Aardman sound team represents a distinct
sonic style to the same extent that his work with the animation and design
teams represents a distinct visual style. Both of these interconnect, playing
with signifiers of Lancastrian identity past and present in immersive ways. In
order to explore these ideas, this chapter begins by engaging with the films’
music and sound in relation to geographical space, moving on to consider the
brass band instrumentation in dialogue with the North’s industrial past, and
finally the particularly Lancastrian symbolism of Wallace’s inventions. The
chapter ends by asking whether Nick Park’s North is nostalgic or inventive, a
memory of the past or a promise for the future.
Tunes, toons and towns

In order to understand the distinct sonic style of the Wallace and Gromit
films, it is important to first grasp the particular nature of film music, and
film music for animation specifically. Peter Larsen describes film music as
‘functional music’ whose determinants lie outside of the music itself.11 As
such, both the structural progression of the music and its sonic landscapes
are determined by ‘structural resemblance’ either to the images themselves
or to the wider sets of associations upon which those images also draw.
This ‘structural resemblance’, simply put, is what makes sounds and music
suitable for a film. They are structured so as to resemble what is on screen
and generate meaning without diverging from the film’s visual language. The
Wrong Trousers (1993) demonstrates both types of structural resemblance:
music that suits the action directly and music which draws upon wider
generic expectations for its effects. For example, the visual iconography of
the penguin’s surreptitious scheming heavily draws upon the visual language
of the Hitchcockian suspense film, a visual style suitably mirrored in the
music, with a prevalence of diminished sevenths and minor thirds creating a
suspended quality within the notation (albeit with an emphasis on brass over
strings to reflect the instrumentation in the rest of the film).
Meanwhile, the chase scene shuns the typical rhythms of chase music or
runaway train music, preferring a more upbeat, major-oriented comic timing
incorporating inversions on the main theme with dramatic Hollywood
strings and jazzy sevenths. Here the music is arguably contrapuntal to the
images, but retains a harmonious structural resemblance to the world of
Wallace and Gromit more broadly through its association with music hall
and the English farce. Julian Nott, the composer, has described the chase
scene as ‘out and out comedy music’ but in terms of what type of comedy he
is referring to the music clearly suggests a silent era-style piano-led type of
comedy,12 or that associated with music hall.13 Claudia Gorbman argues that
music’s relation to film is at once defined by a ‘freedom from the explicitness
of language or photographic image’ and a requirement to provide ‘expressive
values easily comprehended by listeners’.14 In The Wrong Trousers train chase
scene the music is free to play in a comedic rather than tension-building
mode but only because we, as an audience, immediately and intuitively read
this divergence as reflective of the silly situations which provide the climax
to a typical farce.
The correspondence of image and music is also impacted by the production
workflow. In Lord and Sibley’s ‘how-to’ book, Cracking Animation, Julian
Nott speaks only in general terms about his process: ‘in animated films the
music may be needed first if the film is dependent on a song […] In more
story-led films, I prefer to come in at the end when the editing is finished and
I can write music to the pictures.’15 We can presume therefore that Aardman,
at least during the late 1990s, routinely scheduled music as a post-production
process. In Daniel Goldmark’s book on Hollywood animation music, however,
a clear case is made for the typical workflow incorporating a musician from
the start, with musical composition being ‘integral to the construction of
cartoons’.16 Chuck Jones famously incorporated musicality even down to
the timing between key poses. Arguably, the extent of music’s incorporation
into the animating process goes a long way to determining how ‘toony’ the
final effect is.17 With Aardman working in a straight-ahead style, privileging
‘strength and simplicity, directness and energy’,18 ultimately appearing less
choreographed as a result, the choice to leave musical composition until the
end results in a more live-action-style approach. The music and sound of
Wallace and Gromit is still within the range of animation, but it is on the
more realist end of that range.19 It is exaggerated, but not toony.
The physical setting of the Wallace and Gromit films is accompanied by
sonic signification and the sonic landscape is constructed through Julian
Nott’s musical cues. These cues relate to Larsen’s ‘structural resemblances’ in
that they draw upon generic expectations fostered by comedy music in order
to cue the on-screen action. The sound effects and foley compiled under the
direction of editor Helen Gerrard contribute to this resemblance in a more
direct manner – sounds introduced to accompany images of sound-making
actions such as footsteps – and the performances of the actors themselves
contribute to a vocal performance that resembles the character’s written
characterization. All of these elements combine to immerse the audience
in Wallace and Gromit’s world, geography and all. Importantly, the creation
of music, sound and voice takes place at considerable distances and times
within the Aardman workflow, placing increased emphasis on Nick Park’s

directorial vision as a means of bringing the elements together. Whether Park
considers Wallace and Gromit to be quintessentially English or inhabitants
of a particular Northern town can therefore impact the entire direction of
the sonic landscape here.
But where are Wallace and Gromit from? Where do they live? If we are
looking for a certain place, then both A Grand Day Out and The Curse of
the Were-Rabbit (2005) make explicit reference to Wigan. A Grand Day Out
goes as far as showing letters falling onto the doormat listing an address,
62 West Wallaby Street, whereas Were-Rabbit is subtler, displaying a Wigan
A–Z street map in the duo’s glove compartment. Anyone travelling to Wigan
in search of the film’s settings, however, will be disappointed. Not only
because there is no Wallaby Street in Wigan, West or otherwise, but also due
to a distinct lack of any locations resembling those of the films. Wigan, like
most late-twentieth-century Northern towns, is a melange of architectural
styles from redbrick Victorian through 1960s modernism to contemporary
glass and steel. Wallace and Gromit, by contrast, live in a red brick semi-
detached house typical of a slightly old-fashioned suburbia. Their house
grows large enough to accommodate a working mill in A Matter of Loaf and
Death and small enough to border on terraced houses in The Wrong Trousers.
A Close Shave (1995) is the most unusual mix, incorporating both rural
farmland and a square typical of small Northern villages where Wendolene
Ramsbottom’s shop is located (it could in fact be the town Ramsbottom),
while also featuring the tightly packed, terraced houses and huge looming
mills typical of a city like Preston (the industrial centre from which Gromit’s
mechanical antagonist takes his name). Tottington Hall, despite being named
after a leafy Manchester suburb, draws on a Downton Abbey style of rural
idyll perhaps more typical of Derbyshire than Lancashire. The films’ settings
are in the service of the story, but it is clear that each film integrates a certain
geographic hybridity connecting rural and urban Norths. The chapter will
return the question of Park’s vision and its associated nostalgia later but for
now what is important here is a sense of unspecific particularity. There is no
specific location referred to in the settings of Wallace and Gromit but we are
undoubtedly within a particular milieu.
Place, as geography tells us, is not just a matter of spaces but societies.
The signification of place through sound is therefore as much about the
personality of place as it is about physical location. In terms of structural
resemblances, the first order of these relate to sound effects implied to
emanate from the diegetic world of the film, while the second are musical
resemblances. In terms of the first order of diegetical structural resemblance,
Michael Chion describes this as ‘territory sounds’ which surround a listener
and embed them in place,20 while Alain Corbin’s theory of ‘auditory markers’
places sounds themselves at the centre of place with space exiting in relation
to them, place being an ‘enclosed space structured by the sound emanating
from its centre’.21 Whether it is the listener or the sound at the centre of
place, our relation to sound has a clear role in defining how we relate to the
environment with which we are presented. The sound of feet on cobblestones,
especially in The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave, places us straight into
the North described in Orwell’s opening to The Road to Wigan Pier: ‘the first
sound in the morning was the clumping of the mill-girls’ clogs down the
cobbled street. Earlier than that, I suppose, there were factory whistles’.22
The ‘sensory environment of the city’ which Michael Bull associates with the
sound of ‘recent technological developments’ is instead signified here with
the noise of the industrial revolution.23 The sound of Wallace’s machinery
is pneumatic in nature, it tells of cogwheels, gears, steam, traction belts
and the turning of heavy metal parts slick with grease. It is distinctly not
contemporary, but the celebration of noise once associated with a ‘descent
into [industrial] hell’ now in the service of the small,24 the local and the
suburban. The quintessential auditory marker for the Wallace and Gromit
films is perhaps then the sound of techno trousers stomping hydraulically
down a redbrick street with an old-fashioned metal dustbin clanging about
on top of them.
The music too cements us firmly in place. Considering the second order of
structural resemblances, those connected not by direct mimesis but generic
association, Wallace and Gromit can be heard inhabiting a place defined
by the popular music of bygone generations. There is, of course, the ever-
present sound of brass – the significance of which shall be returned to later –
but characters and moments also have their musical sense of place. When the
robot in A Grand Day Out dreams of skiing we hear the theme tune played in
a gypsy jazz style of the sort normally providing cinematic accompaniment
to English daydreams of French holidays. Feathers McGraw, the penguin in
The Wrong Trousers, plays records late into the night featuring the kinds of
organ music typical of the Northern ‘club scene’, the organ always slightly
out of tempo with the backing band.25 Meanwhile, Gromit’s classical music,
from Bach to ‘Poochini’ ends up in the bin. Narrative moments often draw
on musical reference points, from the music hall comedy of the train chase
mentioned earlier to Gromit’s aerial antics in A Close Shave accompanied
by stirring wartime strings. These musical reference points act individually
as intertextual signifiers but also, considered collectively, take on the
‘mutual implication’ described by Claudia Gorbman wherein music not
only accompanies events on screen but expands the limits of the cinematic
world through both diegetic and non-diegetic musical range.26 The range of
music in the Wallace and Gromit films presents to us a musical place. Richard
Hoggart, studying the working-class North of his childhood, described in The
Uses of Literacy how ‘groups still sing some of the songs their grandparents
sang. They do not sing any from before then’.27 Sociologist Steve Hanson
confirms that ‘around fifty years’ is the average span of this living cultural
memory.28 Wallace and Gromit’s music (other than the classical) seems to
reach from the early 1970s of ‘Puppy Love’ back to movie soundtracks of
the 1940s and 1950s, giving them a similar historical breadth of reference
between two and three generations. It also places them outside our own time
as an audience, giving them the musical taste of the average grandparent at
time of first release in the 1990s. Park has commented upon how he always
thinks of Wallace as ‘much older than me’, regardless of their increasingly
similar ages, and the historical musical range of Wallace’s taste fit with this.29
Wallace’s musical place is not only Northern, but a North in which Parks’s
grandfather would have lived.
Brass bands and self-help

The Wallace and Gromit theme tune is one so beloved as to have been
proposed as the official theme tune of England football supporters (to
replace the theme from The Great Escape) and inspired the 2012 Musical
Marvels event in which Wallace and Gromit compered the BBC Proms.30 The
tune is instantly recognizable: a stirring, triumphant march which blends
martial fifes with jazzier clarinets and underneath it all the bold brass of tuba
and horn. It has enough recognizable elements that individual motifs can
be used to interlace the whole film score – as happens in Curse of the Were-
Rabbit and A Grand Day Out – or it can be withheld, as in A Close Shave,
to lead the audience joyously into the ending credits. As with the Wallace
and Gromit films overall, the theme tune has become quintessentially British
while retaining a solid seam of Northernness at its core – in this case, the
tradition of brass bands.
The theme tune as it appears in the films is not at any point played
with standard brass band instrumentation (twenty-three brass players
and between two and four percussion players), rather it incorporates the
key musical signifiers of brass bands into a variation of ensembles from
a seemingly custom arrangement of players in A Grand Day Out to a full
orchestra by A Matter of Loaf and Death. The tempo is regular throughout
and, being in a straight 4:4 metre, echoes the sound of marching feet.31 The
tuba bassline is a staple of colliery band marches. The foregrounding of brass
brings attention directly to the musical inspiration being drawn upon, but
in subtler ways the fusion of martial, largely classical passages with more
lyrical and jazzy passages also mimics the Northern brass band sound. As
with Hoggart’s description of popular songs spanning three generations of
musical memory, band repertoires were also ‘borrowed from other sources –
the concert hall, the theatre, film music, tunes from the charts’ with medleys
of tunes or ‘fantasias’ aimed at providing entertainment for young and old
alike.32 There is a tremendous community focus in the brass band repertoire
which aims to represent the current tastes of listeners and players alike. It is
at once popular and aspirational, a fusion of elements normally associated
with distinct high and low musical cultures.
The community focus of the brass band is a product of its history. It is the
same history which explains the form’s popularity as one overwhelmingly
associated with the North. Where English rural areas had folk bands, mostly
comprising ‘reed, wind and string instruments’,33 the Scots had their pipers
and the Welsh their male voice choirs, the workers of the North gravitated to
brass. Bands typically emerged in the large-scale industry which dominated
the North in the Victorian era. Brass bands were modelled on military
marching bands and, as Barrie Perrins describes, were usually formed
through ‘sponsorship by factory owners, some of whom appreciated the
cultural benefits bands could give, also the means to unite workers’.34 The
majority of brass bands were therefore associated with mills or collieries,
with large-scale philanthropic groups like the Salvation Army also creating
bands towards the end of the nineteenth century. There is something about
the weight of brass that fits with the exclusively masculine worker’s band,
and a pleasure to be had in loud noise puncturing the already deafening
surroundings of the factory or mine. Roland Barthes describes in ‘Musica
Practica’ the ‘two musics: the music one listens to, the music one plays’, these
being ‘two totally different arts’ with their own aesthetic attractions and
rewards.35 The community which formed around a brass band historically,
and still does to a lesser extent today, is undoubtedly the latter of these, but it
is the kind of ‘playerly’ music which nevertheless aims at a communal rather
than individual expression.
There is a classed element to the brass band which is also particular to
the conditions of the industrial revolution wherein cities like Manchester,
Liverpool and Sheffield became the ‘workshop of the world’. Money was made
at an astonishing rate and works like Engel’s The Condition of the Working
Class in England describe the unprecedented level of social damage this
caused to the poorest in society.36 There was, nevertheless, always a strong
core of motivated workers who strove to maintain their dignity even in harsh
conditions and would struggle to improve themselves in the face of ever-
increasing class enmity. The brass band was a magnet for these individuals,
often consisting of workers unskilled, skilled and clerical whose positions

were determined not by employment status but musical ability.37 Perrins
describes the emotional rewards this form of self-improvement offered:
Discipline, team spirit, development of self-expression and personal

confidence are among the benefits of playing in a band […] we find
friendship and happiness in making music together, plus an awareness
of unity and achievement which is satisfying in a world where a sense of
values is often confusing.38
To a familiar ear the sound of a brass band is therefore simultaneously classed

and unclassed. It is the music of industrial workers that reflects a desire to
transcend material constraints and achieve at the highest levels of cultural
distinction.
In his oral history of brass bands Arthur R. Taylor quotes a tuba player,
Howard Snell, who talks of the pleasures of playing outside of Britain. ‘People
abroad come to brass bands with a totally unprejudiced view,’ he says, ‘they
don’t have the English clichés written into their minds’.39 The international
success of the ‘Theme from a Grand Day Out’, to give the tune its proper
title, in many ways echoes this view. The music itself is appealing regardless
of historical context. However, to again echo Marian Quigley’s ‘glocalisation’
argument, I would argue that this universal appeal is attributable to the
particularity of the tune’s origins and reference points. It is not simply
nostalgic but authentic. It is also tremendously suitable, not only on account
of the films’ Northern settings, but in particular regarding Wallace’s status
as an inventor. The history of brass bands is so wedded to the development
of industrial society in the North that its particular sonic eccentricities
undoubtedly owe a debt to rapid technological advancements in heavy
machinery, coal and steam. Wallace, an inventor, and an upwardly mobile
one at that, is exactly the type of mechanically minded entrepreneur whose
self-improvement was fostered in the brass band and rewarded through his
innovations.
The transition from rural to urban living which took place during
the nineteenth century was particularly dramatic in the North. Lancashire, the
setting of the Wallace and Gromit movies, went from a provincial county to
one of the largest manufacturing centres in the world in the space of two
or three generations. These changes demanded a new type of person, the
kind fostered by the brass bands – the entrepreneurial individual. Samuel
Smiles’s 1859 manual, Self-Help, was a paean to this new individual who saw
the squalor of the new cities and rather than sink into despair, sought out
opportunities.40 ‘The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the
individual,’ he wrote, adding that it also ‘constituted the true source of national
vigour and strength’.41 Raymond Williams notes how this new individualistic
spirit was emphasized in literature of the era in ‘the conventional figure of the
orphan, or the child exposed to loss of fortune’.42 The orphan, unencumbered
by family and tradition, represents the spiritual state of industrial man. The
occupation of the successful, self-made man, for the same reasons, is that of
the inventor. In this sense, we can see in Wallace an incarnation of earlier
Lancastrian inventor characters. Elisabeth Gaskell’s industrial epic Mary
Barton, for example, sees only one family escape the confines of the working
class, doing so through the father’s inventions. Hardy’s Mayor of Casterbridge
symbolizes the displacement of rural tradition through the arrival of Scottish
businessman Farfrae, trained in the North. In Hard Times, Dickens presents
Bounderby as a parody of the self-made inventor, only for it to be discovered
he is not as ‘self-made’ as he claims. Entreprenurial invention was enabled
by the Patents Law Amendment Act of 1852, and it is no coincidence that
the same UK Patent Office commissioned Wallace and Gromit to market a
rejuvenated patenting process in 2009. In the advert, ‘A World of Cracking
Ideas,’ Wallace encourages the British people to ‘get your thinking caps on
and you could be a famous inventor, like me!’. Wallace’s prolific inventing
casts him as a one-man industrial revolution. He exudes all the homely
qualities of brass band tunes while also representing a savant-like virtuosity
typical of a disciplined ‘self-helper’.
It is no wonder that Wallace would encourage people to make use of the
patent system if we consider his rise through the class system over the years.
In A Grand Day Out, Wallace is merely a hobbyist tinkering in his basement.
His trip to the moon is devised as something to do during the ‘long bank
holiday’, suggesting that he works for someone else during the week. By the
time we see him again in The Wrong Trousers, he is self-employed, having
both a main business and a side project in A Close Shave. In the final short
film, A Matter of Loaf and Death, Wallace has risen from humble beginnings
and is now a mill owner (albeit of the wind variety). In Curse of the Were-
Rabbit, he even flirts with aristocracy, the aspiration of all ‘new money’ being
to marry into an aristocratic family. They may appear to go wrong all the
time, but Wallace’s inventions have nevertheless provided a decent living for
a man of his presumably humble origins.
It is for this reason that we might consider a satirical reading of Wallace’s
inventions to be missing the point; rather, they act in the same manner
as the music and sound by foregrounding industrial-era crankery in a
warm-hearted, nostalgic way. Paul Wells, analysing the series as a satire
on modernism, describes the ‘autonomous gag’ in The Wrong Trousers as
‘ultimately about humankind’s precarious hold upon the space it inhabits
and the control it assumes it has over the natural order’.43 This interpretation
draws upon a line of machine-related humour which goes back to Chaplin’s
Modern Times and Rube Goldberg’s elaborate engines and ultimately
reflects Bergson’s theory of laughter: ‘it is the business of laughter to repress
any separatist tendency’, he argues, ‘its function is to convert rigidity into
plasticity, to readapt the individual to the whole’.44 Bergson saw humour’s
role as anti-individualist, a way for society to puncture the pretentions of
those who travel too far from established patterns. The man caught up in
the malfunctioning machine has received his comedic justice for preferring
machines to people.
By contrast, the machines of Wallace and Gromit are funny because of
their self-made individuality. They transform the imagery of the industrial
revolution into something homely and familiar, metal turned in the direction
of music. ‘Wallace’s wonderful, riveted moon rocket has all the comforts of
home,’ Sproxton and Lord write, ‘including – uniquely in the annals of
space exploration – curtains and wallpaper’.45 The various inventions,
each dutifully suffixed ‘-O-Matic’, are celebrations of Wallace’s savant-like
ingenuity regarding all things mechanical. Nick Park himself has attributed
Wallace’s penchant for invention to his own father who ‘used to work in
the shed making things all the time’.46 The inventions, like the use of brass
instrumentation and Wallace’s many Lancastrian turns of phrase, are part of
the warm-hearted nostalgia for a Northern past which gives these films their
charm. They also both draw upon a tradition of self-improvement embodied
in the camaraderie of the brass bands and the individual innovator working
to improve industrial processes. Both are forms of creative, individualistic
self-expression which ultimately benefits the broader community and
society overall. The climactic moments of The Wrong Trousers, A Close Shave
and A Matter of Loaf and Death are all arranged around the functioning and
malfunctioning of Wallace’s inventions. At these points, the pneumatic
industrial sounds of pistons and steam valves synchronize with the rising
action of the soundtrack; the alignment of diegetic sound and non-diegetic
musical accompaniment heightens the action, the machines appearing
to become rhythmical, musical agents themselves. These moments break
from the more realist soundscapes typical of the rest of the film, suddenly
filling the scene with the abundance of personality typical of more ‘toony’
styles.
If there is satirical intention behind Wallace’s inventions, it is a generous
satire and one which aims at creating sympathy for the underdog rather
than punishing transgression in a Bergsonian manner. Wallace and Gromit’s
characters are so rounded that they permit an audience to simultaneously
laugh at them and with them, just as they can both inhabit thoroughly
mundane lives and undertake whacky adventures. As we saw with their

sound design, they are a hybrid of realism and exaggeration in which one
aspect relies on the other. Ultimately, they reveal a nostalgia for the machine
which draws on Northern responses to industrialization. Just as the sound of
brass represents a collective pride in the face of the dehumanizing machine,
so Wallace rehumanizes his machines by introducing to them his own
eccentricities and foibles.
Conclusion
In conclusion, we can return to the ‘quintessentially British’ quality of
Wallace and Gromit in both its particular particularity – its Northernness –
and, through Quigley’s theory of ‘glocalisation’, its universal particularity,
the eccentricities of the local which anyone can identify with, regardless of
their own geography. The same dialectical qualities of glocalization can be
found in each of the elements discussed in this chapter. Settings are neither
urban nor rural but evoke a ‘local’ spanning both. Music is neither typical
Hollywood nor a traditional brass band but pursues its own logic which
draws on both. Sound is a hybrid of realism and toon; stories are a hybrid
of the mundane and the spectacular. Overall, we are left with a result which
is perfectly rounded, self-encapsulated and is connected to the world while
being entirely comprehensible and enjoyable on its own. If nostalgia is the
process by which objective memory is rounded into subjective narrative,
then perhaps this ‘glocalisation’, finding the universal in the particular, is the
same process. Musically, the world of the Wallace and Gromit films draws
inspiration from Northern sources, but its sonic landscape is a uniquely
Aardman creation.
Notes
1 Visit England, ‘Wallace & Gromit – Holidays at Home – Making of ’
[YouTube video] (3 May 2013). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=qpuGAbdlyYU (accessed 4 April 2018).
2 Stephen Cavalier, The World History of Animation (London: Aurum, 2011),
p. 354.
3 ‘Wallace and Gromit Nominations’, Icons: A Portrait of England
(7 June 2009). Available at: https://web.archive.org/web/20090101211807/
http://www.icons.org.uk/nom/nominations/wallacegromit (accessed
10 April 2018).
4 Marian Quigley, ‘Glocalisation vs Globalisation: The Work of Nick Park

and Peter Lord’ [2002], in M. Furniss (ed.), Animation – Art and Industry
(London: John Libbey, 2009), p. 60.
5 Glyn White and John Mundy, Laughing Matters (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 2012), p. 164.
6 Peter Lord and Brian Sibley, Cracking Animation: The Aardman Book of 3D
Animation (London: Thames and Hudson, 1998), p. 171.
7 Christoph Schubert, ‘Identity and Dialects in the North of England’, in C.
Ehland (ed.), Thinking Northern (New York: Rodopi, 2007).
8 Jeff Nuttall and Rodick Carmichael, Common Factors/Vulgar Factions
(London: Routledge, 1977), p. 34.
9 Sigmund Freud, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious [1905], James
Strachey (trans.) (New York: W. W. Norton, 1960), p. 43.
10 James Weirzbicki, ‘Sonic Style in Cinema’, in J. Weirzbicki (ed.), Music,
Sound and Filmmakers: Sonic Style in Cinema (London: Routledge, 2012),
p. 3.
11 Peter Larsen, Film Music (London: Reaktion Books, 2005), p. 41.
12 Richard Mears (dir.), A Grand Night In: The Story of Aardman, BBC
(2015). Available at: https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/80144358
(accessed 10 April 2018).
13 Silent films were often packaged with sheet music specific to the film,
although often pianists chose to improvise over comedies using standard
ragtime chord structures as the provided music was often equally as
generic.
14 Claudia Gorbman, ‘Why Music? The Sound Film and Its Spectator’, in
K. Dickinson (ed.), Movie Music: The Film Reader (London: Routledge,
2003), p. 39.
15 Lord and Sibley, Cracking Animation, p. 183.
16 Daniel Goldmark, Tunes for Toons: Music and the Hollywood Cartoon
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), p. 4.
17 Looney Tunes is a clear example of the ‘toony’ effect taken to its fullest:
animation is paced to the music and sound effects accompany action to the
extent that the characters onscreen take on the transformative possibilities
of musical entities.
18 Peter Lord quoted in James Clarke, Animated Films (London: Virgin Books,
2004), p. 111.
19 Goldmark, Tunes for Toons.
20 Michael Chion, Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, Claudia Gorbman (trans.)
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), p. 75.
21 Alain Corbin, ‘The Auditory Markers of the Village’, in M. Bull and L. Black
(eds), The Auditory Culture Reader (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), p. 187.
22 George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (London: Penguin, 2001), p. 3.
23 Michael Bull, Sounding Out the City: Personal Stereos and the Management
of Everyday Life (London: Bloomsbury, 2000), p. 74.
24 Stephan Kohl, ‘The “North” of “England”: A Paradox?’, in C. Ehland (ed.),

Thinking Northern (New York: Rodopi, 2007), p. 100.
25 For those unfamiliar with the Northern club scene, Peter Kay’s series
Phoenix Nights (2001) provides a typical, if more modern depiction of
its tropes. The club’s band Les Alanos, comprising a drummer and organ
player, specializes in covers of popular songs played in polka rhythm, as did
bands such as Bernard Manning’s at the Embassy Club.
26 Claudia Gorbman, Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music (London: BFI
Press, 1987), p. 15.
27 Richard Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy (London: Penguin, 1952), p. 158.
28 Steve Hanson, Small Towns, Austere Times (Winchester: Zero Books, 2014),
p. 30.
29 Mears (dir.), A Grand Night In.
30 Aardman Animations, ‘Musical Marvels at the Proms’, Wallace and
Gromit Website. Available at: http://www.wallaceandgromit.com/history
31 A Matter of Loaf and Death features the theme tune in a faster tempo.
No reason has been given for this but it may be in order to squeeze extra
seconds into the film. As the move to features demonstrated, the half-hour
television slot was perhaps no longer enough to contain Park’s chosen
narrative.
32 Barrie Perrins, Brass Band Digest (Baldock: Egon, 1984), p. 3 and p. 6.
33 Christopher Weir, Village and Town Bands (Aylesbury: Shire
Publications, 1981), p. 7.
34 Perrins, Brass Band Digest, p. 9.
35 Roland Barthes, ‘Musica Practica’, Image, Music, Text, S. Heath (trans.)
(London: Fontana, 1977), p. 149.
36 Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England (London:
Penguin Classics, 2009).
37 Arthur R. Taylor, Brass Bands (London: Granada, 1979), p. 207.
38 Perrins, Brass Band Digest, p. 13.
39 Arthur R. Taylor, Labour and Love: An Oral History of the Brass Band
Movement (London: Elm Tree Books, 1983), p. 248.
40 Samuel Smiles, Self-Help [1859] (London: John Murray, 1969), p. 16.
41 Ibid., p. 35.
42 Raymond Williams, The Long Revolution (London: Penguin, 1973), p. 85.
43 Paul Wells, Understanding Animation (London: Routledge, 1998), p. 163.
44 Henri Bergson, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic, C.
Brereton and F. Rothwell (trans.) (London: Wildside Press, 2008), p. 84.
45 David Sproxton and Peter Lord, The Art of Aardman (London: Simon and
Schuster, 2016), p. 91.
46 Aardman Animations, ‘20 Questions with Nick Park’, [YouTube video]
(4 November 2009). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jwp-
0oEoJM (accessed 4 April 2018).
3
‘Yahoo! My last moment has come’:

Peter Lord and the Literacy of Wit and
Nostalgia
Paul Wells
There is a framed panel from an old comic that takes pride of place in Peter
Lord’s office in the plush depths of Aardman’s headquarters in Bristol, in the
South West of England. The panel depicts a rampant hippopotamus butting a
keeper into the air as the man cries out, ‘Yahoo! My last moment has come’. It is
too alluring as a symbolic touchstone not to use as the starting place to explore
Lord’s identity as an artist and filmmaker. In this initial catalyst alone, I wish
to begin a considerable revisionism, or at the very least, the suggestion of an
alternative perspective on Lord, whose usual narrative has been synonymous
with the story of Aardman itself. This is constantly recounted in most
interviews – joining up with his geek companion, David Sproxton, and making
low-rent table-top animation that was quickly embraced by the BBC in Vision
On in the early 1970s; recruiting Nick Park, and later, Richard Goleszowski
and Barry Purves, for the Lip Synch series; the slow but sure expansion of
the studio, following the successes of their animated documentary shorts and
the Creature Comforts television campaigns; Park’s rise as the company’s go-to
award-winning auteur; the success of the feature films; building a Pixar-styled
new studio; the Christmas Day success of A Matter of Loaf and Death and so
on. While this tells us much about Lord’s often self-effacing role in the creation
and development of Aardman, it does not reveal Lord himself, nor his authorial
identity as a creative director. To this end, it is useful to start, for example,
with the fact that Lord undertook an English degree at the University of York,
graduating in 1976. To paraphrase master writer and director, Billy Wilder,
then, when answering the charge that European émigrés in Hollywood were
too forward because they naturalized the idea that the director would write, he
replied that what was most significant was that they could read.1
I have been fortunate to know and work with Lord on a number of
occasions at festivals and on making-of documentaries, and over a number
of years it has become clear that Lord is a much more complex figure than
his public persona sometimes allows. There has always been a disjunction
between his presence as an avuncular CEO, essentially ‘fronting’ the
studio’s activities in public engagements; his playful performance as a
sometimes-bumbling English eccentric; and his powerful and influential
roles as practitioner, businessman and leader. The panel in Lord’s office – an
image from British comic The Dandy – suggests a different sensibility, and
says something about the agency and currencies of Lord’s work. The mad
surrealism of a charging hippo coupled with the man’s gleeful acceptance of
his demise points up not merely Lord’s absurdist sense of humour, but also his
existential outlook, and his tacit acceptance of a darker state of affairs in the
human condition. While he shares Nick Park’s nostalgia for a 1950s’ ‘England-
that-never-was’ unencumbered by social, cultural and economic reality, Lord’s
perspective demonstrates an altogether more literary and philosophically
grounded awareness. Lord’s love of the word ‘brute’ as a description for
the hippo, for example – part of a ‘Boys’ Weeklies’ vocabulary, in which he
maintains expressions like ‘crikey’, or phrases like, ‘Hmm, these are brainy
questions’ – affords the view that it is important to understand that it is indeed,
Lord’s love for language which offers significant clues about his outlook.
George Orwell wrote about such language in his essay ‘Boys’ Weeklies’
and described its milieu in these terms: ‘in general they are the clean-fun,
knock about type of story, with interest centring round horseplay, practical
jokes, ragging masters, fights, canings, football, cricket and food’, adding
‘sex is completely taboo, especially in the form in which it actually arises in
public schools. Occasionally, girls enter into the stories and rarely there is
something approaching a mild flirtation, but it is entirely in the spirit of clean
fun’.2 This general outlook and tone – simply one of ‘clean fun’ – underpins
the Lord oeuvre, expressed in similar matters of theme and detail, but also
in the construction of worlds that speak to, and test, both the strengths and
limitations of animation, and to the parameters of the material world as he
understands it, interprets it and sees fit to let it in. For Lord, this is about
the combination of his literary sensibility, his interest in history and his
desire to embrace animation as a tool of expression in the service of broadly
philosophic principles and ideas.
Although virtually all critical accounts of animation rightly concentrate
on its techniques and its primarily visual storytelling or abstract expression,
the role of language in the interface between image and text is less addressed.3
Lord’s literary background and interests, though, provide some pertinent
pointers to how this becomes important in his own work, most notably
through the influence of Laurence Sterne and Samuel Beckett, popular forms
like ‘the comic’, and in the pantomimic films of French comic actor and
director, Jacques Tati. The ambiguities, limits and attractions of ‘language’,
Peter Lord and the Literacy of Wit and Nostalgia 55
are, in fact, intrinsic to Lord’s approach and are instrumental in the ways
Lord mediates the studio, the development and direction of his films, and
the nature of the animation he creates. This is informed by different language
forms, idioms and genres that underpin the narrative structures, aesthetics
and approaches to performance and representation Lord employs, an
engagement which, unlike Nick Park, who embraces a more image-based
approach often related to traditional film genres,4 draws upon other modes of
visual and textual formalism. This key concept will be addressed throughout
the following discussion.
The life and opinions of Peter Lord

Lord has often referred to Aardman’s projects as reflecting a ‘Whizzer and
Chips England’ of playful eccentricity and whimsical observation. In many
senses, this starts with Lord’s own naïve understanding of English as a
subject for academic study, seeing it merely as the most suitable subject by
which he could enjoy a university education – an idea that had seemingly
been embedded in his upbringing, and from which, in his mind, ‘something,
as yet undetermined, would somehow emerge’.5 Lord ultimately recognized
that he did not embrace literary texts for the analysis of their themes and
meanings, but rather for how they made him feel, and essentially how they
also located him in a specific context or period. For him, history and language
are extremely important. He notes, ‘I love authentic voices from the past; I
love letters and diaries, although they are quite hard to read, but the appeal
is at the level of the particular, the personal, the intimate, the detail, stories
about country vicars’. This sense of the episodic, short narrative, with some
level of appealing detail, drawn from a past occurrence or memory was to
fundamentally inform Lord’s approach to animation. It should be stressed
immediately that though this model is, of course, correspondent to the idea
of the accumulation of ‘spot gags’, which Lord readily employs in his shorts
and features, it is also a site in which other micro-narratives are taking place,
suggestive of broader themes and ideas.6 Lord’s ‘gags’ are rarely localized,
and for their own sake, but are connected to literary perspectives that have
particular relationship, for example, to aspects of the short story, or the
theatrical scene.
Lord shared his time at York with novelist and screenwriter
Anthony Horowitz, novelist and journalist Linda Grant, and publisher
Anthony Forbes Watson, among others, developing his own eclectic
tastes, alighting on picaresque novels like Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones,
and particularly, Laurence Sterne’s Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy
as particular favourites. The connection with Sterne also has some other
resonances that are helpful to introduce here: Sterne was a parson in York
before he became a writer of some celebrity when his novel was published, in
which he appears in a veiled self-portrait as Parson Yorick. The connection
to York is purely coincidental, but the theological dimension is pertinent to
Lord. Although it has always been assumed that the most influential role that
both the parents of Lord, and his creative partner, David Sproxton, had in
their careers was in facilitating an introduction to producers at the BBC, it is
perhaps something far more ongoing and significant – Sproxton’s father is a
vicar and made religious programmes for the BBC, and Lord’s father trained
to be one, before giving it up to pursue another career. He notes, however,
‘we have at home a family tree, made by my uncle, and there are dozens of
vicars all over Sussex; they are all my ancestors’. Although neither makes this
explicit in their work or public identity, ‘Dave is more explicitly socialist, but
for me it’s the desire for goodness, kindness, not brightly coloured virtues
really, but honesty, and that you can see that coming through in the film; you
have to trust that the filmmaker is doing what they want to do’. It is clear that
Christian values – care, compassion, collaboration and belief-underpin Lord’s
characters and narratives, not only in the sense of how they represent them,
but also in how they imbue the Aardman brand.
The second aspect that can be drawn from the influence of Sterne is that
he was clearly working in a tradition out of Rabelais, and texts like Burton’s
Anatomy of Melancholy. This tradition embodied the idea of ‘learn-ed wit’, a
certain intellectually driven playfulness, that was often satiric or philosophical
in kind, and used the vehicle of literary forms to parody the limits of those
very forms as texts by which to in some way logically apprehend, order and
cogently narrativize existence.7 This approach allows a maximum degree
of flexibility, one that simultaneously allows for the free flow of ideas and
invention, and constantly revises the parameters of the form. Lord readily
recognizes and employs Sterne’s method in animation – on the one hand,
constantly foregrounding the relationship between the creator, the form and
its reception, and on the other, providing diary or letter-like episodes (or,
alternatively, micro-narratives), on associative subjects. In Sterne’s case, for
example, building a bridge, the significance of noses, futility, sleep, words
like ‘Zounds’ and the value of breeches.8 In Lord’s case, shiny cutlasses,
ham, girls with ginger beards, Michael Jackson’s moonwalk, fish dressed
up in a hat and Blue Peter badges in just one illustrative but typical scene:
the Captain’s introduction of his crew in The Pirates! In an Adventure with
Scientists! (2012). It is not hard to see how Sterne’s episodic narratives, full of
digression, and self-conscious ‘story-making’ functioning as a joke in itself,
have influenced Lord’s style and approach. Further literary, formalist and
conceptual practices that inform Lord’s work will be addressed throughout

this discussion as they serve to define his evolving identity.
At this juncture, it is significant to note, though, that Lord has adopted
many significant roles in his long career with Aardman, which may be
usefully understood in four key aspects that broadly correspond with the
chronological trajectory of his professional life: first, the documentary
pioneer of the early films; second, the experimental filmmaker of his shorts;
third, the performer-storyteller of his features; and finally, his polyglot
identity as the embodiment of the Aardman brand. By implication, I wish to
suggest here, that Lord’s liberal arts sensibility, and its grounding in literary
storytelling and Christian values, serves to place him within the characters
and contexts of the narratives that follow. This may at first sight seem an
obvious observation, but within the context of animation as a practice,
animation is usually understood as an authored form in the independent
sector, and a studio-styled outcome in mainstream markets – shorts are
named to their creators: Leaf, Švankmajer, Quinn, Norstein and so on, while
features are defined by their house signature: Disney, Pixar, Studio Ghibli,
LAIKA. Although collaboration is readily acknowledged in both arenas,
and core relationships between producers, directors, artists and writers, are
sometimes privileged, the director–actor partnership that often characterizes
distinctive live-action achievements is rarely identified in animation. For
all the partnerships that define cinema – Martin Scorsese and Robert De
Niro, Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune, Michael Curtiz and Errol Flynn,
to name but a few – rarely are animation directors directly identified with
their lead actors, the characters. The private and quite shy Nick Park, for
example, is not viewed through Wallace and Gromit, except in the sense that
they reference his father to some extent, and ‘Northern’ culture, but don’t
in essence, reveal him in the ways that the celebrated cinema partnerships
noted above do. This is a particularly interesting phenomenon as animators
are actors,9 so a director–actor relationship is potentially an elision of the
roles, and a direct embodiment of the tension between directorial intention
and the capacity for the actor – in this case a plasticine or high-tech puppet –
to express key themes and ideas. In many cases in mainstream cinema, the
director and actor are well known, and potentially celebrities, already highly
mediated and promoted in the public sphere. Rarely are animation directors
‘stars’ in this way, and although Tim Burton, Matt Groening and Park, for
example, may be accorded this status in relation to their animation work and
public presence, Lord affords a particular opportunity to match his public
persona as the ‘voice’ of the Aardman studio, to his performative identity
within the four aspects of his career cited above. As Lord admits, ‘I am in
the characters quite markedly – the waters are muddied by the work being
done by different animators, but I try to imbue their work with my gesture,
the smile, the way of moving, helping them to register the right choices, and
they end up as self-portraits.’
The documentary pioneer

Lord’s early career was inextricably bound up with his working partner,
Dave Sproxton, whose home life was characterized by his father’s interests
in theology, philosophy and crafts. Sproxton’s house was full of machines
and technology, and this drove his love for making things and taking up
photography. This led to an engagement with ‘low rent’ table-top animation
practice, where Lord’s more artistic sensibility found purchase, influenced in
its turn by his mother’s occupation as an art teacher. Lord and Sproxton’s
amateur dabblings were very much in the spirit of a hobby and part of a cultural
outlook for boys which was informed by gaining practical and technical skills
and applying such skills to good purpose. I wish to situate this early work then
within the conventions of ‘invention’. As Paul Carter notes, ‘the condition of
invention – the state of being that allows a state of becoming to emerge –
is a perception, or recognition, of the ambiguity of appearances. Invention
begins when what signifies exceeds its signification – when what means one
thing, or conventionally functions in one role, discloses other possibilities’.10
This is a crucial element in understanding how three-dimensional clay
animation works, in the sense that Lord’s process is literally one in which
his manipulation of the material itself becomes a ‘state of becoming’, until
the clay takes shape or recognizable form, and offers the potential for
configuration or signification. Although Morph is a human figure of sorts,
he is just as much a clay model, a humanoid representation defined in the
first instance only by his head, eyes, occasional raised eyebrows, nose, mouth,
arms, legs and torso, and their correspondence to a minimal presentation of
human identity. There is recognition of a human form here, that is augmented
by the perception of the figure as someone that behaves and performs, but an
ambiguity of appearance is maintained by the idea that Morph can return to
a piece of clay in various sizes that appears to enable him to transport himself
through objects, materials, space and time. In the early Morph films Vision
On and later Take Hart, then, and indeed, across the whole series of vignettes,
to the present day, Morph, his companion, Chas, and the other clay puppets,
are both characters, and phenomenological experiments in the mobility
and representational construction of clay animation. This is a fundamental
principle in maintaining the relationship between the materiality of the form
and Lord’s authorial intervention across his career.
As such, Lord shows himself as an acute observer of behavioural nuances

that define human expression, and the kinds of motion that specifically define
the characteristics of 3D animation as a form. This is important in that 3D stop-
motion animation enjoyed a particular tradition in Britain, largely established
through the work of Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin at Smallfilms, and
Ivor Wood, at Filmfair,11 which Lord and Sproxton established in children’s
programming beyond preschool audiences. As Lord recalls, ‘Dave and I were
lucky to meet Ivor Wood – he made lots of things like The Magic Roundabout,
The Herbs and the original Paddingtons. He introduced us to a few people in
the industry. Mainly, though, he taught us that animation was simple. You
did not have to make it complicated for it to be magical’. This singular point
is significant in that Lord recognized that it would be simple and distinctive
in its own right to present human beings and experience as realistically as
possible through the medium of animation, as the process and outcome itself
would place human conduct into the kind of rhetorical relief that enabled it to
be perceived and understood afresh. As Carter again remarks:
[T]he act of according value to matter is not simply a precondition of

your art […] it is a philosophical attitude or ethos. Material thinking –
what happens when matter stands in between the collaborators
supplying the discursive situation of their work – is a different method
of constructing the world in which we live […] the making process
always issues from, and folds back into social relation.12
Lord and Sproxton’s Animated Conversations: Down and Out (1977),

Animated Conversations: Confessions of a Foyer Girl (1978) and the
Conversation Pieces (1983): Sales Pitch, On Probation, Palmy Days, Late
Edition and Early Bird then become clear examples of the way in which matter
is mediated through what Alan Rosenthal calls ‘the documentary conscience’,
and links to ‘the function of the documentary … to clarify choices, interpret
history and promote human understanding’.13 Lord’s literary and historical
concerns, coupled with a liberal moralist stance, underpin the ‘fly-on-the-
wall’ clay-animated interpretations of real human interactions in these films,
and as such, privilege a particular way of presenting the human condition.14
These early films also anticipate Lord’s later outlook about the nature
of storytelling and story development. His more literary instincts tend to
privilege a different approach from the dominant Hollywood model, and
indeed, from that preferred by Park; in the first instance, eschewing the
formulaic character-centred approach with a defined narrative arc in which
goals are attained and lessons are learned; in the second, resisting too great a
use of verbal and visual puns. Lord suggests, ‘I tend to build a narrative around
how people behave, or some of the truisms or the silly things that people
say or do. I think you should find what the story is trying to say, or what it
might mean, rather than imposing a meaning on it you might want to reveal’.
Lord seeks to avoid what he sees as the overt attempt at ‘moral education’ in
the Hollywood model, and rather ensure that discourses about morality are
imbued in accessible plots. This largely makes Lord’s narratives situational
and event led, and these early films privilege the minutiae of a situation and
the ‘event’ of an exchange between the people involved. Such a model of
‘documentary’ uses the actuality of sound recording matched to the mediation
of material forms that demonstrably represents selective intervention. Lord
insists upon a point of focus that may have otherwise gone unobserved or
not specifically ‘listened’ to in traditional documentary recording. In this,
he uses animation to shift the idea of documentary representation from
the filter of the observational lens to the associative suggestion in ‘state of
becoming’ in the material construction of the image noted earlier.
A pivotal moment in Lord’s career in this regard therefore becomes the
two films made in the late 1980s, War Story (1989) and Going Equipped
(1990), which represent the maturation of his documentary sensibility,15
and the emergence of the ways in which the observational visualization
which underpins it plays out in more overtly comic form in War Story in
particular. The wartime recollections of Bill Perry in War Story, for example,
are used to develop visual jokes – Perry’s house ‘on the slant’, which renders
everything rolling downhill; the playful sentience of Perry’s pet dog in
which the dog pretends to be an air raid warden; the surprise noise of a
coal delivery being mistaken for a bomb going off, the seeming presence of
Hitler in Perry’s bedroom; and the painful cramming of Perry’s family in the
coal bunker. Again, this situational comedy is drawn from Lord’s interest in
silent comedians like Buster Keaton and Jacques Tati, not merely in creating
‘funny’ situations, but also in linking this out to ‘the social relation’, and most
particularly, a Beckettian universe in which everything, however bleak or
potentially threatening, is rendered as absurd. Lord’s parents introduced
him to Tati through Mon Oncle (1958), leading him to conclude, ‘I love
Tati’s persona, slightly distant, slightly awkward, a man constantly surprised
by life – following the logic of cutting the wrong branch, then ending up
trimming the whole hedge’. This model of the ‘clueless hero’ is a fundamental
presence in Lord’s work, and a key cipher for his engagement with more
formalist models of invention that use the distinctive parameters of the
language of animation to address the folly of human existence.
Tati’s sophistication in using ‘low’ comic slapstick for ‘high’ conceptual
purpose was an important influence on the making of Adam (1992), in that
Lord was frustrated that animation festivals had often rejected the invention
of Morph, for example, as merely children’s entertainment and not comic

art. Lord notes, ‘Adam was merely Morph with genitals’, and a deliberately
‘adult’ attempt to show how animation can respond to a big question like
‘what is the point of existence?’ but also get that ‘feeling out loud laughter
that the great silent comedians could provoke’. Sculpted from clay, Adam is
placed atop the earth by ‘the hand of god’, or equally, of course, ‘the hand of
the animator’, and at first, believes himself to be a dog (mere ‘animal’?), and
uncertain of his role and purpose, literally slipping off the edge of the planet,
before recovering, and imagining himself as an entertainer. Then, Robinson
Crusoe-style, he marches around the planet and discovers that he constantly
comes back to the place he started. Such walking and waiting is the central
motif of many Samuel Beckett plays, most notably, Waiting for Godot (1953),
in which the main protagonists – Vladimir and Estragon – find there is no
purpose to existence and their wait for meaning and affect is pointless. Hit
by the clay he has hurled in fury at his maker and seemingly abandoned by
his animator god to an empty planet, Adam ponders upon and prepares
for the possible arrival of a female companion, only to be coupled with a
penguin. His embrace of the creature at the end of the film is a final irony
about the absurdity of his position, and the general sense of laughable folly in
his attempts to find purpose and fulfilment. Lord’s ‘documentary conscience’
moves on then from representing the social relation to interpreting its
philosophic consequences, something he pursues further in this attention to
more experimental work, both in the short form and his feature development.
The experimental filmmaker

Lord’s work as a filmmaker is intrinsically bound up with the ways in which
he configures narrative and following on from Adam his interests in
storytelling become increasingly formalist. He is opposed to a number of
the more mechanistic approaches to story development advocated by much
of the established scriptwriting literature, preferring to evolve story in events
that emerge from core conceptual principles. Lord suggests, ‘you constantly
hold bits of it up to the light, looking or feeling for a pattern; you have a herd
of ideas searching for the best possible shape; I see writing as a puzzle like
solitaire’. Mobilizing these ‘pieces’ into an engaging story is achieved by seeking
to match form with content, and is about the co-exploration of the visual
potential facilitated by animation, how theatrical performance and motion
choreography is imbued with ‘narrative’, and how ideas and concepts themselves
may be conceived as a story point. These approaches were drawn from Lord’s
commitment to both look outside the insularity of the Aardman studio to learn
from animation styles in the independent sector, and outside film culture, for
narrative form and content more rooted in the ‘real world’. Yuri Norstein’s The
Overcoat (unfinished) was an influence on Going Equipped in its pacing and
attention to the visual depiction of consciousness and memory, while Paul
Driessen’s formalist experiments with screen space in films like On The Land,
At Sea And In the Air (1980) and The End of the World in Four Seasons (1995),
informed Lord’s split-screen narrative in Wat’s Pig (1996). The parallel lives
of brothers separated as babies are shown as the two are drawn back together
with the onset of war. One boy is saved by a pig and lives as a peasant, while the
other boy lives as a prince; the former later taking his frightened brother’s place
in battle, and preferred by those who formerly served the privileged prince.
Lord seamlessly and gently points up issues of class, power, and equality, and
ultimately plays out his central and prevailing theme that friendship, affection
and human warmth can triumph over the adversity and challenge that might
compromise it. Lord’s texts thus speak of their moral position through the
formalist metaphors that drive plot and narrative.
Adam is in effect a visual metaphor; Wat’s Pig a moral fable; Chicken Run
(Peter Lord and Nick Park, 2000), the studio’s first full-length feature, in
being ‘The Great Escape with chickens’ is essentially the mobilization of the
prisoner of war film as a metaphoric vehicle to tell a morally driven story
set in a battery farm. For Lord, though, as well as a challenge in relation to
the film’s length and narrative, it was a formative process in changing the
logistics of the studio and the ways in which a feature is made not by several
people, but by several hundred people, that changed his view of practice. As
Lord explains:
[T]he leap to industrial scale production was huge; I did not know
about the story reel then; we did not have enough animators; I had
done animatics by drawing them all myself; but feature length, we
had a constantly changing script, thousands of drawings, and a daily
public showing to convince everyone of what we were doing and that it
would work.
This shift echoed the industrial model, pioneered at the Disney studio in
the 1930s, and which is essentially the same in the major American studios
in the contemporary era. Lord is resistant to some of its processes though,
particularly the idea of the ‘story blitz’ conducted by multiple writers,
which underpins what he calls a ‘Frankenstein’s monster of a movie on the
wall’, which is the starting place for future editorial intervention and story
development. Lord’s altogether more intimate authorial process, working
with a small team of comedy writers once the core treatment and storyboard
has been developed, effectively refines the ‘world’ of the film, but crucially
moves to a more formally scripted stage earlier in order that verbal and
linguistic gags can play as much a part in the story – and chiefly, in the
dialogue – as the visual sequences. The differences in style and tone between
Lord and Park as co-directors could be reconciled by dividing scenes that
privileged their approaches, each preparing animators with a particular
performance direction, Park often drawing from genre examples in other
films and visual sources, Lord through his own theatrical performance and
focus on language.16 Lord explained of his work on Chicken Run: ‘every single
stage of the movement is an experiment, or even an adventure, because you
have this idea of where you’re heading, but no certainty of getting there’.17
This idea of the ‘experimental’ remains bound up with the ways in which
technique facilitates the story event. The fascination with Heath Robinson/
Rube Goldberg’s machines is normally a playful aspect of Park’s comic
outlook, but Lord’s influence is clear here in the greater absurdist threat of
the pie-making machine and the overall infrastructure of the prison-like
farm in general. The idea of a ‘contraption’ is transformed into a monstrous
‘mechanism’, and altogether more dystopian in the style of Chaplin’s Modern
Times (1936). The more utopian aspects of the film were influenced by David
E. Levine’s 2003 short story ‘The Story of the Golden Eagle’, in which an eagle’s
egg finds its way into a chicken’s nest, and although the eagle only knows
himself as a chicken, and that chickens cannot fly, he eventually confirms
his desire and ambition to succeed by flying, and finding his true identity.
The narrative was also informed by Orwell’s allegorical novella, Animal Farm
(1946), a metaphorical rumination on the Russian Revolution, in which the
idea of uprising and resistance is a central theme. The writers, Briton Jack
Rosenthal and American Karey Kilpatrick, worked with Lord and Park to
secure what Lord calls ‘an animated British POW movie, with chickens, made
in Bristol, but with the full Hollywood treatment’. In essence, by the end of
Chicken Run, Lord had established and advanced all the formative credentials
of his personal and professional identity at the studio by ensuring that Aardman
preserved its brand as a British 3D stop-motion animation studio, advanced
its standing as an international producer, and rooted its outcomes in the core
literary, historical and ethical considerations Lord has always embodied.
The performer-storyteller
With the rise of Disney Pixar and DreamWorks SKG in the United States,
and working through the benefits, tensions and complexities of collaborating
with DreamWorks SKG and later Sony Animation, Lord reconciled the
identity of the studio. He encouraged a plurality of work and approaches,

but insisted upon 3D stop-motion puppet animation, augmented by digital
applications as its core practice. As Lord notes:
I am still a bit old fashioned really. I like the CGI films, of course,
they look great and they are getting cleverer and cleverer, but I think
somewhere the audience knows it’s just noughts and ones in the
computer. It probably goes back to our childhood when we play with
toys, and people see something of that in our puppets. The sense of fun
and ingenuity in playing. The audience knows it is not real, but they
believe in it completely. Something hand-crafted and cared about, like
people care about their toys.
Lord’s playfulness is inherently related to the kinds of literary wit noted

earlier, and his desire to extend the material worlds of his narratives.
Deploying computer-generated imagery (CGI) alongside puppet animation
in The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! enabled the construction of
a larger-scale world in which the environments play as important a role as
characters. The sea, the inns and pubs of a foggy London, and the pirate
ship extend the cinematic sense of the narrative, and permit a greater
degree of fantasy (chiefly, the Pirate Captain’s) and spectacle (numerous
action sequences, most notably, the chase in Charles Darwin’s quasi-gothic
mansion). Crucially, however, although Lord wanted to embrace this bigger
landscape, it remained important to maintain an objectivity outside of
the visual sequences the animation could facilitate, and the attractions of the
‘pirate’ story, to facilitate a witty engagement with Lord’s prevailing themes.
These concerned the tensions between the value of creativity and art within
the dominant cultures of the market, the impact of science and technology,
and the social values of personal ambition and success. Working with the
writer of the original The Pirates! book series (2004–12), Gideon Defoe, Lord
properly realized his approach to writing:
The Americans adapt stories, but as Dave [Sproxton] says, they just
work from a kernel of an idea and build on it, like Shrek, which was
just a thirty odd page picture book really, or Cloudy with a Chance of
Meatballs, which is mainly pictures, too. And The Lorax; there is just
so much fleshing out to do, that I am less interested in that. You may
as well start from your own story or visual ideas, like Nick [Park] does,
or use a more developed story. I have a copy of Pirates somewhere with
loads of underlines, and notes of all the funny bits that made me laugh
out loud, and really what I wanted to do, was rather than adapt the story,
I wanted to adapt the world. Animation is really good for that, you can
do the funny, and you can make a world that people can get involved in.
The Pirates! had a sort of cult readership, so I didn’t feel I had to appease
lots of already invested readers, and that if we did it right, and involved
Gideon, they would recognize and enjoy his world. There are so many
great ideas, and it is so funny, it was so good to do.
In Lord’s world, Jane Austen can share a pub with the Elephant Man, and
be in the thrall of ‘clueless hero’ and raconteur, the Pirate Captain. The
Captain, who is both intrinsically foolish and a fundamental believer in
his own superiority, is being duped by the naturalist and biologist, Charles
Darwin, who plans to steal the Captain’s pet dodo bird. Lord gently mocks
the monarchy, key cultural institutions like the Royal Society, and the class-
conscious societal constructs that encourage self-absorbed ambition and
social climbing. Once more, though, this is in a knowing tone that apes
‘The Boys’ Weeklies’: Darwin’s craving for scientific knowledge and status is
couched within the discourse of wanting a girlfriend – ‘we’ve all done silly
things to impress girls’, says the Captain; Queen Victoria’s paranoid hatred of
pirates is described as ‘beard envy’ or caused ‘by being bitten by a pirate as
a child’ in a parody of psychoanalytic jargon, while the Captain’s sacrifice of
everything to win the ‘Pirate of the Year’ is constantly understated or made
the subject of hyperbole as ‘not a total success’ or ‘terrifically idiotic’. Much of
the humour of the film beyond its action sequences is couched in such literary
rhetoric – the wit emerges from the knowledge the film and the audience
shares about the formalized registers of expression and representation in
cultural institutions. More traditional representations of pirates and piracy,
as well as the social institutions of the Victorian era are replaced by a range
of modern English ‘types’ playing out class identities and (mainly) ritualized
formations of masculine identity. The Pirate Captain, like Morph, like Adam,
like the peasant prince, is a reflection of Lord, at once ambitious, playful,
engaging with challenges, but consistently without cynicism, and a knowing
amusement about the absurdity of experience. As Lord remarks:
I like characters who are a bit clueless really, but likeable. We are all a
bit clueless, aren’t we? We have a view of ourselves that is probably very
different from the way other people see us. You can dramatise that in
a story, and it has got so much comedy, and sometimes pathos in that
situation, like with the Pirate Captain, or even, Rocky.
Lord’s ‘performance’ through the characters ensures that the technical

aspects of timing and delivery are on point, but crucially operates as the
connecting agency that involves the audience and prompts the feeling of
empathy. For all the appeal and absurdity of the Captain, the most important
element that the audience takes away is that he nearly loses the love and
loyalty of his crew because of his own selfish motives. Although this is not
the ‘moral education’ of the Hollywood model, it is the implied assertion
of the importance of human bonding, community and collaboration, in the
face of all the supposed attractions and rewards of money, power and status.
It is also the key aspect of Lord’s self-portrait.
The polyglot
If Nick Park’s characters and films have become synonymous with Aardman
in public discourse, it is Lord’s identity that has become synonymous with
Aardman as a studio and a brand, and in relation to the overall narrative
that Lord has essentially become the author of in his public appearances.
Although I have argued here that this has obscured his status as a filmmaker
with highly particular approaches and preoccupations, it is also true that his
public persona (which is much more established than Park’s, who normally
only appears to promote his films) in relation to the studio also helps to
contextualize his practices as a polyglot role-player within the company.
In many public forums, Lord usually cites the creation and maintenance
of the studio itself as his greatest achievement, not least because it is now
represented by a high-quality and long-standing body of work, the sustained
employment of many artists and collaborators, studio buildings and estates,
and an increasingly diverse portfolio in social and cultural presence. This has
also necessitated Lord finding his place within his own larger narrative, and
defining certain aspects of his practice as definitive in not merely in his own
outlook, but in the ethos of the studio itself.
For example, he notes:
I didn’t like the expression ‘family film’. I thought it meant that we just
cared about getting the biggest audience possible. I’m a bit ashamed of
that, now. Because now I know that our films can be enjoyed by the
whole family – grandparents, parents and kids can go together and all
enjoy it. That is just marvellous thing, a great thing.
This realization properly speaks to the wide generational appeal of the studio’s
work, and as such, its signature style, but equally, it shows that a highly
significant model of success has been achieved allied to creative, aesthetic
and ethical integrity, and most importantly, with a high degree of humility:
Self-deprecating is one thing I do, because I am English, which you

have to do. As I say I am not particularly academic, and I don’t do
‘facts’, but holding a movie together, and the studio together, is a major
psychological and emotional task; it is a hell of a thing to do, because you
are responsible, and the constant demands require that you are resilient.
In the figures of Morph, Adam, Rocky, the peasant prince and the Pirate
Captain, Lord has demonstrated the ‘invention’ that characterizes his
approach to animation, to storytelling, to practice and in embodying the
moral and ethical enquiry that promotes kindness and compassion in the
process of self-realization. These characters become responsible and
resilient in evidencing their fortitude and good humour in the light of life’s
challenges. Lord’s polyglot public persona is therefore yet another reflection
of his capacity for performance and wit in the context of the modern absurd.
Conclusion: The nostalgic modernist

Peter Lord is one of the most respected figures in the animation community
and is revered as the voice of Britain’s leading animation studio, bringing
its history and achievement to the popular audience worldwide. Hiding in
plain sight between his success as an animator, director, producer and CEO
of Aardman is an unsung auteur, whose particular and playful address of
humankind’s foibles and hubris is inhabited by an affectionate gaze aligned
to a literary formalism that privileges a singular English wit. Lord’s narratives
work on a number of levels, combining his natural invention in regard to
the materiality of working in 3D animation, and his high regard for, and
knowledge about, the mechanisms that define ‘wit’ – the comic tension
between overstatement and understatement, the use of hyperbole, and the
deployment of bathos. These approaches all reflect an intention to empathize
with human folly rather than be critical of it, and to value humanity and its
inherent goodness, rather than see the worst in humankind. This is a very
important position in a contemporary world that is often viewed as in a state
of deep conflict, economic uncertainty, environmental decay and apocalyptic
doom. Arguably, Lord might be accused of ignoring or sidelining these
issues, but even if this were so, it would be because he is concerned with
engaging with a ‘bigger picture’, one that implies that it is vital not to give up
on humanity and its capacity to live through love and compassion. Ultimately,
it may be that Lord’s key imperative is not to resist ‘modernity’ but the kind
of modernity that is not allied to the highest respect for, and preservation of,
human values and emotions – human values and emotions present in the
literary texts and historical resources Lord so admires, embodies and plays out
in all his roles and identities. I am reminded therefore of the Pirate Captain’s
response when asked to name three elements to gain entry at the Royal
Society’s ‘Scientist of the Year’ Awards. He says, ‘gold, ham, and the tears of a
mermaid’, an apt metaphor for Lord’s preoccupations – ‘gold’, the privileging
of the most precious things; ‘ham’, the playing out of a knowing yet universal
humour; and ‘the tears of a mermaid’, that ‘impossible-to-properly-know-or-
possess’ quality that defines beauty and emotion. It is this triumvirate that
embodies Peter Lord and the significance of his work, both in animation, and
for the communities he works with, and for.
Notes
1 By coincidence, Lord’s favourite film is Some Like It Hot (Billy Wilder,
1959).
2 George Orwell, ‘Boys’ Weeklies’ (1939) in G. Orwell (ed.), Inside the Whale
and Other Essays (London: Penguin, 1957), pp. 179–80.
3 Scholar and animator Miriam Harris explored this issue in her PhD thesis:
‘Words & Images That Move: The relationship between text and drawing in
the animated film and graphic novel’, University of Auckland, 2011.
4 Park largely develops visual scenarios and comic sketches which serve as
the vehicle by which to work with screenwriter Bob Baker, for example, to
develop a screenplay.
5 All information and quotes from Peter Lord throughout this chapter have
been drawn from three formal interviews, and a number of informal
discussions, shared with Lord since meeting him at Zagreb International
Animation Festival in 2002. These include a guest lecture at Loughborough
University (2006); sponsorship meetings for the John Grace Memorial
Conference (2007); Festival events at Utrecht (2009) Portland (2010),
Teplice (2012) and Bradford (2014); script development and documentary
production (2012/14); and studio visits (2014/15).
6 See Paul Wells, ‘Boards, Beats, Binaries and Bricolage: Approaches to the
Animated Script’, in J. Nelmes (ed.), Analysing the Screenplay (London:
Routledge, 2010), pp. 89–105.
7 See Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (New York: NYRB
Classics, 2001 [1621]).
8 See Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (London:
Penguin, 1967 [1759–67]).
9 See, for example, Ed Hooks, Acting for Animators (London: Routledge,
2011)
10 Paul Carter, ‘Interest: The Ethics of Invention’, in E. Barrett and B. Bolt
(eds), Practice as Research: Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry (London:
I.B. Tauris, 2010), p. 15.
11 See: Rachel Moseley, Hand-Made Television: Stop-Frame Animation for

Children in Britain, 1961–1974 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015);
and Jonny Trunk (ed.), The Art of Smallfilms (London: Four Corners
Books, 2014).
12 Carter, ‘Interest: The Ethics of Invention’, p. 19.
13 Alan Rosenthal, The Documentary Conscience: A Casebook in Film-Making
14 For further discussion of these early short films see Chapter 5 (Hosseini-
Shakib) in this volume.
15 See Paul Wells, Understanding Animation (London: Routledge, 1998),
pp. 109–11.
16 See Kevin H. Martin, ‘Poultry in Motion’, Cinefex 82 (July 2000),
pp. 118–31.
17 Lord quoted in Brian Sibley, Chicken Run: Hatching the Movie (London:
Boxtree Books, 2000), p. 26.
70
4
From Europe to Hollywood and Back Again:

Aardman and Its Studio Partners
Christopher Meir
Amongst the many understudied aspects of film producers – as Aardman has

been since the making of Chicken Run (Peter Lord and Nick Park, 2000) – are
their commercial relationships with important partners such as financiers and
distributors. This is true of studies of Aardman and this has created gaps in
our understanding of the company’s work in feature films. These gaps pertain
to the company’s ability to create works that reflect its artistic sensibilities
while also being profitable enough to make the ventures worthwhile
for the company and its partners – in other words, its independence and
its sustainability as a film producing company. Features are after all very
capital and labour intensive and, as such, Aardman’s work in this area has
demanded collaboration with larger organizations. This has meant working
with film distributors: companies that provide access to global markets as
well as production finance, but who also require varying degrees of control
over the projects which they buy and sell. This chapter will seek to explore
the relationships between Aardman and its financiers/distributors for its six
feature film projects released between 2000 and 2018.
Besides providing a long overdue discussion of this vital aspect of
Aardman’s business practice, closely analysing the company’s dealings with
DreamWorks, Sony and Studiocanal will shed new light on Aardman’s ability
to function effectively in the difficult world of film production where global
markets present great opportunities but also significant financial and creative
risks. As Aardman is far from being the only British producer to have faced
the predicaments described below relating to maintaining its independence
while accessing global markets and working with larger, stronger partners,
the chapter will conclude with some discussion of how their experiences can
illuminate our larger understanding of global British cinema. As we will see,
the dynamics between Britain, Hollywood and Europe are currently shifting
in what could be fundamental ways and Aardman’s trajectory as a film
producer might be able to help us imagine an outward-facing British cinema
that is not beholden to the American market.
Working with DreamWorks: Americanizing Aardman

Aardman’s move into feature films began in the mid-1990s and would
eventually bring them into partnership with the American studio
DreamWorks.1 Chicken Run began its life under the aegis of Aardman’s
partnership with the French firm Pathé and their UK-based subsidiary
Allied Films. It was Allied Films who financed the two-year development
of Chicken Run into a project well-defined enough to pitch to Hollywood
studios. With the developed project in hand, Aardman and Allied struck a co-
production accord with DreamWorks in 1997 for the production and global
distribution of Chicken Run. The deal stipulated that Pathé would handle
European distribution for the film while DreamWorks would hold sales
and distribution rights for the rest of world, including the North American
market, the single most lucrative territory in the world. Not only did this
‘greenlight’ the production of Aardman’s first feature, but it also initiated the
creative and commercial relationship that would dominate Aardman’s first
decade of feature production as DreamWorks and Aardman would go on to
sign a five-picture production deal.
DreamWorks SKG was launched in 1994 as a collaboration between
three veritable titans of the American entertainment industries: celebrated
director Steven Spielberg, long-time Disney executive Jeffrey Katzenberg and
music mogul David Geffen. At the outset, the company presented itself as
something of a latter-day United Artists, a collective of sorts run by creative
talents, and therefore champions of creativity, while still having access to the
production and distribution resources of the otherwise ruthlessly corporate
Hollywood studio system. It was in this context that Aardman made Chicken
Run, and the film was developed under conditions closely akin to those of
European/British independent cinema, at a far remove from Hollywood
studio pressures. There was, however, still some pressure from DreamWorks
executive Jeffrey Katzenberg, a notorious micromanager of the animated
films under his supervision. While no one at Aardman publicly complained
about Katzenberg’s involvement in the project, there were a number of thinly
veiled comments in the publicity interviews that accompanied the release
of the film. For instance, an interview with Nick Park and Peter Lord in The
Irish Times:
Park says the important thing with the DreamWorks deal is that it gives
Aardman autonomy within what he calls the studio’s ‘benign embrace’.
‘They’ve kept at arm’s length’, he says, ‘but they’ve also been very helpful,
in that Jeffrey Katzenberg has been flying over in his private jet from
Burbank to Bristol to offer help and advice’.
From Europe to Hollywood and Back Again 73
And not interfere? Park: ‘No, he’s pushing us to make it better, but he
definitely wants our sort of film’.
Lord: ‘He’s not saying he wants another Toy Story, but there’s a little
tension in there, as there would naturally be’.2
How much this ‘little tension’ affected the film will perhaps never be public
knowledge, but whatever disagreements there may have been, the film did
not suffer in any obvious way because of them. Instead it was received very
well by audiences and critics around the world, and it remains Aardman’s
most successful feature film in terms of box office gross. Perhaps more
importantly, the film felt true to the Aardman sensibility that had already
become apparent in the company’s work in television and short films up to
this point.
After this promising start to the partnership with DreamWorks, the US
studio began to change its ethos, and these changes had a knock-on effect
with its relationship with Aardman. By the time the pact between the
companies ended in 2007, with only two of the five intended pictures having
been completed (and one of Aardman’s ideas eventually becoming the DWA
produced hit film The Croods [Kirk De Micco and Chris Sanders, 2013]),
DreamWorks’ position in Hollywood had shifted. By the early 2000s, despite
Oscars for films such as American Beauty (Sam Mendes, 1999) and Gladiator
(Ridley Scott, 2000), under increasing pressure to optimize profitability,
the company had internally adopted the more normative corporate studio
mentality found at other Hollywood studios. Among the factors driving this
change were heavy losses on some films, which diminished profits on the
Oscar-winning pictures. Significantly, many of the money-losing projects
came from the animation studio, where expensive flops such as Sinbad
(Patrick Gilmore and Tim Johnson, 2003) dragged on the company as a
whole.3 Although the animation division also boasted a lucrative franchise
in the Shrek series (2001–10), the unpredictability of its commercial fortunes
ultimately led to the separation of the animation and live-action divisions.
In 2004 the company spun-off DreamWorks Animation (DWA) as a publicly
traded production company, after which both Wallace and Gromit: The Curse
of the Were-Rabbit (Nick Park and Steve Box, 2005) and Flushed Away (David
Bowers and Sam Fell, 2006) were released.
Despite the initial success of Chicken Run, problems began to arise in
the Aardman–DreamWorks relationship in 2001 when Aardman received the
greenlight to make The Tortoise and the Hare, a film based on the eponymous
Aesop fable and budgeted at $40 million. Soon after production started, it
was halted, script doctors were brought in and production staff were made
redundant.4 Although initially Aardman told the trade press that the delays
were temporary and that the film would be delivered on time, The Tortoise
and the Hare never reached the finish line. Publicly, no one was willing to
assign blame for the project collapsing and David Sproxton has said that
the problem was found only in the story reel stage of pre-production and the
decision to halt production was mutual.5 Nevertheless, rumours in the trade
press and elsewhere have attributed it to a ‘butting of heads’ between the two
companies.6
The impasse in the making of The Tortoise and the Hare was perhaps a sign
of things to come for Aardman and their work with DreamWorks, although
these were not outwardly apparent in the artistic outcomes of Aardman’s next
project for the studio. Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit was
well received by critics and the American film-making establishment (it won
the Oscar for Best Animated Feature) and embraced by audiences abroad,
particularly in the UK but also continental Europe, Australia and much of
Latin America. The film blended Aardman’s eccentricities to masterful effect,
creating a work that is funny, entertaining and very much rooted in the
cultural milieu of provincial England that the company had worked in for so
long and so successfully with the Wallace and Gromit shorts. However, there
is some indication that this success occurred in spite of, rather than because
of, the Aardman–DreamWorks partnership, and there are accounts of Nick
Park prohibiting DWA from making any creative ‘suggestions’ regarding
the making of the film.7 It was thus in relative artistic independence, not
necessarily creative harmony between the two studios, that Aardman was
able to create its most critically successful film to date.
Even with plaudits coming in from around the world, there was one
constituency that did not embrace Wallace and Gromit: the American
audience. The film ‘only’ made $56 million at the US box office (compared to
$107 million for Chicken Run),8 and this, despite the film’s international gross
of $136 million, would prove to be a major problem for the newly christened
DreamWorks Animation. Were-Rabbit was budgeted at $45 million and
given the considerable costs of marketing family fare in the United States,
likely cost somewhere close to that figure to promote. When one makes
the standard assumptions about distribution costs being about equal to the
production budget and factoring in the percentage of the box office that goes
to the exhibitors (typically about 50 per cent),9 it is clear that DWA would be
losing money on the film on the theatrical run. This is a common situation
for most films during the theatrical phase of their release, but ancillary
revenues from DVD sales, for example, also proved disappointing. In the
end, despite the Oscar, the now public company DWA announced it would
take a total loss of $29 million on the film, due to lower than expected ticket
and home video sales in the United States.10
Internally, due to these losses on Wallace and Gromit, the pressure was
on DWA to cancel its pact with Aardman,11 but the two companies pressed
ahead with their next project Flushed Away. This time more creative control
was ceded to DreamWorks by virtue of the production being shifted away
from Bristol to DWA’s computer-generated imagery (CGI) laboratories in
California.12 The results would prove to be artistically disappointing and
financially disastrous. The costs on the production of the film – which
included the CGI animation process and also the all-star voice cast, featuring
Hugh Jackman and Kate Winslet – spiralled to somewhere in the range
of $140 million.13 Additionally, there was still the cost of marketing and
distributing the film. In terms of box office revenue, the film came nowhere
near the amount needed to recoup these costs – grossing $178 million
worldwide – and DWA was ultimately forced to book another loss on an
Aardman film, this time in the region of $109 million.14
A loss of this magnitude represented a low point for Aardman in
commercial terms, but Flushed Away was also an artistic nadir for the
company. Very little of the characteristic Aardman sense of humour is
present in the film and nor is the animation style particularly distinct
or interesting, with the company eschewing its signature stop-motion
techniques for CGI. On both of these fronts, the film is actually much closer
to the script and animation house styles of DWA, which have been often
derided by critics as bland and predictable. In terms of national identity and
cultural representation, the film moved away considerably from Aardman’s
favoured settings of bucolic, eccentric rural England to a touristic view of
Britain, in which the landmarks of central London are transposed to the
film’s subterranean milieu. Such a setting may have been easier for American
audiences to recognize as British – after all there was Big Ben! – but it also
robbed the film of the source of much of Aardman’s artistic distinctiveness.
DWA may have seen these changes to the typical Aardman style – moving
the film closer to the DWA/Katzenberg house style (and reportedly with
a great deal of input from DWA themselves)15 – as necessary to appeal to
American audiences, but the end result was that the film had little appeal
to anyone. In short, this was a case study of an American studio forcing too
many compromises on a British production company and the film suffered
for these attempts to please an audience that it was just not in synch with.
Acknowledging the steep losses on Flushed Away, and without the
consolation of the critical esteem that had come with other Aardman
releases, Katzenberg announced the end of DWA’s pact with the company.
Aardman for their part claimed – and continues to claim – that the working
relationship between the two companies was fatally impaired by DWA
becoming a public company16 and that the personal relationships and mutual
artistic respect between those involved remained strong. The decision to go

public made DWA change its business model to one focused on predictable
(in both commercial and artistic senses) franchises such as Shrek and Kung
Fu Panda (2008–16). These changes, and the dependence on the American
market that DWA’s business model hinged on, ultimately made it impossible
to work with a company like Aardman, whose films generated the bulk of
their revenues outside of the United States and which never looked likely to
generate box office grosses on the scale that DWA needed to turn a profit.
Globalizing Aardman: Working with Sony

Aardman thus looked for a new distribution partner and in 2007 signed an
exclusive deal with Sony, a company which was in need of family-oriented content
in order to compete with the other Hollywood majors. Sony is also a company
with a much more global footprint than DWA in terms of direct distribution
territories and among the Hollywood majors the company has a reputation for
being particularly adept at marketing and distribution in international markets.
For Aardman, which had consistently been more popular outside of the United
States, this made Sony appear a better fit as a studio partner. Announcing
the deal in the trade press, Sproxton said, ‘We’re Europeans with a European
sensibility. Our films have played better in the UK and Europe than they have in
the States,’17 and Sony too saw these as the key markets for the films. But despite
the rhetorical emphasis placed on Europeanness by Aardman executives, their
counterparts at Sony were indicating ambitions for larger global audiences,
saying things like ‘Aardman Features [sic] is enormously popular all over
the world,’18 and this sentiment would be followed by an apparent disparity
in the expectations the two companies had for Arthur Christmas, with Sony
anticipating broad-based global success rather than aiming it primarily at the
European markets. One trade industry report, for example, quoted Arthur
Christmas director Sarah Smith as saying:
The great thing that [Sony executives] said to Aardman is they would be
happy to make smaller-scale films that would be primarily for a European
market […] I think that’s primarily what they expected Aardman to offer,
but when they heard (our pitch for “Arthur Christmas”), they went, “Wait a
minute, this is a big idea. This is going to work ‘round the whole world!”’ 19
Sony ultimately only greenlit two features from the Aardman slate:
Arthur Christmas and The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! (2012).
The strategic global commercial ambitions that Sony held for these features,
rather than the more European-facing plans that were mooted initially, is
perhaps indicated by their settings as the films’ British characters transcend
their geographic origins by traversing the planet and the high seas,
respectively. The films’ budgets are also telling with Arthur Christmas coming
in at $100 million and The Pirates!, which included CGI details, registering
the highest budget of the firm’s stop-motion films at about $55 million.
Reminiscent of Hollywood’s animation practices but with a clear emphasis
on British stars, both films also featured celebrity voice casts, including
Hugh Grant and Salma Hayek in The Pirates!, and Jim Broadbent and James
McAvoy in Arthur. Ultimately, neither film was a commercial success, at
least not enough to justify their budgets. The Pirates! grossed $123 million
which, when one adds marketing and distribution expenses to its production
budget, likely meant the studio lost money or at best broke even on home
video sales. With its much bigger budget, Arthur Christmas needed to do
considerably better than its global box office gross of $146 million to come
close to breaking even.20 It was thus perhaps not a surprise when Sony let the
deal with Aardman expire in 2012, leaving the production company to once
again seek a new distribution partner.
However, while the films made with Sony were commercial failures,
this does not tell the whole story. Both films were critically well received,
particularly in the UK, and The Pirates! was nominated for an Oscar.
Moreover, both were novel in artistic terms and owed these distinctions to
a relative lack of interference from Sony, who according to Sproxton were
less involved than DWA in creative matters, even if they weren’t wholly
hands off.21 The Pirates! in particular was true to Aardman’s unique comic
sensibility with its particularly idiosyncratic humour. The pace at which the
jokes come, their edgy, even at times off-colour, content and the eccentricity
of a children’s film featuring Charles Darwin and Queen Victoria as villains,
implies that Aardman was given a certain amount of creative freedom. Arthur
Christmas, which is on the surface more conventional than The Pirates!, still
features a decidedly non-Hollywood plot that takes a critique of Santa Claus’s
corporatized supply chain as its point of departure.
Instead of artistic interference, which seems to have been the case with
DWA and Aardman, one can perhaps look to a different type of industrial
pressure to explain the commercial failings of Aardman’s films for Sony. Both
were released during major holiday seasons (Thanksgiving/early parts of the
Christmas season in the case of Arthur, Easter in the case of The Pirates!) into
crowded marketplaces, where the competition for children’s media is acutely
intense. This ill timing on Sony’s part can be seen as a product of its own
corporate agenda. A dispatch in Variety from 2010 suggested that Aardman
was rushed into releasing Arthur Christmas in 2011 by a Sony that was
chastened by failures in its animation division such as Surf ’s Up (Ash Brannon

and Chris Buck, 2007) and that ‘desperately needed fresh content’.22 Sproxton
has said there was no alteration to the original completion date set by the two
companies, but does concede that the film’s release – for which Aardman was
not responsible – was badly timed given the competition and was necessitated
by Sony’s corporate needs to simply release a film during that period, in part
for the sake of its quarterly financial reports.23 It is telling in this regard that
in the years following its disappointing theatrical run, the film’s reputation
has grown and it has been a perennial favourite during the holiday season for
broadcasters in the UK especially, while streaming services such as Netflix
have also made the film available to audiences. The ways in which the film
continues to be discovered by audiences long after its cinema run suggests
that the film needed more exposure than was granted by Sony’s release in such
a crowded market. This long-term cultural resonance contrasts sharply with
Sony’s short-term, hurried thinking and lack of appreciation for the markets
to which Aardman’s sensibilities naturally speak. Put simply, the bungled
release of Arthur Christmas is yet another reminder of the incompatibility of
the producer and distributor.
The search for a European partner

Given the film’s theme of losing the wonder of Christmas under a regime that
favours corporate efficiency and risk management, Arthur Christmas makes
a poetically emblematic film for why the relationship between Aardman
and its Hollywood partner was not sustainable.24 After the partnership with
Sony ran its course, Aardman was determined to return to its roots and to
find a financing and distribution partner in Europe and after unsuccessfully
approaching their former partner Pathé,25 Aardman ultimately found a new
backer in Studiocanal. The two companies soon after struck a deal to make
Shaun the Sheep Movie, a film that had first been pitched to, and turned down
by, Sony.26 Thus began a new chapter in Aardman’s work in features.
Studiocanal’s emergence as a major player in the global film industry was
itself circuitous and marked by several unsuccessful attempts at working
with Hollywood. These attempts included being forced by parent company
Vivendi into a merger with Universal Studios that ended with the French
company teetering on the brink of bankruptcy in 2002. Studiocanal survived
this period and later re-emerged as a global force in the mid-2000s by
methodically acquiring distribution operations in the UK (2006), Germany
(2008), and Australia and New Zealand (2012). With these territories as
well as its French operations and a network to sell its films to distributors
outside of its territories, the company began fully financing English-

language feature film production in the late 2000s. With an investment in
the Belgian animation company NWave in 2010, the company signalled
its intention to get into the family entertainment segment of the market, a
direction that would ultimately lead them to finance and release Paddington
(Paul King, 2014) and Paddington 2 (Paul King, 2017). As part of this larger
strategy, the company also looked to Aardman as an important potential
partner.
Possessing a confederation of distribution territories and a sales network
that sells to distributors in other territories has created a business model for
Studiocanal that is significantly different from Aardman’s previous partners.
It is also one that takes advantage of the growing value of non-US markets
to make films with mid-range (20–80 million Euro) budgets.27 Crucially, this
business model avoids direct dependence on the US market. Studiocanal
sells the US rights to its films to distributors there and has thus far avoided
forming or acquiring a subsidiary to handle its products in that territory.
While this means that they lose out on potential revenues from what is still
the biggest single national market in the world, they also avoid the risks that
come with spending on marketing and distribution costs in America, which
are proportionally much higher than those in Europe. Such a business model
meant that Aardman’s films would have to be produced for lower budgets
than those funded under their Hollywood partnerships, but it also meant
that pleasing the American market would not be a creative priority. It also
removed the ‘global pressures’ that came with Sony’s particular distribution
strategy. The home market would now be European countries, Australia
and New Zealand, markets that Aardman felt much more comfortable
addressing.28
A film version of Aardman’s highly successful children’s television series
Shaun the Sheep was an ideal first collaboration because not only was
Studiocanal in the market for British-themed family fare but also, being a
very conservative company in commercial terms, they were interested in
films with pre-existing audiences.29 Conveniently, it was also a project that
did not require a great deal of development funding from Studiocanal – the
character designs and sets already existed from the TV show and the script
required relatively little development.30 This meant that the film would
move quickly – for an Aardman feature at least – from announcement in
April 2013 to release in February 2015. Costs were also kept low by the
film’s lack of a voice cast, avoiding A-list actor salaries and the lengthy, and
therefore expensive, process of adding voices to stop-motion animation.31
In addition, this helped keep distribution costs down as the film would not
have to be dubbed for each linguistic market.
For Aardman, the Studiocanal deal was attractive because it meant a

partner with a global reach, but more focused on the European market. It
also meant working with a partner with a European sensibility, according to
David Sproxton, and this translated into little creative interference from the
studio during the making of the film,32 a degree of independence that the
company had not seen during its Hollywood misadventures. In the end,
Shaun the Sheep Movie was made for a reported budget of under $25 million,33
by some distance the least-expensive Aardman feature to date. The film was
also Aardman’s lowest grossing feature, making $106 million internationally,
well short of the $123 million that The Pirates! – the next lowest-grossing film
made by the company – made in what was a disappointing run in theatres
for Sony. Shaun had an especially difficult time in the American market. A
distribution deal was signed for the territory only after its debut in the UK
and its roll out across the Studiocanal network, when Aardman brokered
a deal with US ‘mini-major’ Lionsgate.34 Lionsgate released the film late
in the summer season, long after the release of family-friendly box office
juggernauts Inside/Out (Pete Docter and Ronnie del Carmen, 2015) and
Minions (Kyle Balda and Pierre Coffin, 2015) and despite this lack of serious
competition, the film had a weak opening and only grossed $19 million in
total in the United States, far below the performances of previous Aardman
films.
Despite these seeming challenges, the overall box office performance
allowed Shaun to turn a profit on its global theatrical release,35 and the
film has since spawned a sequel that will be financed and distributed
by Studiocanal. This seeming paradox of the lowest amount of box office
revenue possibly making for the most profitable of Aardman’s films was
significant as it meant that the partnership with Studiocanal might offer the
most sustainable basis for Aardman’s feature-film-making future. It is also
one that seems to allow Aardman the greatest degree of artistic freedom of
any of its distribution partnerships to date. This meant that Aardman was
free to return to their favoured setting and cultural milieu and to extend the
Wallace and Gromit universe (the character of Shaun originated in the short
film A Close Shave [Nick Park, 1995]). The fact that Sony had turned down
the film indicates that it was simply not possible to produce the film while
working with Hollywood, let alone its sequel, which, at the time of writing, is
in production and scheduled for release in 2019.
Besides the Shaun sequel, Studiocanal and Aardman also partnered on
Nick Park’s return to feature filmmaking for the 2018 release Early Man,
his first film since Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. While
this means that the Studiocanal relationship led to the return of Aardman’s
most accomplished auteur director, somewhat worrisome for the outside
observer is the issue of economic sustainability. Early Man, unlike Shaun,

does not have an in-built audience, and the main marketing hook besides
Park’s return is the film’s plot about the invention of football. Additionally,
the film’s reported budgeted at $50 million, was over twice what Shaun cost.36
Although by Studiocanal’s standards, this is well within their 80 million
Euro framework and the BFI is providing some additional funding, it looks
increasingly unlikely that a profit can be made on an Aardman production
of this scale. The film’s poor performance thus far at the US box office (at the
time of writing, under $9 million, compared to $19 million for Shaun) and
the relative underperformance in the UK (currently at about $15 million after
nearly six weeks on release, heading towards what would be by far the lowest
Aardman gross in its home market), would seem to indicate that the film
will end up generating even less in revenue than Shaun. This could of course
change as the film continues its global rollout, but if the box office returns for
Early Man do not improve this could prove the sternest test yet of Aardman’s
sustainability as a feature film producer on the global stage.
Conclusion
This chapter has sought to illuminate the business practices behind Aardman’s
feature work, a project that necessarily meant exploring the industrial
contexts surrounding the financing and distribution of the six feature films
that the company made between 2000 and 2018 and the one slated for release
in 2019. As discussed at the outset of the chapter, commercial relationships
are of extreme importance to the work of the producer and by examining
them more closely in the case of a company like Aardman, the chapter has
sought to provide fresh insights into questions of artistic independence and
economic sustainability, ones that are at the heart of producer studies. At
the level of political economy, the biggest threat to filmmakers in Britain
and Europe has long been the power of American companies and the related
temptation to appeal primarily to the American market. As we have seen,
Aardman has had to deal with both of these problems throughout their
career as for the first fifteen years of their work in features only American
companies were willing and/or able to finance and distribute their works
on the scale required. Engaging with the American studio system may have
created some of Aardman’s most distinctive works, but it also meant artistic
compromises and ultimately unrealistic expectations and unsustainable
filmmaking.
Getting back to Aardman’s distinctive voice as filmmakers meant
finding a European partner and they found this in Studiocanal, and Shaun
the Sheep Movie was in many ways a return to form for the company, with
critical acclaim and sustainable commercial success. For the time being,
this has all the hallmarks of a fruitful, symbiotic relationship between two
European companies.37 This has implications for scholars of British cinema
as the nation’s industry has long been seen as one situated metaphorically
(and geographically) between Hollywood and Europe. Conventional
wisdom within scholarly and industrial circles is that economic survival
and success would necessarily – if lamentably – come only from partnering
with Hollywood. The early success that Aardman had with Studiocanal,
combined with similar successful British–European collaborations in
recent years – including the partnerships of Working Title Films and
Heyday Films with Studiocanal and that between auteur Ken Loach and
French studio Wild Bunch, for example – show that opportunities for
continental collaboration are increasingly attractive to British filmmakers.
For scholars of European cinema, these partnerships and the journey
that Aardman took to arrive at Studiocanal’s doors should also be a
reminder that understanding creativity on the continent must necessarily
mean understanding the role that commercial concerns play in shaping
the careers and output of filmmakers. Long thought of as the land of the
Romantic figure of the auteur director, what this chapter suggests is that
we can learn a great deal more about producers like Aardman if we also
remember that even European artistic practice is embedded within larger
industrial and corporate contexts.
Notes
This article grows out of a larger research project which has received
funding from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, the European Union’s
Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development
and demonstration under grant agreement nº 600371, el Ministerio de
Economía, Industria y Competitividad (COFUND2014-51509) el Ministerio
de Educación, cultura y Deporte (CEI-15–17) and Banco Santander.
1 Although technically a production company, DreamWorks had a
preferential distribution arrangement at the time with Hollywood major
Universal Studios. As part of this deal, DreamWorks also oversaw the
marketing campaigns for their films.
2 Stuart Husband, ‘Nobody Here but Us Chickens’, The Irish Times,
24 June 2000. Available at: h ttp://www.irishtimes.com/news/nobody-here-
but-us-chickens-1.285808 (accessed 15 December 2015).
3 Nicole Laporte, The Men Who Would Be King: An Almost Epic Tale of
Moguls, Movies and a Company Called DreamWorks (Boston, MA and New
York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010), pp. 349–61.
4 Patrick Frater, ‘Aardman’s The Tortoise vs. The Hare Back on Track’,
Screen Daily, 8 August 2001. Available at: http://www.screendaily.
com/aardmans-tortoise-vs-hare-back-on-track/406529.article
(accessed 15 December 2015).
5 David Sproxton, Interview with Andrew Spicer, Steve Presence and
Christopher Meir, 10 November 2015, Bristol, UK.
6 Stuart Kemp, ‘DWA-Aardman Deal Flushed’, The Hollywood Reporter,
31 January 2007. Available at: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/
dwa-aardman-deal-flushed-129100 (accessed 15 December 2015).
7 Nicole Laporte says that, after the experience of working with Katzenberg
on Chicken Run, Nick Park stipulated that there be no input on the film
from either Katzenberg or other DWA executives on the film. Laporte,
The Men Who Would Be King, p. 388. David Sproxton has denied this was
the case, saying that Park welcomed Katzenberg’s input, including his
suggestion to have Hans Zimmer score the film. David Sproxton, email
exchange with Andrew Spicer and Christopher Meir, 10–15 January 2016.
8 All box office statistics, unless otherwise noted, are taken from
Boxofficemojo.com (accessed 15 December 2015).
9 Both the distribution budget and exhibitors’ cut assumptions are taken
from Jeffrey C. Ulin, The Business of Media Distribution (Los Angeles, CA:
Focal Press, 2014), p. 109.
10 DreamWorks Animation, 2006 Annual Report. Corporate Press Release, p. 50.
11 Kemp, ‘DWA-Aardman Deal Flushed’.
12 Adam Dawtrey, ‘Aardman Awakes from Dream’, Variety, 5 April 2007.
Available at: http://variety.com/2007/voices/columns/aardman-awakes-
from-dream-1117962633/ (accessed 15 December 2015).
13 Exact dollar amounts for the film’s budget vary, with IMDB and
Boxofficmojo.com saying it cost $149 million to produce and several news
outlets reporting it cost $143 million. Following the lead of reporting in the
trade press (e.g. Dawtrey, ‘Aardman Awakes’), I will simply leave the figure
as somewhere in the $140 million range.
14 DreamWorks Animation, ‘2006 Annual Report’, p. 31.
15 Peter Debruge, ‘Quality, Quantity = No Certainty’, Variety,
6 November 2006. Available at: http://variety.com/2006/film/awards/
quality-quantity-no-certainty-1117954109/ (accessed 15 December 2015).
16 Sproxton, Interview with Andrew Spicer, Steve Presence and Christopher
Meir.
17 Dawtrey, ‘Aardman Awakes from Dream’.
18 Sony CEO Michael Lynton quoted in Dawtrey, ‘Aardman Awakes from
Dream’.
19 Peter Debruge, ‘Aardman Charts New Course with Sony’, Variety,
10 December 2010. Available at: http://variety.com/2010/film/news/aardman-
charts-new-course-with-sony-1118029221/(accessed 15 December 2015).
20 The estimation of Sony’s profits, or lack thereof, on these films cannot be
verified in the way that DWA losses on other films were because Sony did
not report on the profitability of these individual films. These are therefore
my own assumptions based on standard industry models drawn from
Ulin 2014, p. 109.
Meir.
22 Debruge, ‘Aardman Charts New Course with Sony’.
23 Sproxton, Email exchange with Andrew Spicer and Christopher Meir.
24 For the sake of clarity, it is important to reiterate that The Pirates! was the
last Aardman film released under the Sony pact.
Meir.
26 Sproxton, Email exchange with Andrew Spicer and Christopher Meir.
27 For more on Studiocanal’s business model and how it corresponds to
shifts in the global film and television industries, see Christopher Meir,
‘Studiocanal and the Changing Industrial Landscape of European Cinema
and Television’, Media Industries iii, no. 1 (2016), pp. 49–63.
Meir.
29 The same formula was at work, for instance, in one of the company’s
breakthrough live-action films, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Thomas
Alfredson, 2011), which was the subject of a famous 1970s TV series
starring Alec Guinness.
30 Wendy Mitchell, ‘Set Report: Shaun the Sheep the Movie’, Screen International,
4 November 2014. Available at: http://www.screendaily.com/features/
set-report-shaun-the-sheep-the-movie/5079341.article?blocktitle=SET-
REPORT&contentID=43109 (accessed 15 December 2015).
Meir.
Meir. See also Mark Burton, Interview with Andrew Spicer and Steve
Presence, 11 November 2015, Bristol, UK.
33 John Hopewell, ‘Legend, Shaun Smash Benchmarks for StudioCanal’,
Variety, 14 September 2015. Available at: http://variety.com/2015/film/news/
legend-shaun-smash-benchmarks-as-studiocanal-universal-music-group-
explore-synergies-exclusive-1201592926/ (accessed 15 December 2015).
Meir. In calling Lionsgate a ‘mini-major’, I am referring to the fact that the
company has achieved vertical integration of production, distribution and
retail sales of their products through a television network they own (Starz).
‘Mini’ refers to the fact that this integration has not been achieved on the
international level comparable to the Hollywood majors.
Meir.
36 John Hopewell, ‘Aardman, Studiocanal Set Early 2018 Release Dates for

Early Man’, Variety, 8 January 2016. Available at: http://variety.com/2016/
film/news/aardman-studiocanal-set-early-2018-release-dates-for-early-
man-1201675068/ (accessed 15 December 2015).
37 Albeit one that may prove to be threatened by Early Man’s relative lack of
box office success.
86
Section Two
Cultural Contexts
88
5
Aardman’s Early Shorts and the British

Social Realist Tradition
Fatemeh Hosseini-Shakib
This chapter deals with the short films made by the studio’s co-founders Peter
Lord and David Sproxton during the early phase of Aardman Animations’
history, spanning from 1978 to 1989. The films they made during this period,
which can be thought of as the studio’s ‘pre-Nick Park phase’, can be seen
as belonging to an almost disremembered history that is not well known to
contemporary viewers familiar with their more recent, popular output such
as the Wallace and Gromit films and Shaun the Sheep. During this early phase
Aardman produced ten films as part of three series – Animated Conversations
(1978), Conversation Pieces (1983) and Lip Synch (1989)1 – which combined
stop-motion plasticine animation with documentary soundtracks of overhead
conversations or recorded interviews. This approach to animation concluded
with Park’s arrival in 1983 and his gradual influence on the creative direction
of the studio. Park’s impact is manifest in the last few films of this period,
especially his Oscar-winning short Creature Comforts (1989).
The films of this period represent a formative and productive phase in
Aardman’s history. They also have specific qualities and characteristics that
make them very different from both their early TV series such as The Amazing
Adventures of Morph (1980/1), and the work they would later become most
closely associated with – the Wallace and Gromit series and their stop-
motion feature films such as Chicken Run (Nick Park and Peter Lord, 2000)
and Shaun the Sheep Movie (Richard Starzak, 2015). These are indeed quite
strange films in their own right, often serious in tone with an unprecedented
penchant for realistic yet animated renditions of ordinary people, events and
actions, emulating the documentary form, with a thematic focus on social
issues. This chapter will explore how a predominantly social and at times
political undertone informs all of the films produced during this phase, and
will argue that, unusually for animation, they form part of a wider cultural
discourse of British social realism. The late 1970s and 1980s neo-Liberalist
Thatcher era in Britain was one of cultural activity stirred by rage, resentment
and criticism towards the conservative social and political atmosphere.

As Samantha Lay observes, ‘the social and political context proved to be a
spur to many working in the arts, and the early to mid-1980s saw general
shift to more left-field politics, and if not completely socially committed, at
least socially aware’.2 The Aardman films discussed in this chapter present an
example of such social comment and commitment.
This period of Aardman’s animation production took place within what
Van Norris has termed the ‘Second Wave’ of British animation. This wave,
which Norris suggests took place between 1979 and 1996, favoured ‘auteur-
driven, politicised, independent’3 work and was facilitated by the changing
media landscape in the UK in the early 1980s. After its launch in 1982,
Channel 4 emerged as a significant supporter, commissioner and broadcaster
of individualistic, experimental and marginal voices and forms, including
animation. This, along with funding from other leftist, anti-Thatcherite
institutions such as the Arts Council, helped to elevate the cultural status of
animation from children’s entertainment and comedy cartoons. Clare Kitson
notes that the channel was founded on the fundamentally unconventional
ideas – espoused by Anthony Smith, the then director of the British Film
Institute and Jeremy Isaacs, the future Chief Executive of Channel 4 – about
a ‘minority TV’ that was neither aiming for a huge audience, nor subject to
the usual compulsory TV scheduling slot lengths. The desire was to cater
for tastes and needs not provided for by the other three channels. Isaacs in
particular had a revolutionary attitude in his desire to create an alternative
form of television with programmes that represented the diversity of
Britain’s multicultural society and challenged the cultural and social status
quo.4 Kitson, who was Commissioning Editor for Animation at Channel 4
from 1989 to 1999, describes how the very marginality of short and
experimental animation as the minority ‘other’ to live-action film, as well
as the limitless visual potential of animation made Isaacs insist on having
animation as part of the broadcast schedule. In 1981 Isaacs was introduced to
David Sproxton at the Cambridge Animation Festival and, after later viewing
Conversation Pieces, he commissioned Aardman to make a similar series in
plasticine and based on real-life conversations for the launch of Channel 4
the following year.5 Unattuned to the lengthy timescales of stop-motion
animation production, Isaacs enthusiastically asked for ten films. Sproxton
and Lord, who at this point still comprised the sum total of the Aardman
staff, talked this down to five shorts which were broadcast on the channel’s
first anniversary in 1983.
Andy Darley has placed the Aardman films made in this period, in
particular Aardman’s Down and Out (1978: Animated Conversations) and
On Probation (1983: Conversation Pieces) as part of a strand of ‘non-fiction
The Early Shorts and British Social Realism 91
animation’ within experimental, individualist animation of the 1980s. He

suggests that this strand represents and comments on ‘feminist, socialist and
anarchist perspectives’ and minority groups of the 1980s and early 1990s.6
For Darley, the legacy of British live-action cinema with keywords such
as ‘documentary’, ‘realism’, ‘independence’ and ‘modernism’ is the main
influence on the animations in question, rather than any tradition of British
cartoon or mainstream animation.7 As such, the films discussed in this
chapter may be described as ‘Social Realist Texts’, a term Samantha Lay
uses to describe British cinema’s ‘enduring relationship with social realism’.8
Lay, like many others, contends that two key historical moments in British
cinema – the 1930s Griersonian Documentary movement and, in the 1950s
and 1960s, Free Cinema and the subsequent British New Wave – and the
subsequent televisual ‘British Kitchen Sink Drama’ conjoin many practices
and preoccupations with social realism.
In general, Lay suggests that a social realist text accommodates some or
all of these tendencies:
1. Independent, low-budget, directed towards the art house and/or video

and television market, and stand in contrast to classical Hollywood
realist cinema.9
2. Involve ‘social extension’, a term borrowed from Raymond Williams,
meaning that they ‘tend to extend the range of characters and topics to
include marginal or previously under-represented groups and issues in
society’.10
3. Politically motivated or at least politically conscious.11
4. Reformist, educational or socially purposive in some way: ‘the choice of
issues and the prevalence of certain themes is bound up with a mission
or a message’.12
5. Show a ‘slice of life’ as it was or is, particularly in the British context.13
6. Favour ‘content over style’, hence the terms Brit-Grit and ‘kitchen sink’
drama, particularly in a British context.14
7. Use an observational style of filmmaking, ‘which tends to produce
distance between text and spectator’.15
Although Lay’s broad definition of the social realist text does not encompass
animation, the common characteristics of social realist cinema she identifies
may be applied to Aardman’s early films. The films were commissioned
by the BBC and Channel 4 as low-budget content for non-commercial
broadcasting. Their content concerns mainly the representation of marginal
characters: ordinary working-class people, the elderly, an ex-convict,
amongst others, in either problem contexts or ordinary, everyday situations
and challenges. A few have explicit or implicit political undertones, and many
are ‘slice of life’ films. In terms of style and aesthetics, they mainly adopt the
‘gritty’ tone familiar from the ‘kitchen sink’ dramas of British realist film,
albeit in an animated version. In depicting typical events and characters in
social contexts through clay puppet animation, and taking their lead from
their documentary soundtracks, these Aardman films emphasize their
content in a way similar to social realist film and, in most cases, avoid the
spectacular effects of both mainstream live-action cinema and animation. As
such, I argue that they can be considered as social realist texts that convey
a serious statement about the social and political conditions of the time
they were made. Furthermore, in common with social realist cinema, these
films are strongly connected to the documentary tradition. The look and
structure of the films, although varying from film to film, mimic the style
of observational or interview documentaries and the films retain a direct
link with reality through their documentary soundtracks. In addition to
mimicking the appearance of documentaries, the films treat the content of
the factual soundtrack in ways to make social comment and address social
problems of the real world as documented by the sound.
There is, however, variation in the films’ realist, observational style of
stop-motion animation. The factual content on which the films are based is
by varying degrees represented as it might have happened in the real world or
imaginatively altered through fictional and at times comic interpretations of
the events being relayed. This varies from the more straightforwardly realist
rendering of characters in contexts familiar from British social realism, that
lip-synch the recorded conversations in On Probation and Down and Out, to
films such as Sales Pitch and Late Edition that also use an observational style
of filming, but are more light-hearted in subject and tone. In other films,
cartoon conventions begin to encroach on the observational documentary
style, for example the fictional scenarios and events that are absent from the
soundtrack in films such as Palmy Days and Early Bird. In some other later
films, such as War Story, the visual jokes that encroach into the memories
of a Second World War veteran push the film’s logic into the cartoon world.
Ultimately, in Creature Comforts, visual realism is abandoned and the
interviewees are represented as talking animals.
As television began to dominate in the 1970s, social realist film found
new forms, dimensions and implications, including soap operas and light-
hearted documentaries that have more entertainment-based formats and
engage with their social content in a less serious or political way.16 This change
of direction, and the impact of television, becomes evident in Aardman’s
later films of this period that move away from the more serious engagement
with social criticism of the earliest films and opt instead for a more comic or
parodic encounter with everyday situations. These later films engage with the
more banal aspects of social life, adopting the documentary techniques seen
in televisual formats, such as the interviews and vox pops in War Story and
Creature Comforts.
Claymation as observational documentary

In Down and Out, the story of an old man asking for a free meal at a Salvation
Army Hostel is narrated via realistic clay puppets in an approximately realistic
setting and utilizes shot-reverse-shot and other conventions of continuity
editing. The ‘observational’ camera stays indifferent to and removed from
an everyday life event as it unfolds. The animation avoids any stylistic
exaggeration or other codes that might connect it to a cartoon tradition. The
documentary sound is evidential of the reality of the situation, and the film
as a whole comes across as a genuine attempt to remediate a troublesome
dialogue in which a poor man who is singled out for his cunning yet painful
attempt to convince the Salvation Army officer of his entitlement to a free
meal.17 A similar approach is seen in On Probation, which reconstructs
a meeting between a group of ex-offenders and their probation officers. In a
similar way to Down and Out, this film observes one man’s discomfort as
he makes his case, in vain, for a leave of absence from a group meeting. The
animated observational style functions to unfold the event, paying particular
attention to the body language of the characters in the scene. Sales Pitch
presents a less hostile world, in which an elderly couple chat with a polite
door-to-door salesman from whom they have no intention of buying. This
film displays an attention to banal detail – some of which is extraneous
to the main narrative, such as the nosy neighbour peering down from an
upstairs window and the dog snoozing in the shade of a wall – that helps
create a nostalgia for the British setting of a bygone era and the gentle social
courtesies played out by the characters.
These three films have a common theme of public rejection: the homeless
man denied his meal ticket; the ex-convict refused leave to visit his brother,
the salesman failing to secure a new customer. In this way, the films are all
subtle tales of disappointment and humiliation. They also function as ‘social
extension’ in the vein of social realism through their documentary-style
representation of slices of lives of those that were rarely shown on screen.
The tribulations of human existence also underscore Late Edition, in which
the overheard conversations of the people working in a magazine office
become the backdrop for the imagined travails of a writer trying to finish
an article for the next edition. While the film remains a close simulation
of a live-action observational documentary, Aardman introduce a character

and story thread that was not necessarily present in the real-life scenario the
film represents. The film also uses establishing and concluding shots and a
fictionalized passage of time during which the writer struggles with his piece
late into the night. The conversations of the editorial staff discussing the order
of the headlines are marginalized in comparison to the story of the writer.
Here Aardman begin to challenge the idea of ‘voice’ as the key representative
of people and their ideas and suggest that those who speak little or who have
no voice or are not heard are just as significant as those who are more vocal.
In addition, Late Edition draws attention to a trait present in all of the films:
the tension between the aesthetic copying of documentaries in claymation
and the soundtracks that use recordings of real people, either in the form of
‘eavesdropped’ conversations or interviews recorded specifically for the film.
In Down and Out and On Probation, for example, our attention is drawn
to the way these two things, animated imagery and documentary sound,
which are of a different order, are added together. The dialectic between the
two is not one of immersion or transparent realism. Instead, the films create
a reflexive effect that draws attention to the films’ liminal status between
documentary and fiction.
The films also invite reflexivity in a different way that begins to become
apparent in the three examples examined so far, in particular, in Late Edition,
where the implication is that the story being told is of equal significance to
how it is told in visual terms. As we will see, in other films from this period,
the juxtaposition of documentary sound and animated visuals is reinforced
by visual embellishments that stray beyond simply reconstructing the scene
of the soundtracks’ recording. This reflexivity contributes to the films’ social
commentary in a way that both depends and expands upon the conventions
of British social realism.
From fictional banality to cartoon vox pops

A gradual change from documentary conventions towards more fictional
representations based on the documentary audio recordings can be identified
in two films from the second series made by Aardman: Conversation Pieces.
In Early Bird, the sounds of a morning radio programme are accompanied
by surreal images of a claymation DJ waking up in the studio and performing
his morning ablutions while on air. The filmmakers’ visual engagement with
the soundtrack often has nothing to do with what might have happened
in the studio, and is full of surreal events and amusing flights of fancy. The
DJ is shown getting up from a built-in bed hidden in the wall of the studio,
brushing his teeth and preparing a hearty cooked breakfast while he reads
the headlines, plays music and engages in the usual banal banter of an early
morning local radio show. At the end of his show, the DJ hands the mic
over to a parrot as he leaves the studio. As such, the film adopts a fantastical
approach and does not directly function as social commentary via social
extension in the way that the earlier films did.
Palmy Days goes even further in fictionalizing its soundtrack of a
group of pensioners chatting over afternoon tea, accompanied by images
suggesting that they are shipwrecked on a desert island. The raggedly clad
friends are seen nibbling on seaweed and fish in a ramshackle cabin. This
bears no relation to the dialogue that is heard on the soundtrack, in which
they share their previous, mostly banal, holiday and travel experiences.18
There are many surreal moments or imaginary elements within the story’s
apparently seamless narrative, which in formal terms is being ‘observed’ by
the camera. In this way, the ‘real’ voices of the chattering group become a
means for creative play with imagery in a similar way to Early Bird. Whilst
not participating in the overt social commentary of the earlier films, Palmy
Days presents a gentle critique of British social niceties, as well as a subtle
celebration of British grit and determination, through the absurd scenario of
the shipwrecked group adhering to the social conventions of afternoon tea
despite their circumstances.
Such playful and fictional approaches become more fully realized in
Creature Comforts, the short Nick Park made for the Conversation Pieces series,
which parodies vox pop interviews, that staple of television broadcasting,
through the pairing of animated zoo animals with documentary recordings
of real people talking about both their own living conditions and those of
animals living in captivity. This turns the film into a comedy in which the
reality of the voices heard is juxtaposed with the animated animals to which
they are attributed. This is at times poignant, such as when a jaguar cooped
in a cinder block enclosure talks longingly about how there is more space to
live in Brazil. At other times, the short uses animation for purely comedic
ends, such as when a bird twangs the beak of another bird while their friend,
voiced by a child, talks in the foreground. Yet, the film still owes much to
the traditions of British social realism because it astutely uses the recorded
voices in conjunction with the often-playful animation to reveal the attitudes
of the British pubic in all their everyday ordinariness. Similar to Palmy Days
and Early Bird, Creature Comforts is a light-hearted and at times bittersweet
social commentary on British society.
Honess Roe (2013) has usefully observed the importance of the
relationship between the voices of real people and their animated
realizations in animated documentaries. She adopts Steven Connor’s term
‘vocalic bodies’ to argue that in films such as the Conversation Pieces, these
are not animated characters with added voices. Rather, these are anonymous
voices given bodies and identities by the artistic observation and rendition
of human (or, in the case of Creature Comforts, animal) movements and
action.19 As such, in these Aardman films the animation not only remediates
the content of the conversation, but also offers an additional subtle
observation of human emotions and character through the close attention
to detail in animating the face, facial expressions, lip-synching and body
language. As such, the figuration of the characters and their gestures transmit
something of the reality of the mostly social yet also deeply personal human
condition. It may be argued that the realistic animation in these films with
all its subtle renditions of facial expression penetrates the surface level of
what is represented and connects to a deeper reality, through seeming at
the same time both very familiar and close to home and reflexively distinct
from reality. This tendency is apparent in all of the films being discussed
in this chapter, but is particularly prevalent in the films that juxtapose the
documentary soundtracks with animated scenes that riff off the recorded
conversations in flights of fancy that are fantastical yet still presented in the
style of observational documentary.
Collaged and paratextual narrative

In Confessions of a Foyer Girl (1978), Going Equipped and War Story
(both 1989) the homogenous aesthetics and seamless narrative of the
examples discussed earlier are replaced by a structure that intersperses
imagery of a different order into the scenes of clay animation. This extra-
diegetic imagery, which is diverse across the three films, serves to represent
characters’ memories and trains of thought. Although this technique may
seem to separate the films from the real-world scenarios recorded on the
soundtrack, in fact, similarly to the flights of fancy discussed in the previous
section, the juxtaposition of the live-action footage with the animated visuals
and documentary sound contributes to the films’ social commentary.
Confessions of a Foyer Girl portrays the mundane conversation of two
women working in the foyer of a cinema. It is the first Aardman film made
with pre-recorded documentary sound, and although the muffled and
at times unintelligible voices of the two women clearly suggest a real-life,
overheard conversation, the visuals are not represented in a straightforwardly
documentary style. Instead, the images of the women are interspersed with
archival, live-action material that connects only loosely with the characters’
dialogue and includes examples of spatial metamorphosis. At one point,
while the main character talks of how exhausted she is from work, the foyer
setting behind her is replaced by live-action footage of British industry,
familiar from the British documentary and social realist films discussed at
the beginning of this chapter. Later, when she talks of wanting to return home
quickly after finishing work, the scene cuts to live-action footage of a car
screeching at high speed around an urban landscape. The transformation of
the main animated setting to other live-action spaces disrupts the ‘seamless’
realism of the narrative and its spatiotemporal continuity as the unity of
space is interrupted by the intervention of live-action fragments. These
live-action sections are not historical evidence and are not integrated into
the ‘main’ body of the film’s clay animation. They are also only tangentially
linked to the women’s words and at times reflect only a loose train of thought
based on the conversation, such as when a discussion of beauty face masks
is followed by a live-action montage of various faces, from a figure wearing a
monstrous papier-mâché mask to an image of Mount Rushmore.
Furthermore, the opening titles and accompanying theme music, whose
bold typography and funky tones are reminiscent of exploitation cinema,
create a paradox when set against the non-fictional setting and grainy
visuals subsequently presented to the viewer. The tone suggested by the
film’s provocative and sensationalist title is in stark opposition to its actual
content. The majority of Confessions conforms to the mundane ‘slice of life’
subject matter peculiar to the tradition of British social realism and contrary
to the expectations set up by the title, not many confessions are made.
However, the ‘formalist’ approach of mixing clay animation and grainy
live-action footage and the contrast between the film’s opening and closing
titles and theme music and the film’s content, along with the aesthetic and
spatial disorientation of its collage of visual imagery provides a reflection on
the realities that are hidden from view and disguised behind the mundane
nature of everyday life. The superficiality of an actress represented in a comic,
cartoonish way on a poster in the cinema lobby is counterposed by the ‘real-
ness’ of the foyer girls, despite the fact that they are clay models.
In terms of visual aesthetic, War Story also mixes different categories
of imagery; in this case an interview represented in present time and
flashbacks. The old man who is the subject of the film is initially shown
against a simple black background, speaking in a strong Bristol accent to
an off-screen, unheard interviewer. This short scene fades into an animated
reconstruction of the old man’s work at the Bristol Aeroplane Company
(BAC) during the War. The gently ironic and exaggerated take on the man’s
memories is established from the outset. In an early scene, he is seen ‘sleep-
walking’ home, eyes closed and dragging his body in a caricatured, rhythmic
way. Over the scene, his voice describes his tired return from a night shift.
He opens the front door, tramples both the dog waiting expectantly at the
door for his master’s return and his gas-mask-wearing wife, who is scrubbing
the stairs. The film continues in this pattern with the interview scenes that
represent a neutral depiction of this familiar documentary set-up intercut
with a whimsically comic account of the past.
In this way, the film provides a counterpoint to the usual reverence
with which war veterans’ memories are represented – an attitude that is
underscored, in a similar way to Confessions of a Foyer Girl, by the contrast
between the film’s opening and closing music and credits, which evoke the
triumphant, epic style of a typical, bombastic war film. Aardman’s War Story,
however, has none of the ingredients of a typical war story and instead of
the exciting exploits of a celluloid hero presents the relatively mundane
recollections of an ordinary man. This may be read in an ironic way: as
the film gently poking fun at the typical aggrandizement that surrounds the
Second World War in British culture by placing undue emphasis on the
ordinary and unheroic. Yet, at the same time, the film may also be read as an
indirect social commentary through highlighting the everyday challenges of
living during wartime. The man’s final remarks about taking cover from air
raids in the coal cellar comment on the discomfort of the situation, but in an
uncomplaining way that demonstrates that most typical traditional British
trait of keeping calm and carrying on: ‘… and I tell you, it weren’t no fun and
games to be sat on coal … “it’s agony, Ivy,” I said, “agony, Ivy”’.
Initially, Going Equipped might seem to be a straightforward claymation
animated version of a talking head interview – a man sits at a table and
describes his past, intercut with flashbacks to his childhood and later time in
prison that are realized in dark, grainy footage. This flashback material is of
indeterminate provenance occupying a liminal position between live-action,
animation and abstract imagery. Paul Wells has noted that the ‘ordinariness’
with which the ex-convict is portrayed contrasts with the mythologized
and sometimes glamorized version of villains in both conventional fictional
live-action and animation.20 In this way, the film, and its subject, has much
in common with the types of British social realism discussed at the outset
of this chapter.21 Yet, it moves beyond directly mimicking the aesthetic of
the documentary interview through the use of both the dramatic effects
in the interview scene and the visually untethered flashbacks. The interview
takes place at night, in a room lit only by the street lamps whose light seeps
into the room through an unshaded window. The empty setting bereft of
all objects seems neither connected with the man nor a typical interview
space; it is large with almost no furniture except for the desk and chair the
man is using. Furthermore, he is frequently shown in long shots, distant
from the camera and framed by the setting to emphasize the largeness and
emptiness of the space he occupies. Unlike conventional interviews that use

a ‘dead’ background for their setting, the interview space in Going Equipped
is a dynamically ‘animated’ place where things happen and information is
communicated through spatial interactions. For instance, the visual effects
of approaching cars’ headlights and rain on the window, which at times casts
shadows on the man’s face, are repeated throughout the film. The intermittent
light source from the passing cars suddenly and sporadically floods the half-
lit interior with dazzling light, washing out the man’s face and other objects
in the room, creating dynamic and dramatic shadows and extremes of light
and dark.
This dramatized, animated space, can be read as representative of the
man’s state of mind. Links can be made between the film’s ‘poetic’ use of
space and what Andrew Higson (1996) identifies as poetic realism in the
British New Wave films such as Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (Karel
Reisz, 1960) and A Taste of Honey (Tony Richardson, 1961). In his essay
‘Space, Place, Spectacle: Landscape and Townscape in the “Kitchen Sink”
Film’ (1996), Higson observes how the deployment of urban landscapes and
townscapes of the industrial North where these films were set adds to the
‘documentary realism’ of the narrative, while simultaneously producing a
romanticized, poetic effect.22 Higson sees a tension between these two factors,
which eventually elevates place to ‘a metaphor for the state of the mind of
the character’23 He thinks many of these landscape shots in particular and the
“ordinariness” or gloominess of these films’ atmosphere in general may also
be seen as a pleasure to the eye, as spectacle, creating a series of tensions:
‘between the drabness of the settings (hence the “kitchen sink”) and their
“poetic” quality’, between ‘documentary realism’ and ‘romantic atmosphere’,
and between social problem and pleasurable spectacle.24 What distinguishes
these ‘quality’ British films from Hollywood narrative films, then, is a claim
of ‘surface realism’ – a loyal depiction of ‘visual and aural surfaces of “the
British way of life”’ that involves a ‘fetishisation of certain iconographic
details’.25 Yet, these films are also committed to a realism of social content
that Higson calls ‘moral realism’, by which he means an incorporation of and
commitment to a ‘particular set of social problems and solutions, a particular
social formation’.26
In drawing attention to such poetic realism as an implicitly romanticized
and spectacular effect within a type of cinema that prioritizes content
over form, Higson divides discourses of poetic realism from documentary
realism. Thus, ‘documentary realism’, which was ‘assigned to the more prosaic
renderings of surface realism and moral realism’,27 is defined in opposition
to poetic realism that ‘in fact transcends ordinariness, which makes the
ordinary strange, beautiful – poetic’.28 Aesthetics therefore find a new position
within the social realist text, which in turn makes way for a more personal
vision and reflection by the artist. Hence, such a strand of realism results
from an inevitable tension ‘between the sociological and the aesthetic, the
moral and the poetic’.29 Higson’s conceptualization of poetic realism provides
a productive context in which to consider Aardman’s early short films. While
their observational style works as a shortcut to their ‘documentary-ness’,30
the unpretentious, simple and non-glossy settings and characters in everyday
situations evoke a poetic realism in the tradition of British social realism as
described by Higson.
Going Equipped can be seen as implementing such ‘poetic’ features
through its focus on spatial qualities. The miserable, bleak space of the
interview scene transcends to a spectacle and a pleasurable visual experience
whilst the dark and empty room becomes a metaphor for the man’s loneliness
and helpless life. In addition, the flashback memories in the film, both of
his messy childhood home and criminal adulthood in prison, convey an
atmosphere of claustrophobia, coldness and gloom. This is a world of old
objects and rough material, of clutter and mess. The man recalls prison
in the same manner as his childhood, revealing a preoccupation with the
detail of things, textures, sounds and smells, mainly linked to specific
‘places’ as fetishized, intensified paratextual images of ugliness, murkiness
and claustrophobia that extend and make visible the man’s experience. Such
poetic realism is evident in other films from this period that as a whole can
be said to make the ordinary strange and, in their own way, create a spectacle
of the everyday through its reconstruction and reimagination in claymation.
Conclusion
In a period extending more than a decade that coincided with a very specific
historical era in British history, politics and media, Aardman evolved from an
experimental, low-tech and low-budget animation studio to an established
institution that would become a national icon of British animation. The
films of this formative period are characterized by a preoccupation with
realistic style of clay animation, an allusion to social themes and a gradual
transformation from serious work that copied the look of live-action
observational documentaries to comical parodies of such genres as well as
moving from eavesdropped dialogues to controlled interviews. These films
can also be seen as studies of British society and identity through their close
observations and animated representations of British social interactions and
individual mannerism. Thus, the films offer a close simulation of typical
British subjects in situations that are sometimes banal and sometimes
troubled, portrayed through minute detailing of facial and body language

performed for a stop-motion camera. In this, it may be suggested, an era of
Britishness is ‘recorded’, ‘inscribed’ or indeed documented.
Yet, these films also represent a period of trial and error for Aardman.
This early phase may be seen as a demonstration of Peter Lord and David
Sproxton’s concern with social reality, before they moved to more fictional
and conventional formats that nevertheless remain highly British in
tone and style. These artistic endeavours remain as evidence of a period
of experimentation in British TV animation, a period in which Aardman
inscribed and documented some of the main concerns and passions of
British people of the 1980s as well their mannerism, ways of life, language
and behaviour. As such, the films in their own way function as a sort of
animated ethnographic document of Britain from the late 1970s to the
late 1980s.
With the gradual move from realism towards reflexive modernism, the
films also reveal a gradual shift from live-action influences towards cartoon
conventions. Lay defines British social realism of the 1980s as prototypically
hybrid: ‘with a disparate range of directors, each with distinctive styles and
ways of representing “life as it is,” working in film and television, making
documentaries and fiction films, in feature length and short forms’.31 The
Aardman films discussed in this chapter are hybrids that rely on formats of
live-action filmmaking and subject matters that were deeply rooted in British
culture at the time of their making. Further, they use animation as a vehicle
to show parallel lines of information with space becoming a paratextual
device of reflection in Confessions of a Foyer Girl, War Story and Going
Equipped. The silent events depicted in the imagery without equivalent in
the soundtrack, the voiceless characters that are given the main role, and the
metaphorical mindscapes of the characters mean that these films transcend
from the simple copying of live-action social realist films to multifaceted
structures that find a style and genre of their own. Hence, besides the nostalgic
impulses, and whether serious or comic in tone, they are ‘poetic’ films that
reflect upon ordinary people and unimportant events that nevertheless were
directly linked to the realities of British life in the 1980s.
Notes
1 Animated Conversations (1978) include Confessions of a Foyer Girl and
Down and Out. Conversation Pieces (1983) include On Probation, Sales
Pitch, Palmy Days, Early Bird and Late Edition.
Lip Synch (1989) includes Next, Ident, Going Equipped, Creature

Comforts and War Story. Next (dir. Barry Purves) and Ident (dir. Richard
Goleszowski, 1990), along with the other short Aardman produced during
this period, Babylon (dir. Peter Lord and David Sproxton, 1986), do not
combine documentary sound and animation and as such fall outside the
scope of this chapter.
2 Samantha Lay, British Social Realism: From Documentary to Brit Grit
(London: Wallflower Press, 2002), p. 82.
3 Van Norris, British Television Animation 1997–2010: Drawing Comic
Tradition (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), p. 29.
4 Clare Kitson, British Animation: The Channel 4 Factor (Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press, 2008), pp. 20 and 21.
5 Ibid., p. 27.
6 Andrew Darley, ‘History and the British Non-Fiction Animation’,
conference paper given at 14th annual Society for Animation Studies
Conference, Glendale, California, 26–29 September 2002.
7 Ibid.
8 Lay, British Social Realism, pp. 1–2.
9 Ibid., p. 8.
10 Ibid., p. 9.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid., p. 13.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid., p. 22.
16 Samantha Lay observes that after the 1960s filmmakers of the Free Cinema
and New Wave who continued to make social realist films, including Ken
Loach, gradually and inevitably changed direction towards newer formats,
making films for television instead, which entailed making film for a
different kind of audience. By the 1990s fewer and fewer of these kinds of
film were being made for the cinema. See Lay, British Social Realism, p. 101.
17 In fact, this scenario was chosen because it was the only usable material
the animators captured when they went to record at the Salvation Army
centre that day. See Andy Lane, Creating Creature Comforts (London:
Boxtree, 2003), p. 49.
18 The decision to ‘let the design of the animation pull against the dialogue’
came about through Sproxton and Lord’s concern that the conversation
‘lacked any interest at all’. Lane, Creating Creature Comforts, p. 52.
19 Annabelle Honess Roe, Animated Documentary (London: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2013), p. 78.
20 Paul Wells, ‘The Beautiful Village and the True Village’, in P. Wells (ed.), Art
& Animation (London: Academy Group, 1997), p. 110.
21 The subject of Going Equipped recalls the male protagonists of the British
New Wave films of the 1950s: petty thieves and rebellious youngsters with
a poor working-class background and a neglected childhood who are

depicted as ordinary men whose lives are worth examining.
22 Andrew Higson, ‘Space, Place, Spectacle: Landscape and Townscape in the
“Kitchen Sink” Film’, Screen 24, no. 4–5 (July 1984), p. 3.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid.
27 Ibid., p. 4.
28 Ibid., p. 5 (emphasis in original)
29 Ibid., 6.
30 Paul Ward, Documentary: The Margins of Reality (London: Wallflower
Press, 2005), p. 4.
31 Lay, British Social Realism, p. 89.
104
6
A Darker Heartland: Otherness,

Dysfunction and the Uncanny in
Aardman’s Short Films
Jane Batkin
Home and belonging are familiar themes within Aardman’s animated

films, with Peter Lord announcing that Wallace and Gromit remain their
‘heartland’.1 Here, individual identity is embedded in nostalgic national
culture to form stories of hope and achievement of the everyman within an
Aardman universe with which audiences have become comfortably familiar.
However, a number of the studio’s animated short films, with their themes of
Otherness, isolation and dysfunction, offer a startlingly dark juxtaposition to
the warm, homely worlds of Wallace and Gromit and Creature Comforts (Nick
Park, 1989). Early shorts Babylon (Peter Lord and David Sproxton, 1986) and
Going Equipped (Peter Lord, 1990) depict apocalyptic fears and recollections
of a life of crime. This darker oeuvre was later revisited with Steve Box’s Stage
Fright in 1997 and Luis Cook’s award-winning short The Pearce Sisters, a
dysfunctional story of fish and men gutting, in 2007. These worlds reveal
a nightmarish underbelly to Aardman’s more recognizable heartland. This
chapter will explore these less familiar films and their surreal terrains of
Otherness and isolation, where Aardman’s familiar nostalgia is contested
and themes of difference, dysfunction and violence pervade the narratives.
Where the familiar shifts and is forced aside, a space opens up for the Other
to replace it.
Lifeless objects brought into motion and often jerky movements mean that
the ‘evocation of the uncanny’ inherent to animation is seen most typically
in stop-motion,2 which lends itself more to the abject than other forms of the
medium. This connection between stop-motion and the uncanny has been
observed by such scholars as Suzanne Buchan, Robyn Farrell and Nicholas
Royle.3 This is hinted at in Nick Park’s films, particularly in The Wrong
Trousers (1993) and its somnambulistic scene wherein Wallace sleepwalks to
the robbery, his body bending and contorting strangely. However, this film, as
is typical of Aardman’s mainstream output, offers more comfort than unease.

For Steven Allen, Aardman’s features, such as Curse of the Were-Rabbit
(2005), exude a childlike artificiality through the clunky, fingerprinted clay
characters, meaning that these films do not evoke the uncanny in the same
way as stop-motion films such as Corpse Bride (Tim Burton and MIke Johson,
2005), whose characters are smooth, pale and stylized. Rather, in Aardman
films ‘the form reassures’ through its childlike shape and texture, which is
‘suggestive of the fantasy of a child’s imaginings’ and, as such, evokes a sense
of familiarity and homeliness.4 As a result, the concept of the uncanny has
not been widely linked to Aardman’s films. Home – the sense of belonging
– and its relationship with the uncanny, however, are thrown into a different
relief in the short films discussed in this chapter.
Aardman, then, is a studio of contrasts, offering juxtapositions within its
canon of work that includes both the familiar, homespun world of Wallace and
Gromit and also a sinister, Other world in which any sense of cosy belonging
is replaced with isolation and dysfunctionality. Character development
within these worlds of difference is stagnated and repressed; protagonists are
unable to evolve, adapt or escape. The sense of home, place and belonging
that are typical identifying characteristics of Aardman’s work are inverted
in the studio’s experimental short films discussed in this chapter – Self is
suppressed, and Otherness emerges with the uncanny to create a distinctly
darker heartland.
Apocalypse and the ‘Other’

Van Norris discusses the widening scope of television in the UK in
the 1980s and 1990s, with the emergence of non-terrestrial channels and the
subsequent shifting emphasis from viewers to consumers. This era demanded
a reorganization of Channel 4 and the BBC and their programming remit in
order to compete in this new media landscape. He claims that the animations
that were the result of this change were products of this newly fragmented
and more varied viewing network.5 Clare Kitson, who was Channel 4’s
Commissioning Editor for Animation from the late 1980s to 1990s,
maintains that the films produced by Aardman and other animators during
this time helped to cement animation as part of the channel’s ‘actual identity’.6
Aardman’s Conversation Pieces (1983) and the Sweet Disaster series (1986),
which featured Lord and Sproxton’s short Babylon, pushed at boundaries
between the familiar and the unknown, producing arresting and challenging
content that depicted gritty encounters in dystopian settings. Much of the
animation broadcast by Channel 4 during this period reflected its ethos of
A Darker Heartland 107
providing innovative and controversial content, and the channel was eager
to champion experimental animations that would have been otherwise
marginalized for their bold, often-unsettling themes.7
Conversation Pieces, a series of five short films, was commissioned by Paul
Madden, Kitson’s predecessor at Channel 4, and aired in 1983, scheduled
ambitiously in a prime-time week-long run against the BBC’s Nine O’clock
News. The films, vignettes of ordinary life based on recorded conversations in
a similar vein to the two Animated Conversations films made for BBC Bristol
in 1977 and 1978, explored aspects of British identity and helped to establish
Aardman as a commercial studio. Subsequently, Channel 4 broadcast the
darker, more haunting Sweet Disaster series in 1986.8 Aardman’s contribution
to the series, Babylon, represents what Irene Kotlarz calls ‘a thoughtful, darker
side of Aardman’s sensibility’.9 Although, we can argue that this darker side
had already been present as an undercurrent in the earlier Conversation films.
The Sweet Disaster films reflect the period of global unrest in the 1980s in
which they were made; political anxiety about Reagan’s election to the White
House, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and disagreements about the
Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty led to what many termed a new Cold War
and the ‘reappearance of the haunting spectre of a nuclear holocaust’.10 Philip
Sabin argues that Britain was instrumental in creating this international
anxiety about nuclear war, with its angst about a potential Third World War
seen as equalling that of the West as a whole.11 Babylon reflects this political
climate, and all of the Sweet Disaster films represent various animated
apocalyptic imaginaries.
Babylon is experimental in its vision, and the soundtrack’s acoustic
whispers of ‘peace and profit’ echo through a dark, apocalyptic world. The
Doomsday clock is pointing to 11.52 pm, thirty years in the future. The film
opens to haunting choral music before depicting a nuclear explosion; the
setting is a destroyed metropolis, awash with green skies and dust. A man
in a dinner jacket smokes a cigarette on a rooftop beneath circling vultures.
Inside, a formal, political gathering takes place, the buzz of conversation
interspersed with images of a map depicting a world at war. The man on
the rooftop finishes his cigarette, picks up a white cloth and silver tray
and returns inside, where a bullish guest assaults another and growls
animalistically at him whilst drinks are served to the diners. The bully grows
in stature as a speech commences, swelling with each word, until suddenly
he explodes, gushing blood and bullets over the dinner guests. The waiter,
unperturbed, returns to the roof and its apocalyptic skies, puts down his
white cloth and watches the vultures soaring overhead. Babylon reflects the
xenophobic and paranoid anxieties of nuclear war in Britain through its war
room speech and the dual aggression and fear of its dinner guests. The film is
also an indictment of the class system, depicting the privileged as destructive

decision makers, whilst the disconnected waiter simply walks away, the sole
survivor.
The film’s narrative depicts the individual through its characterization
of the bully and the bullied. Whilst tormentor and victim would become a
common device in Aardman’s later work, such as Preston and Shaun in A
Close Shave (1995), in their experimental short films there is a palpable sense
of Otherness that sets this work apart from the more recognizable canon of
films. This sense comes through the construction of both character and place.
The bully in Babylon is positioned as Other, in part through his animalistic
behaviour – he appears to be human, but is not; he growls as he bullies
and his ‘monster’ status is elevated as he sits among the diners, instructing
his victim beside him, until he bursts open in Švankmajer-esque style and
devastates the environment and its occupants. For Richard Kearney, the no
man’s land of Otherness is a place that allows the monster to flourish.12 The
strange world of Babylon can be thought of as such a place.
Due to its narrative and its material and aesthetic realization, Babylon
lacks the reassurance found in Wallace and Gromit films such as The Curse
of the Were-Rabbit. Instead, the violent nature and Otherness of its bully
and the roughly hewn figures of its war room (bearing little resemblance to
the clay characters and sets of Park’s work) create a disturbing vision and the
film lingers in the mind long after it has ended. Its surreal world and damned
characters suggest Otherness and the uncanny and perpetuate a haunting
darkness and a dystopian nightmare with no suggestion of resolution. There
is no home here. In the world of Wallace and Gromit, family and the familiar
are frequently threatened by the outsider, but home remains intact at all
times. In Babylon, however, home, place and belonging have been erased,
and the Other resides within this alien setting.
The familiar becoming unfamiliar is key to understanding the
uncanny and its relationship to the home, and Nicholas Royle states that
the uncanny may imply ‘the revelation of something unhomely at the heart
of hearth and home’.13 For Freud, the uncanny was evoked through the
familiar (heimlich) becoming unfamiliar (unheimlich) and the home itself
represents both a ‘dream and dread’ as a trusted place that can hide the
uncanny in its shadows.14 However, in the Aardman films such as Babylon,
home and belonging are either entirely absent or replaced with empty,
shadowy spaces that offer no comfort. These films offer a contrast to the ideas
of home and belonging that are established so strongly in their more familiar
output and also align with Royle’s notion of the uncanny as homeliness
being uprooted.15 Mike Featherstone suggests, ‘to know who you are means
to know where you are’.16 As home and belonging are crucial signifiers of
self and identity, when they are removed and are absent, as in Babylon,
Otherness and the uncanny are able to creep into the void that opens up.
In the absence of home and comfort, these short films construct unfamiliar
spaces that become Aardman’s alternative heartland. Place is contested
and identity unhinged as the characters within these worlds remain lost and
adrift, with no tangible ‘familiar’ to cling to.
Crime and dysfunctionality

In 1989, Clare Kitson succeeded Madden as Commissioning Editor for
animation at Channel 4 and launched the Four-Mations strand to showcase
both British and international animation. The Aardman series of five short
films titled Lip Synch (1989) was part of this strand and included three films
that, in a similar vein to the earlier Animated Conversations and Conversations
Pieces, animated recorded conversations.
Going Equipped is the darkest film of the Lip Synch series. It features an
ex-convict who sits playing cards as he reminisces about a childhood of
neglect and poverty and how it led him to a life of crime. He sits in a dimly lit
room as rain trickles down its window, its pattern creating a marbling effect
on the walls. Cutaways reveal a disquieting past, exteriors of derelict spaces
and interiors displaying chaos rather than comfort, as he admits that he was
stealing at the age of seven: ‘it’s called creeping … you had to creep out there,
take what you could’. He calls himself ‘a little thief ’ and a smile flits across
his face at the memory of the childhood status he achieved because of this.
The streaks of rain from the window reflect across his features as he talks,
creating artificial tears that run down his face. As he recalls further crimes,
the images of his past change to the interior of a prison, with its steel dinner
trays and cold hard toilet seats, the rain becomes a tap dripping into a sink.
He recalls prison life and the smell and sound of his fellow inmates: ‘You’ve
got to listen to them piss’.
Going Equipped is a quiet, thoughtful film that focuses on the
dysfunctionality of its protagonist. Whilst it may be viewed as a nostalgic
piece of regret and loss, through the character’s tone of voice and story, it
is also an indictment of British society and its criminal justice system,
revealed through the debilitating effect of prison on the petty thief. He is
trapped within the system and cannot escape it. The film was made at the
end of the 1980s, a decade of power, opportunity and greed. The film’s focus
on the emptiness of spaces, the childhood home, the back yard, the shop and
prison itself with an undertow of violence reflects the idea of the 1980s as a
paradox.17 Graham Stewart claims that while Thatcher’s Britain was looked
on with admiration by some, others were horrified by the social divisions

that became pronounced in this era. In an interview with Douglas Keay for
Woman’s Own in 1987, Thatcher herself claimed that achieving a good living,
with a good income, was the ‘driving engine’ of life and that there was ‘no
such thing as society’.18 The crime rate rose during this era, in particular
burglary, which peaked at the end of the 1980s in response to poor economic
conditions.19
Going Equipped evokes stealing as an act that remains invisible – hinted
at rather than revealed visually – as well as the consequences of the thief ’s
actions. The theme of loss is prevalent through the empty spaces, and
amplified through the use of documentary audio material of an interview
with the ex-convict. The quietness of the film implies stagnation of the thief ’s
mindset; he is trapped by the social and criminal justice system that created
him, and this evokes empathy for his situation; where there is silence there
should be noise, and where there is emptiness there should be people. In the
political climate of its time, Going Equipped is poignant in its revelations of
Britain’s social divisions. Aardman depicts this in part through the thief ’s
own dysfunctionality. The ex-convict is regretful about his past and uncertain
about his future; he exists in a vacuum of immobility, unable to escape his
situation, as he awaits the next card life will deal him. Rather than portraying
him as a character who can move forward, Peter Lord dwells on the past
and present as inhibitors to freedom. Going Equipped remains a tale of the
dysfunctional: the ex-convict is trapped, both emotionally and physically,
within a 1980s landscape of a divided Britain. He is a victim of, and has no
way out of, the system.
Place and lack of home again become significant in this film and echo
Babylon’s visions of a no man’s land where monsters roam. Memories are
inhibited and the emptiness of remembering creates a void in which flashbacks
are abstract and the space of the home remains elusive. This ambiguity of
place begins to lean towards the uncanny: home here is envisaged as barren
and devoid of lively memories. If the ex-convict does not know where he
is, he does not know who he is. His own memories of his childhood and
its ‘creeping’ are stifled, revealed through the scenes of the empty spaces of
his childhood haunts and of prison life and inmates, rather than his own
physical presence within these spaces. These voids in Going Equipped mean
that the character’s identity is compromised, just as the absence of home
in Babylon becomes a negator of identity. As Nigel Rapport and Andrew
Dawson state: ‘home … is where one best knows oneself ’;20 without home,
or familiarity of place, these worlds become empty and stagnant, and they
allow difference and isolation to creep in. The uncanny is created through
Aardman’s construction of the unfamiliarity of ‘home’ and the Other; home

is uprooted and characters are left to roam in a no man’s land.
Monsters and victims

The dark themes of the Conversation Pieces and Lip Synch series were less
prevalent in Nick Park’s films, which revealed a more romanticized world
steeped in nostalgic, cultural references and parody (of Hammer Horror and
Hitchcock thrillers, for example). Aardman, at this point, was quite firmly
ensconced in its homely heartland, focusing largely on a lovable slapstick
duo in films such as The Wrong Trousers(1993) and A Close Shave(1995),
and familiarity and connection became the core of the studio’s outputs, with
home and belonging at the heart.
Stage Fright, in 1997, however, signified a return to the darkness of Babylon
in Aardman’s short film catalogue. This was a BAFTA-award-winning piece
created by Steve Box, who animated Feathers McGraw in The Wrong Trousers.
Box also worked closely with Nick Park on A Close Shave and admits that
Park’s style can be partly seen in Stage Fright in the characters’ physical
appearances, but stresses that there is a difference.21 Stage Fright explores
the transition between the Music Hall and silent film; Box recognized an
opportunity here to platform a ‘weird world, somehow removed from
ours’ and originally the film was intended to recreate the era of silent films
in animation.22 Stage Fright was commissioned by Aardman’s advocate,
Channel 4, and it is an unsettlingly bleak vision of a trapped, dysfunctional
character and the threat of violence he endures within a changing world.
Tiny is a music hall performer and dog trainer. He hides inside a wicker
basket, where he finds solace, at the side of the stage, and he emerges in fear.
The film reveals Tiny’s inability to either move forward or survive in the
present. He admits that he is afraid of the crowd, ‘they hate me’, whilst
Arnold Hughes, the star of his own projected film show, is Tiny’s bully and
clearly represents the future. He is unafraid of change and is determined to
survive at all costs, which includes victimizing others. Arnold intimidates
and inhibits Tiny, to the point that Tiny cannot function.
In contrast to the humorous foes of Aardman’s mainstream work, such
as Victor, Wallace’s love rival in Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Arnold is far more
ominous. He is a bulky, shadowy figure who is intent on physically harming
his co-worker and ultimately attempts to murder him. As with Babylon, the
bully here is represented as Other through his uncanny appearance. Arnold
is first seen as an enormous figure, forcing Tiny to fall from the stage, from
where he stands grimacing at him, revealing vampirish teeth in a wide

mouth. He sports a garish, blood red bow tie and his hair, too, is a shock of
red and the film’s score accentuates Arnold’s dangerous presence, its jerky
strings reminiscent of the work of Jan Švankmajer or The Brothers Quay.
Box leans towards the gothic in the representation of the villain and Arnold
is clearly positioned as monster. Richard Kearney tells us that monsters defy
‘our accredited norms of identification’ – they are the opposite of the familiar,
and therefore contest identity and the self.23 Arnold as monster (and Other)
is effectively depicted in Stage Fright, but perhaps even more interesting than
this representation is the Otherness and dysfunctionality of Tiny himself.
Difference is viewed as a marker between those that we view as similar
to us and those that we place elsewhere; Kearney discusses the idea that
because we are unable (or unwilling) to see ourselves as ‘other’, we ‘simplify
our existence by scapegoating others’.24 The character of Tiny provides an
interesting study with regard to difference and how it is perceived (particularly
in an Aardman film, wherein the protagonists are typically identifiable and
familiar). From his emergence from the wicker basket, we understand at once
that Tiny is different. Whilst his reactions of debilitating fear clearly present
him as victim, his physical appearance and quirky behaviour denote also
that he is Other. He giggles maniacally to himself and comments ‘it is safer
in the basket’. Tiny is aligned more with the little dogs that live with him in
this confined space than the humans outside it. His existence is debilitating
and he achieves empathy through his positioning as Arnold’s victim rather
than as a relatable and familiar protagonist. However, Kearney argues that
figures that represent Otherness take up residence in a sort of frontier zone
‘where reason falters and fantasies flourish’.25 Whilst we may not understand
him, Tiny’s behaviour and actions remain fascinating, and he challenges our
decision of where to place him. He is stuck in a time out of time, unable to
move forward into motion pictures but also unable to exist as a music hall
performer; Tiny is a dysfunctional character who is crippled emotionally
and physically by ideas of change and by the psychotic bully who physically
represents such change and who appears to want to erase him.
Place and stability are contested in Stage Fright. At the end of the film,
the theatre begins to collapse and Tiny and his female companion Daphne
flee, echoing the waiter’s retreat from the crumbling ruins in Babylon. The
rubble of ruined worlds represents uncertainty and the unfamiliar, achieved
through the destruction of even the most dysfunctional of homes. Home is
refuted; in Babylon it is destroyed, in Going Equipped it has been eradicated,
and in Stage Fright it is wholly contested. Featherstone’s view that to know
oneself is to know where one is implies the interdependency of self and place
in identity politics. Home and belonging shape our ideas of ourselves and
what is important to us, and these markers of identity define the body of
Aardman’s mainstream work; the common assumption is that their stop-
motion films, in platforming home as comforting and identifiable, refute
the uncanny. However, crucially, home is missing in the darker worlds of the
animated short films discussed here, leading to a space for the uncanny to
exist.
Sisters and corpses

Luis Cook describes The Pearce Sisters (2007) as ‘an amusingly bleak-
hearted tale of two weather-lashed spinsters’.26 Originally, Cook wanted to
make The Pearce Sisters using live-action ugly men dressed as women,27 but
was dissuaded by Peter Lord and opted instead for a mixture of Computer
Generated and 2D. The short film went on to win the coveted Jury’s Special
Award at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival and the Grand
Prix prize at the Zagreb Animation Festival. In its creation, Aardman’s
road forked once more away from the comfortable and familiar and into
the territory of isolation, difference and the dysfunctional, a territory that
represents its Other heartland.
The setting for the film is an island off the Scottish coast, an assumption
we gather from the sisters’ accents. They live in a hut at the water’s edge and
regularly take excursions in their rowing boat to hunt for fish. The sea is
wild beneath a pallid, nondescript sky, and the gulls are carved grey arrows
into the background. The sisters’ clothing is muddy green, the same hue as
the ocean. Their hair is oily black, parted in the middle, and their pallor is
a reflection of the rain-soaked beach they live on; they are doppelgangers of
each other, one a tiny mirror image of her large, masculinized sister. From an
aerial shot of the boat, sister one resembles a father, sister two, a child. While
portly sister one rows, the other smashes each fish with a mallet, while the
gulls screech overhead. At the shoreline, sister one works in the wind and
rain to chop and gut the bloody fish, flinging unwanted innards across the
beach and later into the blank canvas of sky for the gulls, while the wind and
sea rush past. When she spies a shipwrecked man in the ocean, she calls for
sister two in a muffled, deep voice, and they go out once more to investigate.
When the drowning man resurfaces, his eyes milky white and his body
lifeless, they row him to shore.
The film deconstructs gender stereotypes by blurring the distinctions
between male and female; the shipwrecked man exposes the same stubbly
body hair as sister one. They carry the man home and shave and dress his
upper half in women’s clothing, smiling for the first time at their efforts.
When the man awakens, he glances down at his exposed genitals, as sister
two asks, ‘would you like some tea?’ and his scream is eerily echoed by her
own. When he rips off the dress, the sister utters an animalistic growl and
chases him with her mallet as he runs back to the sea. The sisters do not
conform to female gender stereotypes aside from their ‘home-making’; they
are savage survivors in a barren landscape. When the man is later washed up
again, dead, his hairy buttocks raised and the hair under his arms bristling
in the wind, it is the tiny, childlike sister two who wants to keep him, the
purpose of which is unclear. She skips gleefully across the beach as her bulky
sibling carries him once more, but this time to gut him as she did the fish.
This act reflects the dissecting of gender stereotypes in the film; masculinity
holds little value in the world of the Pearce sisters. They pierce fish skin and
man skin with the same practicality, and hang both up to dry. Sister two then
hosts a traditionally female tea party but with a twist – it is for a table full of
dressed male corpses. The tea is not real, but the sister’s delight at her game is.
The Pearce Sisters connects once again to the themes of isolation, difference
and dysfunction. Its gender deconstructions are interesting: the interloper’s
own sexuality is something to be undone, like a knot in a ball of wool. Men,
in their natural state, do not belong on this island of violent women. The body
itself can be conceived as a site of identity;28 it can be seen as powerful, flexible,
strong or weak and as something that points to the inner Self. In animation,
gender stereotypes are more easily deconstructed because of the malleability
and limitlessness of the body.29 It is not a material body, but an idea of a
representation, brought to life by the animator’s hand. The desexualization of the
Pearce sisters is particularly interesting in terms of how identity is challenged.
Rather than being fixed and conforming to familiar gender stereotypes, the
sisters offer contradictions to their own animated physical bodies: sister one
is stoic, strong and solid, yet she does the bidding of the willowy, smaller
sister two. Sister two is childlike and gleeful, but also monstrous and unstable.
Identities shift, animated bodies hide surprising traits, and, in the space that
opens up between these shifts and revelations, Otherness creeps in.
Sister two’s unbalanced mindset, revealed through her joy at tea parties
with corpses, exists in perfect happiness within a horror setting that she does
not connect with. Sister one, conversely, spends a considerable portion of the
narrative staring out at the ocean with what appears to be regret or resignation.
Her days are bound by routines and repetition, as well as fishing, rowing and
gutting, she repeats the cycle of catching the fly in the empty teacup, peeking at
it through her hands, and letting it go. This is her only visible act of penitence
for the deaths and dismemberments that enable sister two’s tea parties. Sister
seeks solitude at the shore’s edge, her present merges with the recent past
and represents the dream and dread of home, and we wonder if she longs to
escape the island and leave her sibling behind. The Otherness of island life,
amidst male corpses and daily fish gutting, becomes the familiar for the Pearce
sisters. Stuart Hall posits that ‘to have an identity is to know what one is not’;
it is the opposite of difference.30 Clearly, the Pearce Sisters have a strong sense
of identity, but it is one that suggests wholeness only when they are together
and fragmentation when they are apart. One sister is a shadow of the other,
a doppelganger. Sister two is the Other, the shadowy figure who watches, yet
paradoxically the ‘innocent’ child; she skips to the gutting station, and smiles
as she gazes up at the hanging corpse in the smoke house. Fish and man
have little distinction for her. When she hosts her tea party, she utters little
pleasured cooing noises as she role plays with her corpses. Society becomes
warped and reimagined by sister two; in the absence of others, she creates her
own version of a gathering and, in doing so, accentuates her own difference,
dysfunctionality and sense of isolation. The two characters, together, represent
stability in terms of their routines, as they work in this harsh environment, yet
their familiar is our unfamiliar. The dark themes of the story, the violence, the
washed-up body and the dressed corpses that are revealed at its denouement,
create a starkly fascinating film of difference and dysfunction.
Home is present in this short film and place is fixed – distinctions that set
it apart from the other films discussed in this chapter. The setting is visual and
visceral, a breathtaking world that invites us in to sample this environment.
From the gulls etched into the watery sky to the sister’s windswept, weathered
features, The Pearce Sisters establishes home, place and identity very clearly
and carefully. Rather than interpreting place as an empty or fracturing space,
it is solid and fixed. In doing so, however, director Luis Cook has conjured up
a startlingly nightmarish world of dysfunction and violence. Home for the
sisters is an appalling setting of a barren, dead landscape, within which they
appear to thrive. It is the dream and dread of home that Freud alluded to,
where the familiar and unfamiliar meet and contest the idea of home as safe.
Trapped in this surreal hinterland, human behaviour has unravelled to the
point that dysfunction is normality and violence is routine. Home is dream
for the sisters (they have established their routines within this hinterland)
and dread for their interloper and their audience. The familiar for the sisters
is stark difference for us, and this world and its inhabitants slide seamlessly
into Otherness and the uncanny.
A darker heartland
Peter Lord announced, in the same year as the release of The Pearce Sisters,
that Creature Comforts and Wallace and Gromit were Aardman’s ‘heartland’,
but that boundaries always needed to be pushed.31 Aardman’s identity, we

have seen, is complicated by the short films discussed in this chapter. They
depict fear of apocalypse and regret at a life of crime, insanity in a darkened
theatre and dysfunctional island life among corpses. Identity, here, is in crisis
and the familiar is contested and, at the same time, what we assume we know
about Aardman’s body of work is called into question. The studio’s stop-
motion films largely embrace home and belonging and are not, therefore,
viewed as uncanny, despite the form itself typically leaning towards this (e.g.
the work of Jan Švankmajer and the Brothers Quay). Aardman’s identity
is situated within the familiar: of characters and place. However, as the
familiar shifts to one side in the short films discussed above, it makes way
for themes of Otherness to move into this space and flourish. Home lives are
either absent or dysfunctional and selves are either intimidated by others or
wholly displaced and replaced by creatures of difference. Home and place
become dystopian worlds that offer no comfort or sense of belonging; these
harsh and volatile environments simply offer backdrops to the nightmares
that the characters endure. The lack of fixedness of home and place reflects
the identity crises suffered by the protagonists, or ‘victims’ of these short
films. Emptiness and solitude of setting and self create visions of apocalypse,
insanity and trauma, and Otherness takes up residence in the disturbing
spaces of Babylon, Going Equipped and Stage Fright. Within The Pearce Sisters,
place is fixed and familiar for the protagonists, yet unfamiliar and uncanny
for their audience, echoing the paradoxical notion of dream and dread of
home. Within the films discussed in this chapter, the monstrous and the
victimized exist in a nightmarish vacuum of dystopian worlds that offer no
resolution – this is Aardman’s darker heartland.
Notes
1 Emma Hall, ‘A British Empire of Animation’, Advertising Age 78, no. 34
(27 August 2007).
2 Steven Allen, ‘Bringing the Dead to Life: Animation and the Horrific’, At
the Interface/Probing the Boundaries 61 (2010), p. 87.
3 Suzanne Buchan, Pervasive Animation (New York: Routledge, 2013);
Robyn Ferrell, ‘Life-Threatening Life: Angela Carter and the Uncanny’, in
A. Cholodenko (ed.), The Illusion of Life: Essays on Animation (Sydney:
Power Publications, 1991), pp. 131–44; Nicholas Royle, The Uncanny
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003)
4 Steven Allen, ‘Bringing the Dead to Life: Animation and the Horrific’, At
the Interface/Probing the Boundaries 61(2010), p. 92.

6 Clare Kitson, British Animation: The Channel Four Factor (Bloomington,
IN: Indiana University Press, 2008), pp. 38–43.
7 Michael Brooke, ‘Channel 4 and Animation – How Britain’s Fourth
Channel Became an Animation Powerhouse’, Screenonline. Available
at: http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/1282041/index.html
8 The Sweet Disaster series included Dreamless Sleep (David Anderson),
Babylon (Peter Lord and David Sproxton), Paradise Regained (Andrew
Franks), Conversations by a Californian Swimming Pool (Andrew Franks)
and Death of a Speechwriter (David Hopkins).
9 Animation World Network, 1 September 1999. Available at: http://www.
awn.com/animationworld/history-channel-4-and-future-british-animation
(accessed 20 November 2017).
10 Lawrence Freedman, ‘Foreword’, in P. Sabin (ed.), The Third World War
Scare in Britain: A Critical Analysis (London: Macmillan Press, 1986), p. xi.
11 Philip Sabin, The Third World War Scare in Britain: A Critical Analysis
(London: Macmillan Press, 1986), p. 3.
12 Richard Kearney, Strangers, Gods and Monsters – Interpreting Otherness
(London: Routledge, 2005), p. 3.
13 Royle, The Uncanny, p. 1.
14 Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2001),
p. 251.
15 Royle, The Uncanny, p. 1.
16 Mike Featherstone, ‘Localism, Globalism and Cultural Identity’, in L.M.
Alcoff and E. Mendieta (eds), Identities: Race, Class, Gender and Nationality
(Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003), pp. 342–59.
17 Graham Stewart, Bang! A History of Britain in the 1980s (London: Atlantic
Books, 2013).
18 Douglas Keay, ‘Interview for Woman’s Own’, 23 September 1997.
Available at: https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/106689
19 Ian Cobain, ‘Tough case to Crack: The Mystery of Britain’s Falling Crime
Rate’, The Guardian, 31 August 2014. Available at: https://www.theguardian.
com/uk-news/2014/aug/31/tough-case-mystery-britains-falling-crime-rate
20 Nigel Rapport and Andrew Dawson, Migrants of Identity: Perceptions of
Home in a World of Movement (Oxford: Berg, 1998), p. 9.
21 Ruth and Roger Whiter, ‘Aardman’s Steve Box Talks’, Animation World
Network, 25 July 2002. Available at: https://www.awn.com/animationworld/
aardmans-steve-box-talks (accessed 21 April 2018).
22 Ibid.
23 Kearney, Strangers, Gods and Monsters, p. 4.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid., p. 3.
26 Ramin Zahed, ‘Luis Cook: Creator, “The Pearce Sisters,” Aardman
Animations’, Animation 21, no. 6 (June 2007), p. 32.
27 Andrew S Allen, ‘Interview with Luis Cook (The Pearce Sisters)’, Short of
the Week, 3 March 2008. Available at: https://www.shortoftheweek.com/
news/qa-with-luis-cook/ (accessed 21 April 2018).
28 Karen Woodward, Questioning Identity: Gender, Class and Nation (London:
Routledge, 2000).
29 Jane Batkin, Identity in Animation: A Journey into Self, Difference, Culture
and the Body (London: Routledge, 2017), p. 93.
30 Stuart Hall, ‘The Spectacle of the “Other”’, in S. Hall (ed.), Representations,
Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (London: Sage/Open
University, 1997), p. 226.
31 E. Hall, ‘A British Empire’, p. 9.
7
Washed Up: Animating Literary Corpses

in The Pearce Sisters
Nicholas Andrew Miller
‘I wanted to make a film that felt as if it had been washed up by the sea.’1
Literary Aardman
Within the Aardman canon, a lovingly detailed stop-motion universe most
prominently populated by inventive dogs, blinking sheep and charmingly
daft, cheese-craving bachelors, it is tempting to locate Luis Cook’s short
film The Pearce Sisters (2007) as an intriguing oddity. Most conspicuously,
the film is not a work of stop-motion. Cook dispenses with the plasticine
figures for which the name Aardman has become virtually synonymous,
instead adopting an innovative production process based on the compositing
of 2D drawings and 3D computer-generated images. In its overall design,
the film presents a grim narrative landscape wrought in seasick colours.2
The heroines, Lol and Edna Pearce, are grotesque beauties with misshapen
limbs and twisted, grinning faces; their decrepit seaside home clings to
the rain- and wind-lashed beach like a barnacle to an upturned rowboat.
To look at, the film is fearsome and alien, attended in every frame by what
Cook has called a ‘beautifully ugly’ aesthetic, and projecting the can’t-look-
away fascination of illicit desires long steeped in the suggestive gloom of
the unconscious. The tone is comic, but bleakly so, and Cook’s narrative of
spinster sisters surviving at the edge of the world amid perpetually driving
rain and gusting wind, hauling herring and drowned men from the sea and
gutting both, has the nightmare pathos of a surreal parable.
Set against the wry wit, bright colours and cheerful disposition
characteristic of certain parts of the Aardman catalogue, The Pearce Sisters
might seem initially difficult to place, particularly as the company has
grown increasingly associated with large-scale commercial box office hits
and spin-off productions, not to mention plush toy merchandise and even
theme park rides. In this context, Cook’s account of the film’s origins is
worth noting. In Cook’s telling, The Pearce Sisters came into being not as a
strange and unaccountable non sequitur in the Aardman lineage, but as part
of a deliberate plan to return to a foundational aspect of the studio’s identity.
Attending the Annecy International Animated Film Festival in the summer
of 2005, a group of Aardman directors realized that the studio had not made
a short film in over ten years. ‘Historically the studio had been built on short
film’, Cook commented. ‘It seemed crazy that so much time had slipped
by without making one’. Seeking to address this gap, the studio’s founders,
Peter Lord and David Sproxton, announced an in-house competition. Any
employee could pitch an idea, and the project selected would receive full
funding and production support from the studio. ‘The motivation was simply
to make a short film, nothing more strategic than that’, adds Cook. ‘They just
wanted a great short film to represent them at festivals.’3
This history locates The Pearce Sisters as no aberration, but, on the
contrary, the direct descendent of the formal experimentation and narrative
creativity typical of the early Aardman shorts.4 From a production standpoint,
it is true that Cook’s innovative choices regarding medium and process mark
a divergence from the studio’s prominent identification with stop-motion.
However, Aardman has by no means been devoted exclusively to clay and
plasticine. From the beginning, the studio developed projects using cut-outs,
object animation and pixilation, indeed, the studio’s founding character
and namesake, the idiot superhero, ‘Aardman’, developed from Lord and
Sproxton’s early experiments with drawn animation.5 As for the design of
The Pearce Sisters, Cook has cited among his particular influences Aardman
shorts like Ident (Goleszowski, 1989), War Story (Lord, 1989), Going
Equipped (Lord, 1989), Creature Comforts (Park, 1989), Adam (Lord, 1991)
and Loves Me, Loves Me Not (Newitt, 1992). Among this company, the film’s
originality seems less a reflection of Cook’s putative departures from typical
Aardman aesthetic and narrative traditions than, on the contrary, his desire
to revisit those traditions via alternate routes.
The conspicuous stylistic and tonal singularities of The Pearce Sisters
seem, thus, on examination, a function of its lineage within a perhaps less
commercially visible but no less vigorous tradition of technical innovation
and narrative craft at Aardman. At the same time, Cook’s account of the
film’s origins points to a different, important and generally overlooked
circumstance that does in fact distinguish the film not only from the popular
features for which Aardman is best known, but also from the shorts and,
indeed, the advertising spots, music videos and other diverse productions
that make up the studio’s output. When Sproxton and Lord announced
their plans for the in-house short film competition in June 2005, Cook had
Literary Corpses in The Pearce Sisters 121
just finished reading Mick Jackson’s Ten Sorry Tales, a collection of often
fantastical, occasionally macabre, short stories that had been published
earlier that year. He had found himself particularly drawn to the lead story
in the volume, an account of two sisters who live together on a remote beach
and smoke fish, and who one day encounter a drowning sailor and decide
to rescue him: ‘It was minimal, miserable, bleak, and weather lashed’, said
Cook. ‘It was a story that I thought I could bring to the screen.’ In selecting
Cook’s proposal as the winner of the competition, it was arguably Lord and
Sproxton who ensured the film’s status as an anomaly, at least in a narrow,
technical sense. The lone exception within a formidable record of successful
projects built on original concepts and scripts, The Pearce Sisters is, notably,
the only film in Aardman’s over forty-year history to base its narrative on a
literary source text.
In a general way, Cook’s project thus serves to expand the context in which
Aardman productions are commonly read and considered. The singularity
of The Pearce Sisters’ origins in literary fiction invites consideration of the
studio’s reciprocal influence on and by literature, as well as other arts and
cultural discourses more broadly. Recent animation scholarship has mined
this vein in a variety of contexts with salutary results, effectively challenging
a century’s worth of cultural marginalization by revealing animation’s reach
and impact as an expressive form that is, to borrow Suzanne Buchan’s term,
‘pervasive’.6 Within the context of this discussion, however, The Pearce Sisters
opens a particular and compelling vantage on animation’s interaction with
literary expression. Cook’s primary focus on the sensory bleakness and
tonal misery of Jackson’s text, as opposed simply to its narrative arc, places
a distinct emphasis on animation’s visual materiality in its interactions with
literary language. His confidence in having found a story he ‘could bring to
the screen’ is less a reflection of the narrative’s suitability for adaptation than
of his interest in exploring particular processes and expressive materials
that might be brought into productive visual dialogue with sensory qualities
already present in the text.
This emphasis on the material as the pivotal point of connection between
visual and verbal expressive forms suggests a need to consider both Cook’s
and Jackson’s projects in the context of their broader engagements with
literary history. Ten Sorry Tales is a work that in tone and narrative content
aligns with examples of imaginative fiction in British literature associated
with the fantastic, the nonsensical and the absurd, a tradition represented
by the likes of Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, Roald Dahl and many others7.
Central to this tradition is an emphasis on the confluence of the real and the
fantastical, as, for instance, in the figure of Carroll’s grinning Cheshire cat in
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland or Dahl’s fruit-based airship in James and the
Giant Peach. The rendering of imaginary entities, circumstances and events

in material form is a strikingly accurate and efficient definition of Aardman’s
approach to stop-motion, not to say animation in general, and in that regard
the studio’s record of realizing previously undreamt visions in plasticine, clay,
drawings, photographs, physical objects, paint and other materials, offers a
strong visual corollary to Jackson’s verbal creation of fictional worlds.
A common interest in approaching the marvellous as somehow elemental,
in giving material expression to the imaginary, thus affirms a certain kinship
between Jackson and the animators of Aardman, particularly those whose
fingerprints are figuratively and literally visible in the early shorts that did
so much to define the studio’s identity and creative mission. Registering this
connection opens, potentially, a more expansive perspective from which
to understand the interaction between the material and the imaginary as
a motivating force behind the studio’s films, and indeed as an animating
feature of Aardman itself. In contemplating the studio’s history through the
lens of The Pearce Sisters, it becomes possible and perhaps even necessary
to consider the reciprocal engagements between Aardman’s cultural and
aesthetic influence and traditions of literary fiction.
A methodical, comprehensive investigation into the studio thus conceived,
a ‘literary Aardman’, is well beyond the scope of the present essay. My far more
modest proposal in what follows is to explore The Pearce Sisters’ engagements
with a specific trope that recurs with remarkable frequency in literary history
as a figure for the encounter between the material and the imaginary: the
drowned man washed up by the sea. Broadly speaking, such an inquiry may
offer useful signposts for recalibrating the aesthetic and cultural influence of
Aardman as a studio in the context of literary history. It is Cook’s selection
of Jackson’s text in particular, however, that makes the consideration of this
perspective on Aardman both interesting and important; for viewers, the
opportunity created by The Pearce Sisters’ origins in literary fiction is not that
of analysing the film’s generic or theoretical status as an adaptation, but that
of considering Aardman’s production practices and imaginative ethos in
relation to a specific example of another expressive form, one that is itself
part of a rich and varied tradition based on the written word.
Handsome drowned men

Jackson’s Ten Sorry Tales is a kind of episodic adventure in the surreal, a
gathering of fictional stories and characters that despite their utter bizarreness,
exhibit the unmistakable impress of the real. For readers, the stories are
uncanny in the strict sense, precipitating encounters with characters whose
oddball behaviour affirms that eccentricity is a deeply human, and therefore

universally familiar, trait. In matter-of-fact tones, Jackson’s deadpan narrator
spins offbeat stories of idiosyncratic characters whose slightly surreal lives
seem nevertheless entirely plausible: a retiree builds a boat in his basement
and waits for a flood so that he can set sail when the rising waters finally burst
the building’s foundations; a spiteful horse collects buttons by violently biting
them off the clothing of passers-by and ingesting them; a boy purchases an
antique set of butterfly surgeon’s tools and uses them to reanimate thousands
of dead insects mounted in an art exhibit. In these and other examples,
the fanciful nature of Jackson’s characters’ actions is moderated by their
motivation in human desires that are not only reasonable, but profoundly
ordinary: the boat builder seeks purpose and freedom in retirement; the
horse rebels against his pastured confinement with anthropomorphized
resentment; the boy objects to a form of art that requires killing beautiful
living creatures.
Jackson’s creative imagination inhabits the stories with a light but
powerful touch, redirecting the conventions of narrative logic and causal
reasoning in favour of characters whose desires, fears and compulsions
surface in quirky undertakings that fascinate in their own terms. What is
particularly noticeable is the pattern, replicated in every tale, in which events
and figures that might otherwise seem merely fantastical are anchored by
concrete objects such as boats, buttons and butterflies, everyday articles that
invite symbolic interpretation but that ultimately resist simple translation,
serving instead as talismans of the more-than-real, tangible emissaries from
the world of make-believe. Reading Jackson’s collection is in this sense
a bit like traversing a tenuous boundary between fiction and non-fiction, a
curious border on which the material and the imaginary seem routinely to
meet and coexist. Jackson’s tales evoke a surrealism of the Dada variety: as
in a Duchamp ‘readymade’, or a found-materials collage by Arp or Ernst,
material objects function in these stories not in a merely symbolic sense as
indicators or signifiers but as manifestations of imaginary experience itself.8
In Cook’s version of Jackson’s ‘minimal, miserable, bleak, and weather lashed’
world, matches, teacups, a wandering housefly and other everyday objects
serve to anchor the fantastical contours of the tale in much the same fashion.
It is, however, in a singular example of the material imaginary, the body of
a handsome drowned man washed up on the sisters’ remote and desolate
beach, that Jackson situates the tangible explicitly as a conduit to desires that
are unconscious, unintelligible, unspoken or unseen.
As the opening story of Ten Sorry Tales, ‘The Pearce Sisters’ occupies
a role of structural importance and sets an emotional tone for Jackson’s
volume as a whole. The tale follows the repetitive existence of Lol and Edna
Pearce, who spend their days hauling nets of fish from the sea, gutting and
hanging their catch in their smokehouse, and periodically trundling into
town to exchange their kippers ‘for one or two of life’s little luxuries, such as
bread or salt or tea’.9 Their rescue one day of an anonymous drowning man
sets in motion a plot both grim and comical. Lugging the man inside still
unconscious, they shave his whiskers and set him in a chair, dressing him
in a pair of socks and one of Edna’s old pink house dresses. Finally coming
to in response to these attentions, the man opens his eyes to find the ugly,
leering sisters looming over him, at which point he lets out a blood-curdling
scream and runs precipitously from the house. ‘And that may well have
been the end of that’, writes Jackson, ‘had the fellow not stopped at what he
wrongly considered to be a safe distance and, still wearing Edna’s dressing
gown, raised an accusatory finger at the women who had just saved his life. A
stream of insults came pouring out of him – a bilious rant, so crude and lewd
that all the seagulls (not exactly known for their modesty) hung their heads
in shame’.10 Indignant at seeing their kindness rebuffed, Lol pursues the man
and brains him with a fish hammer, after which the sisters row him back out
to sea and dump him unceremoniously overboard at nearly the spot where
they originally found him.
Jackson reportedly based ‘The Pearce Sisters’ on a local newspaper account
of two women who lived in a shack on a remote Norfolk beach and smoked
fish.11 The trope of the handsome drowned man discovered and revived by
locals, however, is one that places the tale in correspondence with a wide
range of other fictional texts. The Pearce sisters’ interest in male sea-borne
bodies is in fact part of a long literary tradition that includes the mysterious
whale-sized corpse picked over by townspeople in J. G. Ballard’s ‘The
Drowned Giant’; the anonymous man who is ‘found drowned’ and haunts a
hydrophobic Stephen Dedalus in Joyce’s Ulysses; the remains of Phlebas the
Phoenician, a token of foreboding in the ‘Death by Water’ section of Eliot’s
The Waste Land; Gulliver’s binding by Lilliputians in Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels;
a quartet of water-logged gentlemen washed ashore in Shakespeare’s The
Tempest; and so on.12
While the beaches of literary history are indeed awash with beautiful male
bodies, it is to the earliest iteration and prototype for this narrative trope that
‘The Pearce Sisters’ bears a particular and curious resemblance. In Book 6
of Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus, after being nearly drowned at sea by the
god Poseidon, is discovered on a beach of Scheria by the princess Nausicaa.
Like Edna and Lol, Nausicaa lacks male companionship and, in a gesture of
welcome, clothes her unexpected and attractive visitor in some of her own
garments and takes him into her home. Nausicaa’s availability for romance
is quite explicit in the text: she is both virginal and ‘outshines’ her maids,
‘though all are lovely’,13 and Athena cautions her that a girl of her charms
and social standing should have her wedding clothes ready at all times. Alas,
Odysseus, already married, must, in the end, continue on his journey home
to Ithaca and his wife Penelope. In thwarting Nausicaa’s explicit romantic
interest, the episode serves to delineate a sort of literary paradigm for the
domestication of desire, a map for channelling attraction into the safe
confines of marriage via rituals of hospitality; though left behind for now,
Nausicaa will, it is implicitly understood, fulfil her dreams of marriage when
a future, more eligible, visitor arrives on her shores.14
The Nausicaa episode establishes the figure of the half-drowned hero
as the embodiment of erotic mystery, a sort of reverse-gendered Sleeping
Beauty who awaits the living, awakening touch of human, female, desire.
Jackson’s tale reiterates the essentials of Homer’s paradigm, down to the
dressing of the nearly drowned man in women’s clothing, while altering the
contours of the hospitality narrative in a remarkable way. Several days after
dispatching their ungrateful visitor, the sisters find his body washed up on
the beach, naked and now very much dead. They take him in once again,
but this time gut him like a fish and string him up in the smokehouse for a
week, to ‘stop him going off ’. Dragging his blackened, preserved body inside,
they dress him in his old clothes, and set him at the piano, remarking to one
another on ‘how nice it was to have a man around the house’.15
Jackson’s tale effectively rewrites the Nausicaa story as a revenge narrative,
reconfiguring its commentary on female desire and the inadequacy of male
receptivity to it. It is as a corpse, and not as a potential living husband, that
the Pearce sisters’ drowned man fulfils his promise as a companion. In direct
contrast to the plight of the princess Nausicaa, left behind by the already
married Odysseus, the arc of Lol’s and Edna’s desire is only temporarily
interrupted by their man’s return to the sea; instead, it is the arrival of his
lifeless, grinning carcass that transforms their ramshackle structure on the
beach into a domestic space of hospitality. Indeed, the story’s denouement
confirms the impact of this shift as the sisters proceed to kill, eviscerate and
smoke several additional young men, including a visitor from the local town
council checking on building permits, a nosey window-peeping snoop and
a ‘blameless rambler who made the fatal error of knocking on the Pearces’
door to ask for directions’.16 The last, the narrator informs us, is necessary ‘to
complete the set’, and the story ends with the smartly dressed men arranged
pleasantly round the parlour in various postures of gregariousness and
sociability, sipping tea for eternity.
In replicating Jackson’s narrative, Cook’s film places an entirely different
emphasis on the drowned man’s rescue and subsequent death, and in the
process alters the meaning of the corpse that eventually takes up residence
in the sisters’ home. In the film, the Pearce sisters do not murder their
ungrateful guest. Instead, after flinging his tirade of insults at his rescuers,
the revived man turns and flees back into the ocean, evading Lol and her
hammer but meeting his demise among the surging waves. That his death
results from his own actions opens a crucial gap in the narrative: while
the sisters gain ground as sympathetic figures (they are not, after all,
murderers),17 the man’s wilful embrace of his own destruction emerges as
an enigma at the story’s centre, a mystery that will take material form in the
dead body that washes up on the shore. A number of possible explanations
for his extreme reaction to the Pearces’ hospitality suggest themselves. It
may be that the perceived threat to his masculinity, symbolized in the pink
dress he finds himself wearing, is too much to bear. Perhaps he is angry
that their rescue thwarted what was in fact an original suicide attempt.
Or possibly it is simply their revolting appearance that awakens in him a
crazed death wish. The plausibility of each of these interpretations, however,
quickly fades on reflection: drowning himself is an exceedingly odd riposte
to the threat of symbolic castration; a goal of self-harm is hardly consistent
with the position in which the sisters originally find him, clinging for dear
life to his accidentally capsized boat; and while the sisters’ appearance might
explain his taking fright, screaming and running away, it will hardly wash as
a motive for suicide.
By shifting responsibility for the death from the sisters to the man himself,
Cook places a curious hermeneutic emphasis on the materiality of the body
that subsequently washes up onshore. In Jackson’s tale, the preserved corpse
of the drowned man represents the cost of masculine failure in the face of
feminine desire. Clothed initially in Edna’s pink gown, his flight from the
Pearces’ home forecasts his return in a rewriting of desire’s domestication,
a literal redressing of Nausicaa’s spurning by Odysseus. The body enters
the house as the perfected form of male companionship; gutted, smoked,
shaved and suited, he proves superior, from the sisters’ perspective, to the
unappreciative living suitor. In Cook’s film, the drowned man returns as
something else entirely. Shorn of its disposition as the product of a revenge
narrative, the corpse washes up instead as an embodied enigma, a rigid and
inert presence without name, without history and without explanation. In
this guise, the body appears on the shores of Cook’s narrative as a kind of
extra-diegetic arrival, a conundrum that offers an occasion for wonder and
admiration, but that in some final sense exceeds narrative exegesis.18 Lol’s
reaction upon finding him expresses nothing so much as her spontaneous
sense of wonder at the return of this tangible mystery, the unintelligible
material body. Approaching with curiosity, she tips his rigid, naked torso
over, and jumps delightedly up and down, her glee that of a child anticipating
the promise of a new plaything; as Edna shoulders the corpse and trundles
up the beach, Lol skips happily alongside, the picture of childlike joy. It
is thus not as the recipient of the sisters’ justice, but as a marvellous and
unexpected boon that the corpse takes up residence in the Pearces’ parlour.
The drowned man is a wondrous, enigmatic doll whose presence succeeds in
reshaping their familial unit precisely because he exists, materially, outside
established domestic narratives.
This image of domestic order and social community defined by the
presence of a corpse suggests The Pearce Sisters’ nearer kinship with another
literary rewriting of the ‘Nausicaa’ episode – Gabriel García Márquez’s
celebrated short story, ‘The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World’. In this
‘tale for children’, the body of an immense and beautiful man washes up on
the shore of a small village. His arrival is discovered first by the children
of the town, who spend a day playing, delightedly burying and digging
him up again, until the adults arrive and take him into one of their homes.
Throughout the story, the drowned man is affirmed as an unintelligible but
powerful mystery: the women are in awe of him and find their husbands
lacking in comparison, the men seek unsuccessfully to locate his connections
in neighbouring villages, and all wonder indiscriminately at his beauty and
bulk. In García Márquez’s story, the drowned man is not a cipher to be
interpreted, an entity to be fit, willy-nilly, into pre-existing cultural narratives
of love, success, fear, safety, masculinity, femininity, domesticity and so on. He
is simply present, impressive, beautiful, a source of curiosity and delight. He
quite literally takes up a previously unperceived imaginary space in the lives
of the townspeople, so that collectively they ‘knew that everything would
be different from then on, that their houses would have wider doors, higher
ceilings, and stronger floors’.19 In the physicality of his magnificent body, he
remains explicitly unintelligible, the material form of an imaginary desire for
connection among the people, ‘so that through him all the inhabitants of the
village became kinsmen’.20
H. Porter Abbott has argued that in García Márquez’s story the handsome
drowned man represents a deliberate relinquishing of narrative sense that
involves the reader in a ‘textual experience of the extratextual unknown’.21
Abbott is precise and emphatic in demonstrating that the corpse surfaces
within the text as an abiding mystery; it is not simply the site of the narrative’s
deliberate resistance to interpretation (the signifier of reading’s failure),
but a positive manifestation of the incomprehensible, the presence of the
unintelligible itself as a persistent and persisting source of wonder. In this
reading, the drowned man is a real body the influence of which lies in its
remaining outside of previously imagined narratives. As García Márquez
memorably puts it, ‘Not only was he the tallest, strongest, most virile, and
best built man they had ever seen, but even though they were looking at him,
there was no room for him in their imagination’.22
What matters most about the most handsome drowned man, in other
words, is not the hermeneutic possibilities his body evokes, but the physical
presence of the corpse itself as the form of a non-explanation, the material
expression of imaginary, non-diegetic, human desire. Cook’s film enacts
precisely this result in material and sensory, that is visual and aural, terms.
In The Pearce Sisters the anonymous, storyless drowned man arrives first as a
potential companion to the lonely Edna and Lol. Refusing their welcome and
embracing a death previously avoided, he returns not as a character whose
story is to be discovered and explored, but as a tangible enigma, a material
wonder in their midst.
Beautifully ugly
In choosing ‘The Pearce Sisters’ as the source text for his project, Cook
assumed a task of cinematic adaptation driven less by narrow concerns
for narrative fidelity than by the invitation to creative response implicit in
that text’s own corporeal emphasis on its macabre material. As Cook has
indicated, his attraction was not primarily to the narrative itself, so much as
to the squalid wretchedness of its setting and tone, that is, to those factors
that evoke the tale’s potential visuality. Accordingly, it is in the design of the
film and not its narrative that Cook establishes its extraordinary dialogue
with Jackson’s fiction. The elements of Jackson’s text that surface as material,
enigmatic bodies are those that spur Cook’s visualization of the story in a
language that is correspondingly textural, sensory and corporeal.
Cook’s focus on the material and the sensory is immediately evident in
the project’s design, particularly in its visual and aural approach to mise-
en-scène, in incongruously indexical images embedded within the drawn
surface, and in verbal allusions to the historical real within its visualized
fictional space. Most conspicuous is the weather that dominates the film as
an unrelenting physical presence from the first frame to the last. A violent
wind whips Lol’s pigtails perpetually sideways, pulls the smoke from the
Pearces’ chimney in a straight, black, horizontal line across the sky, drives
the rain across the desolate beach in sheets, and tears the very words, muffled
and unformed, from Edna’s mouth when she attempts to speak. The wind is a
positively biblical force that threatens constantly to upstage the heroines and
to derail their story, howling at a deafening pitch and levelling its gale force
energies so indiscriminately that creatures, structures and the very landscape
itself seem in constant danger of being swept away.
Cook also emphasizes the presence of sensory and physical reality

through a curiously deliberate visual contradiction. Among the drawn
figures and backgrounds that dominate the film’s aesthetic, he makes strategic
use of photographic images: freshly caught fish flopping wetly in a basket,
globs of shiny piscine organs flung to hungry crabs and seagulls, gleaming
knives hung by the fish cleaning table, an aged china teacup, and a buzzing
errant housefly all create moments of visual surprise, as if the sensory, the
tangible and the real had suddenly appeared within the space of imaginary
experience. Visually, these photographic elements serve paradoxically to
underscore the textural surface of the drawings as well, strengthening the
sense that the significant correspondences between The Pearce Sisters and
its literary source are not narrative but textual. As in Jackson’s Ten Sorry
Tales, where boats, buttons and butterflies anchor imaginary experience,
materiality is a tangible, persistent and visually enigmatic presence within
the visual surface of The Pearce Sisters.
A further, somewhat counterintuitive, example of Cook’s interest in
material presences lies in his response to the invitation of Jackson’s text as a
verbal document. Where Jackson narrates everyday events such as lighting
the smokehouse fire or making tea, Cook anchors these actions with visual
references to specific historical products and objects, thus grounding the
sisters’ imaginary world once again in an extra-diegetic material reality.
Fictional brands with suggestive names like ‘Luber Kerosene’ and ‘Grit’s
Quality Tea’ (‘handpicked by wretched pygmies, imported and packed by
Grimley Import Co, LTD, Offalshire, England’), give way to actual products
obliquely referenced. The ‘SKAG’ brand stove, for example, recalls the SMEG
company’s line of high-end ranges made in Italy beginning in 1948, and Lol
lights the smokehouse fire with ‘Bry Grey’ matches, an implicit reference to
the nineteenth-century British kitchen match company, Bryant and May,
which marketed wooden safety matches under the name ‘BryMay’.23
Shifted towards guttural ugliness (‘SKAG’) and visual ennui (‘Bry Grey’),
such names serve to import real objects shorn of their histories into the
fictional world of the film; within The Pearce Sisters’ visual landscape, they
operate as material enigmas that disrupt fictional consistency, mimicking
Jackson’s employment of concrete talismanic objects to anchor his characters’
desires, fears and hopes. The visuality of the film is thus wrought with an
eye towards the material rather than the strictly representational qualities
of entities projected within the mise-en-scène. It is in Cook’s design of the
film’s various physical presences, its miserable weather and garish colours,
its photorealistic reminders of actual fish, entrails, utensils and flies, and its
epiphanic treatment of real branded objects stripped of their histories, that
this materiality quite literally takes shape. As in García Márquez’s ‘The
Handsomest Drowned Man in the World’, elements of the real wash up on the
beaches of fiction in The Pearce Sisters as sources of extra-diegetic wonder.
Cook’s reflections on the range of influences that determined the film’s
visual appearance provide an apt account of its evolution within an expansive
and exploratory exercise in material design:
The aesthetic certainly wasn’t chosen strategically; it evolved from the

story. The two sisters had to look ugly for the story to work, so I started
designing from that simple premise. My first thought was to dress up grim
looking men as women (the UK has a rich pantomime tradition of this;
see Les Dawson, Monty Python, The League of Gentlemen, etc.). Then I
was going to find a way of tracking these ugly man heads and composite
them on stop-motion bodies. I’d also seen Gunther von Hagens’ Body
Worlds exhibition and wanted to get a visceral flavour of that in there too.
Sproxton and Lord rejected these ideas as too risky, both visually and
financially. An alternate source of inspiration presented itself but seemed
unsuitable for different reasons. Illustrator David Roberts had created
playfully macabre line drawings for Ten Sorry Tales, borrowing the gothic
pen-and-ink style established by Edward Gorey in The Gashlycrumb Tinies
and other works.24 Roberts had drawn particular narrative and tonal cues
from Gorey’s illustrations for classic literary ‘nonsense’ texts, including
Edward Lear’s The Jumblies and The Dong with a Luminous Nose, as well as
Hilaire Belloc’s Cautionary Tales for Children, which advances a hilariously
dark morality in stories with titles like ‘Jim Who Ran Away and Was Eaten by
a Lion’, ‘Matilda Who Told Lies and Was Burned to Death’ and ‘Rebecca Who
Slammed Doors for Fun and Perished Miserably’. Wary, however, of linking
his film to an aesthetic lineage already well plundered by animator Tim
Burton in films like Vincent (1982), The Nightmare before Christmas (1993),
and Corpse Bride (2005), Cook fell instead to mining a broader range of visual
sources, including ‘naïve’ paintings by Alfred Wallis, cubist landscapes by Ben
Nicholson, calligraphic canvases by Cy Twombly, cartoonish abstractions by
Philip Guston and grotesque caricatures by Basil Wolverton.
Drawings of the three characters, Lol, Edna and the nameless drowned
man, and of the desolate, windswept landscape they inhabit, developed
slowly over time as amalgams of these influences, with a single design
purpose as Cook’s consistent goal: ‘I wanted a beautifully ugly film’. Cook’s
initial visual iterations of Edna and Lol as ‘ugly man heads composited on
stop-motion bodies’ evolved from his early designs for a series titled The
Dregs, in which he can be seen working out a kind of stylized cartoon realism
(see Figure 7.1).25
Figure 7.1 Edna and Lol as ‘ugly man heads composited on stop-motion bodies’
(reprinted with permission, Luis Cook).
Marrying a warped verisimilitude to simplified caricature, the figures

became progressively more fantastical, with leering mouths, gaping
mismatched nostrils, patched clothes, elfin shoes and distorted bodies done
in flesh tones of a pale, sickly, Frankenstein green. Test runs using various
animation techniques resulted in a composite process in which computer-
generated models formed a sort of visual substratum with drawings layered
on top (see Figure 7.2). This hybrid approach eventually produced the look
Cook wanted:
At the time most CG films looked very clean. I was keen on using CG
in a rougher, scratchier, uglier way … . [W]e printed off the CGI shots
and animated traditionally in 2D over the top of them, then composited
the 2D back over the 3D. It was all an experiment really with each shot
composited slightly differently, but within the tight confines of the
designs.
The result is a film that has the look of traditional, hand-drawn animation,
but that conveys unexpected and intriguing depth effects within a surface built
Figure 7.2 Combining 3D and 2D imagery in The Pearce Sisters (reprinted with

permission, Luis Cook).
up from individual images including, in addition to backgrounds, separate

layers for CG models, fill areas, line drawings, highlighting and shading.
Visually captivating, the film has a calligraphic and translucent feel, as if one
were watching a sort of moving palimpsest in which flat drawings of characters
and objects possess paradoxical material qualities of weight and volume.26 So
far from marking a retreat from physicality into virtual imagery, the process
of coarsening the CG forms by animating on top of them served, for Cook,
to strengthen the sense of the drawings’ material presence onscreen: ‘[I]t
felt … like the characters were rooted to the land, pushed down by gravity’.27
Visually, the film’s aesthetic is at once difficult to describe and astonishingly
vivid. Elements of each frame exhibit the impromptu immediacy of drawn
sketches, as if one had happened upon a page from one of the artist’s
notebooks: stones, shells and seaweed are rendered as rudimentary scribbles,
and the winged shapes of distant seagulls are implied in simple doodled
curlicues. Yet within the same visual field, images of the sisters hauling nets
of herring, attempting to revive the rescued man on the beach, and flinging
fish entrails to hungry crabs and gulls pulse with a corporeal vitality, asserting
incongruously physical and material presences within the planar flatness of
the ‘notebook page’. One representative frame, for example, features a hungry
crab slurping a pile of fish guts freshly jettisoned by Edna (see Figure 7.3).
The crab’s green pincers glow with photorealistic detail, and the entrails
gleam red, a gloppy, viscous mass. The beach on which they sit, on the other
hand, has a flat, sketched appearance as if a bit of pale yellowed paper had
been hastily strewn with random jottings. Odd scribbles, spiral and circle
shapes, indiscriminate nicks, scratches and smudges suggest the miscellany
of seawrack in a manner that belies visual depth cues and contradicts the
physicality of the crab and its heap of viscera.
This confluence of surface and depth is consistent throughout the film;
inscribed planar surfaces cohabit comfortably with bodies that expressively
convey volume and weight. Cook’s accretive technique, ‘photographic
textures … scribbled over, made uglier and placed over rigged CGI models
which were then animated’, results in a conspicuous emphasis on the
materiality of the visual field. Objects and characters greet the spectator not
as mimetic representations but as tangible, enigmatic bodies, ‘handsome
corpses’ washed up by the sea. Cook recounts a representative moment in the
development of the film’s material aesthetic: ‘I was in Cornwall when a big
storm hit. The next day I took lots of photos of all the rubbish that got washed
up on the beach. Wood, sticks, seaweed, plastic, bottles, toothbrushes, even
old condoms. All rather unpleasant. I stuck it all in there with all my Cy
Twombley-like scribblings.’ When Lol discovers the drowned man’s return,
these items surface visually alongside the body as visitors at once strange
and familiar, freighted, like the naked corpse itself, with the same uncanny
Figure 7.3 Surface and depth in The Pearce Sisters (Aardman Animations, 2007).
quality that attends material objects in Jackson’s Ten Sorry Tales. Like its
source text, The Pearce Sisters exhibits a hybrid visual field in which the real
and imaginary intermingle, and in which natural objects appear at once
commonplace and extraordinary, ‘[as if] reality has been tumbled, battered,
and re-appropriated by the sea somehow’.
While in many respects Cook’s chosen aesthetic in The Pearce Sisters
suggests the very antithesis of what might be presumed as typical of Aardman
design and technique, his approach to animation as a process of embodiment
suggests otherwise. For him, the task of designing the film lay not in forging
faithfully accurate representations of the characters described in Jackson’s
fiction, but in constructing bodies from elemental materials that convey, not
unlike plasticine and clay, specific qualities of substance and presence.28 For
Aardman, the project marked an extraordinary new departure that was at
the same time a return to the studio’s roots. In the context of that history, the
film’s formal uniqueness and literary lineage qualify it as a valuable lens
through which to contemplate Aardman’s pattern of inscribing human
desire and behaviour within a world of imagination and fantasy; Cook’s
material dialogue with Jackson’s text in The Pearce Sisters represents a
powerful and innovative model for navigating the shoreline between literary
fiction and animation.
A signal example of the film’s power in this regard occurs two minutes
into the film, as Lol finds herself atop the sisters’ dilapidated seaside home.
Attempting to mend a leak in the roof, she pulls a scrap of board from the
pocket of her frock. To her consternation, the bit of wood has a large, round
knothole in it, and she pauses momentarily as if contemplating the irony and
dubiousness of her task, before the wind suddenly rips the useless fragment
from her hand and flings it to the beach below. Later, while gathering
kindling for the smokehouse fire, she comes across this same bit of holey
detritus and, in an expressive, childlike moment, brings it playfully to her eye
to peer through it down the beach.
The point-of-view shot that immediately follows joins Lol’s sightline to
that of the film’s viewer, and the piece of wood becomes for us, as for her,
an improvised optical device, a kind of lensless camera. Within its round
frame, a flock of hungry gulls appears, wheeling and diving as they circle
low over the sand, their cries reaching us in muted cacophony across the
near distance. For the viewer, Lol’s wooden peephole operates in the manner
of an iris-shot in an old silent film, neither magnifying nor diminishing
its objective but framing it, blocking out what is extraneous and focusing
attention on what the Pearce sisters, along with the film’s spectators, will
shortly discover is there: the washed-up corpse of a naked man. This scrap
of wooden debris through which spectators and characters together gaze in
this sequence offers an apt simulacrum for The Pearce Sisters itself, a film
that must enter the consciousness of even the most ardent and well-versed
Aardman devotee as a startling, accidental find, a bit of cinematic flotsam
that feels, in confirmation of Cook’s wish, ‘as if it had been washed up by
the sea’.
Notes
1 Quoted in Paul Wells et al., Basics Animation 03: Drawing for Animation
(Lausanne, Switzerland: AVA Publishing, 2009), p. 170. I am grateful to
Luis Cook for his patience in answering my many questions about the
genesis and development of The Pearce Sisters, as well as his generosity in
sharing unpublished design materials used in production.
2 Cook offered this comment on his palette for the film: ‘I had an art
teacher once who told us that “red and green should never be seen!”
Even the colours were intended to evoke a sea sick feel’. This and all
other quotes from Luis Cook in this chapter are taken from various
email correspondence between Cook and the author between 27 March
and 21 May 2018.
3 The Pearce Sisters ultimately demonstrated the wisdom of this plan, proving
a worthy heir to the Aardman tradition of success from the moment of
its premiere in 2007. A Special Jury Award for Short Films at Annecy was
quickly followed by a BAFTA Film Award for Best Short Animation and
nine other awards at festivals from Córdoba to Zagreb. Inclusion in the
Animation Show of Shows catalogue of 2007 further confirmed the film’s
place among must-see animation shorts of the last half-century.
4 See Chapter 5 (Hosseini-Shakib) in this volume.
5 See, for example, Lord and Sproxton’s Aardman series for BBC’s Vision On
in the 1970s; the influential music video productions for Peter Gabriel’s
‘Sledgehammer’ (1986) and Nina Simone’s ‘My Baby Just Cares for Me’
(1987); and the studio’s advertising work for companies like Enterprise
Computers, Scotch Videotape and Perrier in the 1980s.
6 See Suzanne Buchan (ed.), Pervasive Animation (London: Routledge, 2013),
in particular the concluding essay, ‘Animation Studies as an Interdisciplinary
Teaching Field’ (pp. 317–37), in which Paul Ward argues that animation is
‘the missing link, the glue, the universal touchstone and meeting place for
a very wide range of theorists, historians, and practitioners working within
contemporary moving image culture’ (p. 318). For a sampling of rigorously
interdisciplinary assessments of animation in relation to literary narrative,
aesthetics and history, see in Suzanne Buchan (ed.), Animated Worlds
(Eastleigh, UK: John Libbey, 2007): Rachel Kearney, ‘The Joyous Reception:
Animated Worlds and the Romantic Imagination’, pp. 1–14; Richard Weihe,
‘The Strings of the Marionette’, pp. 39–48; Miriam Harris, ‘Literary Len:

Trade Tattoo and Len Lye’s Link with the Literary Avant-Garde’, pp. 63–77;
Paul Wells, ‘Literary Theory, Animation, and the “Subjective Correlative”:
Defining the Narrative “World” in Brit-Lit Animation’, pp. 79–94.
7 Michael Levy and Farah Mendlesohn, Children’s Fantasy Literature : An
Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016); Jackie
Wullschläger, Inventing Wonderland: The Lives and Fantasies of Lewis
Carroll, Edward Lear, J.M. Barrie, Kenneth Grahame, and A.A. Milne (New
York: Free Press, 1996). See also Chapter 8 (Sergeant) in this volume.
8 Krzysztof Fijalkowski and Michael Richardson (eds), Surrealism: Key
Concepts (London: Routledge, 2016); David Hopkins, Dada and Surrealism:
A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004);
Rudolf E. Kuenzli (ed.), Dada and Surrealist Film (Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 1996).
9 Mick Jackson, Ten Sorry Tales (London: Faber & Faber, 2005), p. 3.
10 Ibid., pp. 6–7.
11 Cook, email correspondence.
12 An interesting corollary to these literary examples in animation history is
Caroline Leaf ’s Two Sisters (1990), in which a reclusive, severely disfigured
writer and her overly protective sister live together on a remote island. In
a twist on the drowned man trope, a male admirer of the writer’s stories
swims across the water to meet her. Cook has said that Leaf ’s film was not
an influence, except perhaps unconsciously: ‘I had seen the film before but
it was only after The Pearce Sisters was completed that someone pointed out
the comparisons’.
13 Homer, The Odyssey, Robert Fagles (trans.), Reprint Edition (London:
Penguin Classics, 1999), 6.120.
14 In the ‘Nausicaa’ episode of Ulysses, Joyce offers a devastating exposé of this
romantic narrative in the person of Gerty McDowell, for whom the dream
of marriage functions as both an unrealizable fantasy and a prophylactic
measure against the risks of actual human contact. James Joyce, Ulysses,
Hans Walter Gabler (ed.) (New York: Vintage, 1986).
15 Jackson, Ten Sorry Tales, p. 8.
16 Ibid., p. 10.
17 In an interview featured on the blog, Short of the Week, Cook suggested
that he loved the idea of Lol and Edna as deliberate killers, ‘but couldn’t
make it work. It would have been the end of the story in the middle of the
film and we would have lost any crumb of sympathy we may have had with
the sisters’. Andrew S. Allen, ‘Interview with Luis Cook (The Pearce Sisters)’,
Short of the Week. Available at: https://www.shortoftheweek.com/news/qa-
with-luis-cook (accessed 22 January 2018).
18 Frank Kermode has theorized the surfacing of such enigmatic bodies within
narratives as a form of textual secrecy. As readers, ‘we are most unwilling
to accept mystery, what cannot be reduced to other and more intelligible
forms. Yet that is what we find here: something irreducible, therefore

perpetually to be interpreted; not secrets to be found out one by one, but
Secrecy’. Frank Kermode, The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of
Narrative (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), p. 143. For
an especially powerful and provocative exploration of reader resistant
literary texts, see Vicki Mahaffey, Modernist Literature: Challenging Fictions
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2007); also Allon White, The Uses of Obscurity: The
Fiction of Early Modernism (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981).
19 Gabriel García Márquez, ‘The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World’,
Collected Stories, Gregory Rabassa and J.S. Bernstein (trans.) (New York:
HarperCollins, 1999), p. 253.
20 Ibid.
21 H. Porter Abbott, ‘Immersions in the Cognitive Sublime: The Textual
Experience of the Extratextual Unknown in García Márquez and Beckett’,
Narrative 17, no. 2 (10 May 2009), p. 131.
22 García Márquez, ‘The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World’, p. 248.
23 According to Cook, ‘Bry Grey’ also alludes to the first stop-motion film in
history, Arthur Melbourne Cooper’s Matches an Appeal (1899), a one-
minute advertisement featuring an animated BryMay matchstick man
encouraging donations in support of soldiers fighting in the Boer War. This
connection is a point of interest for animation historians, though not in
all likelihood the average viewer, for whom the significance of the brand
remains its enigmatic material specificity.
24 See the omnibus editions of Edward Gorey’s Works: Amphigorey: Fifteen
Books (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1980); Amphigorey Too (New
York: TarcherPerigee, 1980); Amphigorey Also (San Diego, CA: Mariner
Books, 1993); Amphigorey Again (Orlando, FL: Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt, 2006).
25 The project, pitched while Cook was working at Aardman, was never
produced, although the designs influenced a later BBC digital ad
campaign.
26 Cook has acknowledged his intention to create ‘a crude and calligraphic
pictorial world’ (‘un mundo pictórico crudo y caligráfico’). See E.A.
Albedo, ‘The Pearce Sisters – Luis Cook (2007)’, N+2: Animación
de autor, 25 September 2013. Available at: http://nmasmas2.
blogspot.com/2013/09/the-pearce-sisters-luis-cook-2007.html
(accessed 8 May 2018); Sam. ‘The Pearce Sisters: Integrando 3D+2D’,
Animaholic, 5 February 2008. Available online: http://animaholic.
blogspot.com/2008/02/pierce-sisters-integrando-3d2d.html
(accessed 8 May 2018).
The result is an emphasis on the film’s visual field as an inscribed
surface, rather than a space for mimetic portrayal. As Laura U. Marks
puts it, ‘Calligraphic animation shifts the locus of documentation from
representation to performance, from index to moving trace.’ See Laura U.
Marks, ‘Calligraphic Animation: Documenting the Invisible’, Animation: An

Interdisciplinary Journal 6, no. 3 (November 2011), especially pp. 307–11.
27 Cook’s combination of 2D drawings with 3D CG images also echoes the
literary aesthetic employed by Jackson, who emphasizes his heroines’
pressing boredom, loneliness, unsatisfied desire and overall flatness of affect
while affording the reader access, through the arrival of the drowned man,
to the rounded volumes and layered depths of the surreal, the fantastic and
the magical.
28 Cook’s fusion of drawings, photographs and CGI generates visual
representations that also retain their own character as material entities. In
this respect, The Pearce Sisters suggests a certain technical and aesthetic
alignment with the material processes of stop-motion animation as it has
developed over decades of production at Aardman.
8
Wallace and Gromit and the

British Fantasy Tradition
Alexander Sergeant
Aardman Animations is arguably the UK’s finest contemporary exponent

of the animated fantasy film. Drawing on what J.P. Telotte describes as
animation’s ‘invariably fantastic aspect’,1 Aardman have produced popular
animations that display tendencies towards anthropomorphism and comic
exaggeration, both of which are also prominent features of traditional fantasy
storytelling. This is especially true of the studio’s signature commercial
property Wallace and Gromit. Created by Nick Park as part of his final-year
project at the National Film and Television School, Wallace and Gromit
were first made famous through a series of Oscar-winning shorts aired
sporadically on British television between 1989 and 2008. The international
popularity of these shorts has spawned a global franchise that has been
described as ‘one of the few genuinely eccentric places left in the movies’ and
‘as quintessentially British in flavour as a wedge of Wensleydale’.2 The world of
Wallace and Gromit has become synonymous with Aardman itself, existing
across an array of media platforms including video games, television spin-offs
and other merchandising outlets, but this global popularity has not come at
the expense of its British identity. It is, rather, precisely the franchise’s ability
to simultaneously celebrate and lampoon concepts of British nationality that
gives the distinctly British feel to its characters, scenarios and comedy.
Wallace and Gromit is a fantasy franchise. It features outlandish narratives
involving situations that are self-consciously designed to be larger-than-
life, not to mention a whole host of non-human characters (dogs, robots,
penguins/chickens) who display the fantasy genre’s tendencies towards
anthropomorphic caricature. Yet, asserting the identity of Wallace and
Gromit as fantasy cinema matters not only because it effects how we might
categorize the Aardman franchise in accordance with popular film genre
labels, but also how this quintessentially British franchise contributes to
discourses of nationality. Despite its similarities to certain aspects of British
society, the world of Wallace and Gromit is as much a fantasy as the more
obvious secondary fantasy worlds of C.S. Lewis or J.R.R. Tolkien. The only
difference is that whilst the worlds of Middle Earth and Narnia display
similarities with British culture as part of their respective authors’ attempts
to bring authenticity and richness to worlds that are self-consciously unreal,
the world of Wallace and Gromit displays elements of self-conscious fantasy
within a setting that is ostensibly representative of a certain vision of
Northern English society. Contextualizing Wallace and Gromit within what
Colin Manlove’ describes as the ‘domestic emphasis’ of British fantasy,3 I wish
to explore the narrative and stylistic conventions of the Wallace and Gromit
films that establish this distinctly British feel to its fantasy storytelling.
Trading on a set of shared literary and visual influences found within the
rich heritage of nineteenth- and twentieth-century British fantasy fiction,
Wallace and Gromit becomes quintessentially British not so much in the
way it represents reality, but through the way it departs from reality. Viewing
Wallace and Gromit through the lens of British fantasy theory, then, reveals
an ambivalence in Wallace and Gromit’s attitude towards British identity
and British fantasy heritage. On the one hand, there is potential to read the
franchise as a subversion of outmoded concepts of British national identity,
using as it does well-worn stereotypes and viewing them with an askance
lens so as to potentially critique and reject their assumed reality within
contemporary society. On the other hand, those same stereotypes serve as
a source of wonder within the world of Wallace and Gromit, lampooned
through the use of fantasy, but affectionately so in a manner that arguably
reinforces their assumed rightful existence within contemporary society.
This chapter does not promote either of these readings as the correct
interpretation of the franchise. Rather, it showcases how the potential for
either interpretation relies on audiences treating the images and scenarios
onscreen not as representations of reality, but as objects of fantasy. In short,
claiming Wallace and Gromit as an example of British fantasy helps to reveal
the sociocultural underpinnings of their world, utilizing the critical rubric
of fantasy fiction to illuminate what is at stake in the franchise’s engagement
with culturally engrained ideas of Britishness, and how such a process is
imaginatively communicated onscreen.
The British fantastic: Wallace and Gromit

and national context
During the numerous behind-the-scenes articles that accompanied the
release of their first feature film, Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005), Aardman’s
trademark process of stop-motion animation was often described as offering
Wallace and Gromit and the British Fantasy Tradition 141
audiences a ‘stylized’ or ‘anatomical’ realism.4 At the same time, Wallace and

Gromit has also been praised for its idiosyncrasy and eccentricity, features
that function as a key aspect of the popular appeal of the franchise. Drawing
from Nick Park’s childhood influences from visual and literary sources
including The Dandy and The Beano comics, the horror films of Hammer
Studios and the fantasy adventures produced by Ray Harryhausen, in
particular his Mother Goose Stories (1946), Park has often spoken of the sense
of ‘quirkiness, creativity and imagination’ that he sought to emulate in his
own work.5 Therefore, whilst Wallace and Gromit does not match the most
recognizable conventions of a specific type of fantasy identified by the use
of secondary worlds and a relatively stable iconography of dwarves, elves,
goblins and other such fabulist creatures, it does self-consciously draw from
other traditions of fantastic storytelling established particularly within the
British context over the past centuries.
Steeped in the folkloric traditions of the fairy tale, fantasy fiction first
emerged as an artistic response to the European cultural enlightenment
during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Tied to the aesthetic and
political aims of romanticism, the genre has historically been intertwined
with the Enlightenment’s undercurrent of nationalism, embracing folklore
not only to highlight the imaginative potential of the written word or visual
arts but also to celebrate a cultural legacy shared between different European
societies. In eighteenth-century Germany, pioneering fantasy writers such
as Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm as well as composers such as Richard Wagner
delved into a treasure trove of folklore and fairy tales to articulate the shared
cultural heritage that existed between the politically disjointed Germanic
states.6 In the United States, romantic sagas such as Washington Irving’s Rip
Van Winkle (1819) and James Fennimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans
(1826) set in a fantasy version of the American frontier functioned, as
Brian Attebery argues, to invest obscure corners of the nation with ‘human
interest’ that celebrated the newly discovered American landscape.7 Fantasy
has, therefore, played a crucial role in articulating and shaping discourses of
nationality since its inception, assisting the process by which national identity
is constructed through a shared awareness of an imagined community.8
Within the British artistic and literary heritage of the genre, fantasy has
functioned largely ‘not in terms of creation, but in terms of disturbance and
destruction’.9 This is seen in a broad tradition of writers stretching from
Geoffrey Chaucer to Jonathan Swift to the works of Lewis Carroll, each of
which utilizes fantasy as a device for satire to playfully subvert prevailing
social and political norms. Swift’s Lilliput in Gulliver’s Travels (1726) is a
grotesque subversion of aristocratic tradition, whilst Carroll’s Alice novels
(1865 and 1871) feature numerous scenes in which Victorian intellectualism
is lampooned through various nonsense-filled dialogue exchanges in which

supposedly logical suppositions are used to prove illogical syllogisms such
as one must always move forward to stay still, and that the best technique
for drying wet clothes is a discussion of history. This emphasis on fantasy
as a device for satiric subversion within the British traditions of the genre
is often masked due to the international popularity of a number of key
British fantasy authors whose works are often atypical of the conventions
of this heritage. J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis are responsible for the most
globally popular fantasy fictions produced by British authors, but the type of
‘secondary world’ narratives popularized through their work is actually not
characteristic of the wider tradition of British folklore.10 Instead, the British
fantasy tradition is typified not by the construction of secondary worlds,
but an askance alteration of our own world in which the laws of reality are
simultaneously represented and played with to subvert the status quo.
Wallace and Gromit fits within this broader tradition of British fantasy,
albeit in a manner that reveals as many mid-twentieth-century influences as
it acknowledges the influences of a longer tradition of storytelling stretching
back to the high point of romanticism. Emerging out of the end of what Van
Norris refers to as the ‘second wave’ of British animated cartoons, Aardman’s
early output ‘predicted the Third Wave still to come’ by moving away from
the European-influenced formal experimentalism that typified earlier British
animation.11 Park’s work as an animator exemplifies what Brian Cosgrove,
co-founder of the Cosgrove Hall studio, describes as a ‘warm and cosy’
streak within British animation,12 celebrating rather than decrying the
banality of everyday concerns such as the domestic setting of the British
living room and comforting traditions such as afternoon tea. Park’s work
for Aardman, and the enthusiasm with which it was received by audiences,
established a particular tone for the studio within the public consciousness
that on one level showed his contemporary visual literacy and on another
harked back to firmly engrained storytelling conventions held still within
the British cultural zeitgeist. Creature Comforts (1989), for example, fuses the
sense of comedic subversion of the status quo that The Beano achieved on
the page through a style of animation that, as Paul Wells argues, is ‘gentle in
tone, but ironic in style’.13 In this way, Park’s early work provided a British
alternative to shows like The Simpsons that similarly used animation to
subvert conventional domestic life in the US national context. Yet, at the
same time, Creature Comforts respects the traditions of the British fantastic,
modernizing those traditions by drawing from more immediate literary
and visual sources found with mid-twentieth-century popular culture but
remaining steadfast to the underlying principles that give British fantasy is
particular national sensibility. In this way, Park’s early work would set the
blueprint for a franchise that achieved global popularity, creating a style of

animated fantasy film distinctly aware of its own national status and identity.
Wallace and Gromit and anthropomorphism

Perhaps the most striking component of the world of Wallace and Gromit
that pulls its core mythology into the realms of the fantastic is its use of
anthropomorphism. Anthropomorphism is a trademark feature of popular
animation, but its prominence more widely in children’s literature and media
can be traced back to the British literary fantasy tradition, epitomized in
works such as Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, A.A. Milne’s
The Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and Richard Adams’s Watership Down.14
As Juliet Kellogg Markowsky argues, anthropomorphism signals ‘the flight
of fantasy itself ’.15 As a storytelling technique, it disturbs the world of reality
to provide an alternative perspective, allowing the usually fixed boundaries
and identities upon which the distinction between human and non-human
depends to be temporarily suspended.
Wallace and Gromit’s anthropomorphism is established in the opening
sequence of A Grand Day Out. Accompanied by the franchise’s now-famous
orchestral theme, the film begins with a panning shot of Wallace’s living room
that introduces the duo of man and dog via a number of ‘family photographs’
hanging on the wall. Reaching the carpet, the scene then begins to introduce
the domestic setting these two inhabit, travelling across the floor to reveal a
rather lived-in living room wherein travel brochures and camping magazines
litter the carpet and coffee tables. However, this sense of the familiar and
domestic is quickly disrupted by the presence of the dog Gromit, who sits
in his own armchair next to Wallace. The duo read quietly, and the sound
of ticking clock provides the scene with an additional sense of rhythm in
line with the pace established by the earlier camera movement. Gromit is
thus positioned within the mise-en-scène as a spouse-like figure. Each
consumed with their own activity, the couple share the room in comfortable
silence with a sense of ritual and regularity that suggests an air of domestic
tranquillity. The real-life boundaries between human and animal are played
with and subverted, establishing an atmosphere of the fantastic.
The series makes use of these anthropomorphic tendencies in order
to play on the audience’s perspective of the action and allegiance to the
characters, as well as to open up a liminal space wherein the narrative itself
is viewed from a perspective of fantasy. The Wrong Trousers (1993), for
example, tells its story largely from the point of view of Gromit as he suffers
the frustrations and humiliations of being placed in the position of a ‘mere’
dog at the hands of Wallace. Reacting with disdain at being given a leash as
a birthday present, a gift that confirms, in Wallace’s words, that somebody
owns him, Gromit’s objection is borne out of his refusal to be relegated to the
status of pet rather than the position of partner he more naturally inhabits
in other instalments. This is true both on an emotional level – Gromit is
seen to provide Wallace with much needed guidance and support – as well
as at the level of commercial activity – he shares with Wallace the labour and
the credit for the duo’s various business enterprises. In fact, it is when the
harmony of the duo is threatened by outside forces that Gromit is relegated
to a position as Wallace’s pet, a threat often arising in the form of various
competitors for Wallace’s affection including Feather’s McGraw in The Wrong
Trousers – a figure who also mocks animalistic notions of species through his
ability to ‘disguise’ himself as a chicken through the use of a rubber glove – as
well as later love interests such as Wendolene Ramsbottom in A Close Shave
(1995), Lady Tottington in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and Piella Bakewell
in A Matter of Loaf and Death (2008). In these scenarios, the villainous or
untoward nature of these characters is often foreshadowed by the threat they
pose to Gromit’s status as an equal partner to Wallace, a relationship that an
audience familiar with the franchise knows is crucial to their success.
Gromit frequently demonstrates his intellectual superiority and
emotional maturity in comparison with Wallace’s dim-witted charm, yet
in spite of Gromit’s assumption of human comforts such as his armchair
and newspaper, he is dependent on Wallace for access to the human world.
The frequent threats posed to Gromit within the narratives of the series
showcase the fragility of this dependency. In the case of A Matter of Loaf
and Death, the transference of affection from Gromit to Piella directly
reduces Gromit to the role of ‘dog’, similar to the status of her own pet
Fluffles, robbing him of his own room and redecorating the house, making
Gromit feel an outsider in his own home. The narrative strategies of such
plot points invite the audience to feel the injustice and fear Gromit feels. By
asking us to witness the events from the point of view of Gromit, even the
more representational elements of the Wallace and Gromit universe become
somewhat fantastical, viewed as they are from the mindset of a character
who, through his animal status, exists in a space outside of both society
and reality. Gromit’s perspective is inherently fantastical in that to imagine
ourselves sharing his perspective is to imagine a dog possessing impossible
cognitive faculties beyond the realms of everyday life, offering us a sentient
space through which to view the fiction outside the confines of realism.
Audiences can therefore read, for example, Wallace’s obsession with cheese
and British comforts as somewhat fantastic occurrences rather than simply
as typical or everyday, as Gromit’s anthropomorphism becomes a device
used to provide an askance vision of British society in a manner reflective of

the traditions of British fantasy storytelling.
Anthropomorphism within British fantasy, as appropriated by authors
such as Beatrix Potter and Richard Adams, is often linked to a deeper
cultural desire to, as John Pennington argues, ‘escape the industrial world
and recapture Aracadia’.16 Epitomizing a harmony with nature and a freedom
from the modernizing forces of industry and commerce, the invocation of
the myth of Arcadia within twentieth-century fantasy literature allowed
writers to present a melancholic view of contemporary, urban culture.
The myth of Aracadia engages in a nostalgic escapism that ‘constructs
a literature of revision that provides useful equipment for living; their
didactic fictions teach us that the world is fallen, but that the world is also
vital’.17 The myth offers itself to readers through a mixture of nostalgia and
melancholy that articulates a dissatisfaction with the contemporary world.
Yet, the dissatisfaction is not channelled into a desire to change reality, but
a melancholic recognition that the constructed worlds of Watership Down,
Peter Rabbit and Jemima Puddle-Duck are ‘just fantasies’. Because they are
not real, because their anthropomorphism declares them to be fantastic,
they cannot exist in reality. The lost world such authors present cannot be
reclaimed, but instead enjoyed only as passing utopian fantasies tinged with
British societal concerns.
This subversion of contemporary life through nostalgia appears in
Wallace and Gromit, albeit in a manner that reflects the more immediate
concerns of its sociocultural climate. Whilst British fantasy fiction of the
nineteenth and early twentienth centuries steeped in the Arcadian model
reflected concerns over industrialization, Wallace and Gromit’s nostalgic
vision of middle-class Northern England values community against the
sweeping ideological agenda of individualization within Thatcherite and
post-Thatcherite Britain. Seen through Gromit’s eyes, the world of Wallace
and Gromit is desirable due to its sense of community. Due to his animal
status, Gromit is constantly shut out of public life, unable to participate
in the same eccentric festivals or inane conversations that characterize
Wallace’s interaction with the world, and he is at the whim of his owner’s
often-erratic temperament to achieve a sense of belonging and security. Yet,
that same sense of community that is valorized through the perspective of a
character that can never be part of it is seen from a perspective that cannot
be occupied in reality. Gromit’s anthropomorphism means that he evades
the real world of humans in every sense. Within the context of the fiction,
Gromit’s ability to function outside of human society gives him the necessary
insight to bring about a narrative resolution, whether through his ability to
make alliances with fellow animals like Shaun the Sheep in A Close Shave, or
through his outsider’s perspective that allows him to see past Wallace’s focus
on social acceptance and solve the mystery of Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Yet,
beyond his outsider status within the mechanics of the plot, his fantastical
perspective given his anthropomorphic status pulls the story-world into a
realm of self-conscious fabrication. Gromit cannot realistically become part
of Wallace’s community because neither Gromit nor that community exists.
Like previous examples of Aracadian British fantasy novels, Wallace and
Gromit uses anthropomorphism both to express a longing for a lost world
and to construct that lost world as self-consciously impossible fantasy. The
representation of a sense of community that is increasingly absent from a
post-industrial Britain is simultaneously celebrated through nostalgia and
exoticized through fantasy, constructing the cosiness of such a landscape as
both admirable and false.
Wallace and Gromit, nostalgia, satire and subversion

The Arcadian tradition in British fantasy that stems from the ideas of
romanticism borne in opposition to the societal effects of the industrial
revolution discussed above went on to inflect the writings of authors such
as Tolkien and Lewis, whose work was rooted in what Meredith Veldman
terms a ‘suspicion of industrialization and empiricism’.18 Ostensibly, the
manner in which technology is presented within the Wallace and Gromit
universe might seem to clash with such literary and artistic traditions
because Wallace’s role as an inventor not only serves as his most defining
and admirable characteristic, but also often functions as the main narrative
thrust that allows the story to depart from the everyday world of reality
established within the narrative. Yet, whilst technology is partially celebrated
within Wallace and Gromit it is also reminiscent of the nostalgia displayed
in the Arcadian streak of British fantasy, treated with a degree of suspicion.
In The Wrong Trousers, it is Wallace’s purchase of the eponymous Techno
trousers that attracts the attention of Feathers McGraw and allows him to
steal the diamond from the museum. In A Close Shave, the villainous Preston
is made uncanny due to his initial ability to pass as a dog, only revealing his
robotic and therefore artificial nature later in the narrative. In The Curse of
the Were-Rabbit, Wallace’s ambition to cure the town of its rabbit infestation
proves to be his folly as his ill-fated machine creates the beast of the title.
Not only is technology often a source of antagonism within the franchise,
but it is also a source of comedic incongruity, utilized often within a bathetic
situation that involves a mismatch between the technological sophistication
on display and the ends to which such ingenuity is being put. This helps to
undercut the potential for a utopian celebration of technological wonder. In

A Grand Day Out, Wallace is motivated to design a rocket capable of going
to the moon because he has run out of cheese. The Wrong Trousers opens
with an extremely elaborate wake-up system that requires the house to be
fitted with trap doors, escape hatches, pulleys and other such gadgetry so
that Wallace need not walk down stairs or spread jam on his toast, a feat
repeated in the opening of Curse of the Were-Rabbit whereby the duo build
into their elaborate preparations for their job as pest controllers a device
that provides them with a cup of tea during their exit procedure. As such,
technology in Wallace and Gromit interacts with the series’ aforementioned
anthropomorphic traits to blur the lines between animalism and humanism.
Beyond the franchise’s representation of technology, the broader satiric
impulse that lies at the heart of the Wallace and Gromit universe further
indicates its place within a distinctly British tradition of fantasy. As Eric
Rabkhin argues, ‘[s]atire is inherently fantastic. Not only does it depend
on narrative worlds that reverse the perspectives of the world outside the
narrative, but also the style usually depends on irony’.19 In the traditions
of British fantasy storytelling, this satiric impulse has functioned as a
key characteristic of the broader tendencies towards subversion and
critique. As Manlove argues, ‘[c]omic fantasy has done particularly well
in England, where the impulses to laugh at absurdity and to create it are
both strong’.20 Exemplified in a literary tradition stretching back to Jeffrey
Chaucer through to the satires of Jonathan Swift, this comedic impulse as
represented through fantasy often manifests through a dynamic expressed by
Manlove as ‘the high and the low, or the little and large’.21 Frequently utilizing
comedy in order to express distinctions of class, the type of subversion
achieved through this fusion of fantasy and satire allows humour to be used as
a force that temporarily elevates the position of the powerless at the expense
of the powerful. Whether it be Titania’s devotion to the weaver Bottom in A
Midsummer Night’s Dream or Edward Lear’s celebration of nonsense in
opposition to the conservative values of Victorian society in poems such as
‘The Owl and the Pussycat’, satire in the British fantasy tradition is used to
provide a temporary position of authority to that which is often repressed
or excluded from dominant discourses, a device that allows it to once again
enunciate its more subversive tendencies.
A similar comedic reversal of the dynamic between the powerful/
powerless is at play in Wallace and Gromit, albeit within a more
transnational discourse that often positions British filmmaking traditions
in opposition or in dialogue with two popular Hollywood genres of the
fantastic: horror and science fiction. These parodic allusions to US genre
filmmaking allow the satiric impulse that underlies a lot of British fantasy
fiction, so often used to give voice to the powerless against the powerful in
folklore, to speak to anxieties of globalization and US cultural dominance.
Scott Lash and Celia Lury link the comedic elements of Wallace and Gromit
to a Bergsonian theory of the comedic as a form of ‘disruption’.22 Littered
with references to all manner of popular genres, an interplay is established
between the fantastic elements of the world of Wallace and Gromit, which
are often exemplified through its use of animation, and narratives that
remain focused on the banalities of traditional British middle-class culture.
In the opening credits of The Wrong Trousers, for example, the trademark
opening of orchestral theme over panning shots of Wallace’s wallpaper
is quickly interrupted by a scene reminiscent of horror cinema. Jagged
lettering reminiscent of pulp horror magazines and pronounced shadows
of the eponymous trousers on the walls recall the title sequences of the
classic 1930s Universal creature features such as Frankenstein (1931) and
The Wolfman (1941). Similar references to the history of both British and
US horror cinema appear elsewhere in the series. The first half of The Wrong
Trousers, for example, is essentially an extended riff on Hitchcock’s Shadow
of a Doubt (1943), whilst A Close Shave begins with a brief homage to Psycho
(1960). The Curse of the Were-Rabbit contains numerous allusions to horror
conventions, including a scene in which the foreboding sound of a church
organ, first seeming to be functioning as non-diegetic accompaniment to
the scene, is revealed as being played by a sheepish elderly organist. As
the film then establishes the successful completion of a giant vegetable
competition as its key source of dramatic tension, the typical hysterics of
a classical horror film are undermined by the relatively parochial concerns
of the village inhabitants. Rather than being used as vehicle for the abject
or as device to discomfort audiences in lines with the aesthetics of horror
cinema itself, these allusions to the horror genre are instead used as part of
the traditions of satire within British fantasy. This comedic subversion of US
genre cinema asserts the British identity of the franchise not only through
the humorous juxtaposition of US narrative conventions and iconography
and ‘middle England’ banality, but also through the broader subversive
atmosphere established through these comedic tropes that draws upon
traditions of British fantasy storytelling.
The satiric impulse of British fantasy often seeks to lampoon figures
of authority in a manner that utilizes comedy’s propensity for subversion
to provide a voice for the downtrodden or imposed. A tacit but powerful
component of Wallace and Gromit’s parody of genre conventions is the way
US heroism is made the object of fun by channelling it through a British
vernacular and sensibility. Not only does comedic subversion through
fantasy occur at the level of the dramatic stakes of each Wallace and Gromit
adventure – replacing, for example, the murder of villagers with the murder
of villagers’ vegetables and a trip to the moon with a picnic on the moon – but
also through the vernacular in which such stories are articulated. A similar
attitude to the conventions of science fiction takes places in A Matter of Loaf
and Death, whose finale contains a nod to Aliens (1986). This reference is
used to knowingly and mockingly aggrandize Fluffles’s act of bravery as she
thwarts Piella’s evil plan by commandeering a machine equipped with oven
gloves in a manner of Aliens’ Ripley’s own assault on the alien creature to save
her surrogate daughter Newt. Injecting this famous cinematic moment with
the banalities of baking and oven-gloves positions a British re-appropriation
of generic conventions within a far more domestic sphere. Such references not
only help to negotiate a US–UK relationship in which the drama of American
genres is pulled through a British lens of eccentricity and banality, but also
engages with British storytelling and comic traditions as form of nostalgic
celebration. In this way, the comedy of Wallace and Gromit manifests what
Wells refers to as the post-1980 turn within animation towards ‘observational
comic tropes’ and away from the counter-cultural discourses of the earlier
decades.23 Through a dialogue between British and US traditions in genres
such as horror, comedy and science fiction, the fantastic in Wallace and
Gromit contributes to a transnational dialogue that both subverts and
celebrates such conventions. This allows the comedic element of the franchise
to be rooted in distinctly national concerns, subverting the assumed power
and influence of US genre cinema in a comparable way to the subversion of
authority in traditional British fantasy literature.
Conclusion: Wallace and Gromit in the

quest for the carnivalesque
This chapter has situated some of the formal and stylistic conventions of the
Wallace and Gromit universe within the broader traditions of British fantasy
storytelling in order to better pinpoint some of the characteristics that
identify the stories as quintessentially British, despite the fact they depart
so much from the contemporary reality of living within the UK. Looking at
Park’s nostalgic-fuelled creation of a world somewhere between the pages
of The Beano and the monster movies of Ray Harryhausen, it is difficult to
ignore the manner in which Wallace and Gromit departs from reality not
only at a physical level, but at a social level as well. The films are full of talking
animals, far-fetched gadgets and silly puns. They are also lacking in social
and cultural diversity, presenting only a very narrow subsection of traditional
British society that excludes more than it includes.
Assessing any fantasy text within such sociopolitical parameters will

often lead one quickly into some rather broad and long-standing debates.
Conceived partially as a form of protest against dominant trends within
European society towards rationalism and empiricism, fantasy fiction
has long been defined through a dialectical critical commentary that has
simultaneously celebrated the genre’s potential to subvert the givens
and assumptions of a preconceived notion of reality whilst at the same
time deriding the political opportunities contained within such an act of
subversion. Sharing an iconography with European folk stories, fantasy is
bound by a sensibility that, as Mikhail Bakhtin describes, is ‘saturated with
a specific carnival sense of the world’.24 It has the ability to make the fool the
king for a day, but that process can be argued to either highlight the inherent
idiocy of such political institutions or else provide justification for the order
of things by setting itself up as a form of transgression from a supposed
‘norm’. As Rosemary Jackson argues, fantasy fiction ultimately constitutes
not a transgression or a replication of reality but rather operates a form of
‘paraxis’.25 It subverts and supports, is bound by the socio-historical context
it emerges from and yet deliberately transcends that context.
Wallace and Gromit’s place within this debate is similarly paradoxical
in that it contains much that can be argued to be subversive in the manner in
which it utilizes certain fantasy conventions. Its use of anthropomorphism
gives its world a fantastic charge that then allows it plenty of space to critique
certain aspects of contemporary British culture, to which the world of
Wallace and Gromit offers a transgressive alternative. It presents technology
in a spectacular, nostalgic manner, rejecting a world bound by rationality.
It celebrates British eccentricity over British conformity, offering this as
a comedic foil to the larger forces of globalization and Americanization
through its dialogue with genre conventions. Yet, the franchise also presents
a world that shows little awareness of the important changes that have taken
place within British society over the past half century and strikes a note of
nostalgia that seems to wish for a less complicated, and less diverse, Britain
than the one that currently exists. As its stylized world of British cosiness
becomes increasingly divorced from reality, the fantasy on screen begins
to avoid the world off screen altogether. By staying true to many features
of British fantasy storytelling, Wallace and Gromit plays on traditional and
outmoded concepts of British nationality, defining itself largely through a
white, Anglo-Saxon culture from which such conventions have emerged.
On the one hand, that outdated concept of ‘Britishness’ is worth critiquing
through fantasy and the franchise can be said to do that. On the other, by only
critiquing this aspect of British identity, whole swathes of British society and
culture are left out of the process, conspicuous in their absence. If Wallace
and Gromit is a very British fantasy franchise, then such a classification

might say as much about the ephemeral nature of nationality as it does about
the ephemeral nature of fantasy.
Notes
1 J.P. Telotte, Animating Space (Lexington: University of Kentucky
Press, 2010), p. 15.
2 A.O. Scott, ‘A New Challenge for an Englishman and His Dog’, New York
Times, 5 October 2005, p. E1; Leslie Felperin, ‘Wallace and Gromit: The
Curse of the Were-Rabbit’, Variety, 26 September 2005, p. 54.
3 Colin Manlove, The Fantasy Literature of England (Houndmills,
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999), p. 10.
4 Rachel K. Boseley, ‘Animating Atmosphere’, American Cinematographer,
October 2005. p. 6. Available at: https://www.theasc.com/magazine/oct05/
curse/page6.html (accessed 19 December 2015).
5 Cited in Owen Gibson, ‘A One-Off Quirky Thing’, The Guardian,
21 July 2008. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/media/2008/jul/21/
television (accessed 1 November 2015).
6 A summary of this period of writing is provided in Gary K. Wolfe, ‘Fantasy
from Dryden to Dunsany’, in E. James and F. Mendlesohn (eds), The
Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2012), pp. 7–20.
7 Brian Attebery, The Fantasy Tradition in American Literature (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1980), p. 20.
8 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1991).
Emphasis added. The term ‘imagined community’ represents the central
argument of Anderson’s famous treatise on nationalism and can be found
throughout this text. For an introduction to the concept, see pp. 1–9.
9 Brian Stableford, ‘The British and American Traditions of Speculative
Fiction’, in M.K. Langford (ed.), Contours of the Fantastic: Selected Essays
from the Eighth International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1990), p. 40.
10 Their writings are an attempt to atone for a relative dearth of indigenous folk
tales and romantic sagas in comparison to those of nations like Germany
in which the world-building narratives exemplified in Wagner’s Der Ring
des Nibelungen helped to forge part of a growing sense of nationhood. If
Tolkien and Lewis had truly tried to replicate this in British fantasy fiction,
then their fantasy creations might have built on surviving British folk tales
such as Jack and the Beanstalk, Tom Thumb and Dick Whittington with,
as Manlove elaborates, their combination of ‘mute courtliness, chivalry,
love, idealism and religion, with heroism, decency, generosity, loyalty and
common sense’. Manlove, The Fantasy Literature of England, p. 17.

12 Cited in ‘“Warm and Cosy” British Animation’, BBC News,
16 March 2012. Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/
newsid_9706000/9706363.stm (accessed 28 November 2015).
13 Paul Wells, Understanding Animation (London: Routledge, 1998), p. 60.
14 Watership Down is referenced within the Wallace and Gromit franchise in
Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Gromit briefly stumbles across Art Garfunkel’s
Bright Eyes, a song featured heavily in the animated adaptation released
in 1978, whilst flicking through a number of different radio stations.
15 Juliet Kellogg Markowsky, ‘Why Anthropomorphism in Children’s
Literature?’, Elementary English 52, no. 4 (April 1975), p. 466.
16 John Pennington, ‘From Peter Rabbit to Watership Down: There and Back
Again to the Arcadian Ideal’, Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 3, no. 2
(1991), p. 68.
17 Ibid., pp. 77–8.
18 Meredith Veldman, Fantasy, the Bomb, and the Greening of Britain: Romantic
Protest 1945–1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 3.
19 Eric S. Rabkin, The Fantastic in Literature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
20 Manlove, The Fantasy Literature of England, p. 114.
21 Ibid., p. 115.
22 Scott Lash and Celia Lury, Global Culture Industry: The Mediation of Things
(Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007), p. 92.
23 Paul Wells, ‘“The Sight of 40-Year-Old Genitalia Too Disgusting, Is It?”
Wit, Whimsy and Wishful Thinking in British Animation, 1900-Present’, in
I.Q. Hunter and L. Porter (eds), British Comedy Cinema (Abingdon, Oxon:
Routledge, 2012), p. 204.
24 Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 1984), p. 107.
25 Rosemary Jackson, Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion (London:
Routledge, 1988), p. 19.
Section Three
Process and Production

154
9
Animation Storyboarding as Part of

the Pre-Production Process: An
Aardman Case Study
Paul Ward
Introduction
There is little doubt that the pre-production process is a vitally important
stage for any film, where things are planned, mapped out and what has often
been referred to as a ‘blueprint’ for the production drawn up. Because of the
labour-intensiveness of the animation process, this pre-production planning
arguably becomes even more important. There are signs of an increase in
scholarly interest in the processes of animation production – including pre-
production aspects of the pipeline such as storyboards, character designs,
concept work and pre-visualization.1 This has partly been driven by the
welcome reframing of approaches to film, media and animation industry
practice that has followed in the wake of the shift to a ‘production studies’
paradigm marked itself by a deeper attention to production artefacts, spaces
and behaviours.2 Despite this welcome shift in emphasis, it is still routine for
storyboards to be presented in the literature in a normative, instrumentalist,
‘common sense’ manner.3 For example, ‘the main purpose of the board is
to provide a practical and accurate idea of how the finished film will turn
out’.4 Additionally, ‘art of ’ and ‘how to’-type books about storyboarding (e.g.,
Fionnuala Halligan’s The Art of Movie Storyboards or Giuseppe Cristiano’s
The Storyboard Design Course) present this key pre-production process as
self-evident rather than analysing the type of work it entails.5
Central to my discussion is an examination of storyboarding in the
wider context of animation labour – not only as labour in and of itself
(storyboarding is a highly skilled job), but as a process which is indicative
of the future labour of others. The overall objective is to further develop and
deepen the ways in which we might understand the animation process as
‘labour intensive’. It is commonplace to refer to animation in general in this
way – and it seems to be especially true of how stop-motion animation is

perceived.6 But what does this notion of ‘labour intensiveness’ mean for
particular specialists, like storyboard artists, within the overall animation
production process? Historically, the work of the storyboard artist seems
to inhabit a contradictory space in that they are recognized as a vital part
of the pre-production phase of the pipeline – playing an essential role in
the development of the storytelling – but at the same time their role, and the
artefacts they produce, is often devalued and seen as subordinate to other
parts of the production process. Unlike many other aspects of stop-motion
animation production, recent digital technological innovations have not
materially changed this relationship. As Chris Pallant and Steven Price
note, ‘[a]lthough [the move to a digital workflow] represents a radical shift
in the materiality of the storyboard […] its functionality remains relatively
unchanged’.7 This productive tension between materiality and functionality
is an important way of understanding artefacts like storyboards, and the
labour that underpins them. As we shall see in relation to Aardman in
particular, the storyboarding phase is not only a multifaceted and iterative
stage of story development, the boards also play a vital role in the highly
complex production management of their projects.
Storyboards: Histories and discourses

The ‘invention’ (or gradual evolution and development) of the storyboard
tends to be credited to Walt Disney Studios in the 1930s. Usually attributed
to Disney artist Webb Smith, there was a move from ‘comic strip’-style visual
mapping out of stories in notebooks to a more formal drawing of specific
actions on separate sheets, which could then be pinned to a board, in
sequence. According to Christopher Finch:
If changes had to be made, drawings could be moved or taken down and

replaced. It was the ideal method for developing an animated film, and
it was perfectly suited to Disney’s style. He no longer drew, but he
could shape the movie at the storyboard phase, controlling the overall
structure.8
There are a number of notable things implied here: the notion of ‘visual
planning’ being an integral part of story development; the fact that this new
process gave a sequential ‘overview’ of the entire story; that this ‘overview’, in
turn, enabled efficiencies in terms of improvements to the film; and, finally,
that this seemingly collaborative story process was ultimately controlled
Animation Storyboarding 157
by Disney via his Story Department. The ‘story conference’ stage became
subject to intense scrutiny by the studio management and, according to
Mark Langer, ‘by using the script and the storyboard as a choke point, Disney
could oversee production. The Story Department became the chief organ of
this management and occupied a place at the very top of the hierarchical
pyramid.’9
In their celebrated book about Disney animation, The Illusion of Life,
Disney animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston recall:
Writers of proven skill had been brought into the studio, but they were
seldom given a chance to write. A script could be used in the beginning
to show suggestions of what might be done with the material, but more
often the ideas were talked over, tossed around, beaten to death, changed
discarded, revamped, built upon and “milked” without a single word
being put on paper. Since animation is a visual medium, it is important
that the story ideas, the characters, the business, the continuity, and
the relationships be presented in visual form rather than in words.
So the storyboard was invented.10
The breezy, determinist language (‘so the storyboard was invented’) masks
what was no doubt a more complex emergence of a way of working and
glosses over the power relations at play. These bubble to the surface in a
distinction Thomas and Johnston make elsewhere in their book between
the ‘storyman’ and the ‘sketch man’ – and a nascent division of labour
(‘the storyman did the talking in the meetings’)11 – with the former being
very near the top of Langer’s hierarchical pyramid (because those in the
Story Department reported directly to Disney himself). As Matt Stahl has
argued, there is a tension, though this is certainly not unique to animation
production, between ‘above the line’ creative personnel (including writers,
producers and directors) and ‘below the line’ craft and technical labour
(which would include storyboard artists), a tension that is exacerbated
by the often creative interventions that storyboard artists, despite being
below the liners, make to the stories (e.g. in the form of adding, or improving
the timing of, gags). Stahl cites one telling example of a 2002 case when ‘a
group of Animation Guild writers, well aware of authorial contributions by
lower-paid storyboard artists, sought to shore up the boundaries around
their own positions and downplay the originating work of the [storyboard]
artists’, with the clear implication being that the writers’ labour was more
valuable and creative than that of the storyboard artists.12
We can identify here a tendency for talking about the work of storyboard
artists, and the storyboards they produce, as an important but ultimately
subordinate part of the filmmaking process as a whole: important, because

the key scenes, actions, character relations and so on are ‘mapped out’ in what
then becomes seen as a ‘blueprint’ for the future film; subordinate in that this
process is ultimately driven and overseen not by the storyboard artists, but by
what would be termed the ‘story men’ in Thomas and Johnston’s parlance, along
with the directors and producers. This perceived subordinate role of storyboard
artists and their labour is borne out by a further detail from the 2002 case Stahl
cites: the writers argued that storyboard artists should not be referred to as
‘artists’ at all, but should be termed ‘graphic enhancers’. Alongside this way of
talking about storyboard artists, there is also the tone of instrumentality of much
of the discourse around the actual storyboards. They have a common sense
meaning and function: they ‘serve a purpose’, namely to ‘board out the story’.
They are, apparently, simply a means to an end – to make the film and tell the
story in as clear and efficient way as possible. One of the things that we can draw
out from just the brief historical references above is that storyboarding emerged
from a specific model of animation production – the streamlined, for-profit,
efficiency-driven studio system innovated by Disney. As we shall see, though,
the emergence of storyboarding as a distinct process in the pipeline – from its
roots in the looser ‘story meetings’ where animators would rehearse gags and
other business – has meant that there are some important aspects of how various
different types of animation labour can be conflated, or even ignored, in favour
of other roles in production that are deemed to be more valuable.
Aardman’s approaches to storyboarding

Writing about storyboarding within the specific contexts of stop-motion
animation and Aardman conforms with the way that storyboarding, when it
is actually discussed at all, is positioned as a certain kind of animation work
that is valued in particular ways. For example, Ken Priebe’s The Advanced Art
of Stop-motion Animation has no entries at all for ‘storyboards’ in the index;13
Aardman’s book Cracking Animation, about their animation production
process,14 has a few pages on storyboards, but these are more descriptive
than analytical. Barry Purves’s book Stop-motion includes some comments
on storyboards and pre-visualization in a subsection titled ‘Working
with others’.15 However, discussions with Aardman personnel reveal the
fundamental role that storyboarding plays in the studio’s production process.
To a certain extent, storyboarding at Aardman conforms to the perception
discussed above – as a functional activity that is subordinate to the ultimate
storytelling of the film. It is equally clear, however, that the storyboarding
process cannot simply be equated with ‘mapping’ the story or creating a
‘blueprint’ for the film – it is an integral part of the creative process of story
development more generally.
Long-standing Aardman director Luis Cook, for example, notes that in a
lot of cases the starting point for what becomes a fully worked board is the
director’s own sketches and swift thumbnails. In some cases, such activity is a
form of visual development from a written script or story idea, although this
is not always the case. Michael Salter, Head of Storyboarding at Aardman,
likewise noted that when working on Nick Park’s films, there might be a broad
scenario but the ‘scripting’ is something that is initially ‘worked out’ by Park
himself, acting out the scenes and doing rough thumbnails in the way that
Cook suggests.16 This chimes with what Paul Wells outlines,17 namely that
the specific qualities of animation often mean that a ‘script’ as such (as
in a formalized, written document) might not exist – or, if it does, it has
emerged from (and not necessarily prior to) the ferment of story meetings,
LAV (live-action video) sessions,18 thumbnail sketches and other aspects of
pre-production that are completely visual and practical in nature. In effect,
the storyboarding stage of the process is one where the tangle of ideas, gags
and the director’s overall vision starts to be formalized into a document that
enables the film to actually get made.
Cook has referred to storyboarding ‘[a]s a distillation process’, thereby
drawing attention to the ways in which the storyboarding process
concentrates or distils the essential components of the story.19 Similarly,
Wells has used the term ‘condensation’ to refer to the specific properties
of animation that enable certain storytelling conventions to come to the
fore – those to do with compression of actions, alongside certain tropes
such as sudden transformation/metamorphosis, or what we might call the
‘economy’ of character design. Although Wells uses the term ‘condensation’
to pinpoint what he sees as an underlying quality or trait of animation in
general, he makes a similar point about animation script development and
storyboarding when he talks about it being a compressed or condensed
‘shorthand’ that implies a ‘bigger picture’ without explicitly showing every
detail.20 This suggests that the ‘blueprint’ analogy for storyboarding is
inaccurate – as Cook makes clear, the process is not about mapping out every
last detail of the story, it is about capturing the essence of the scenes. As Cook
says, ‘with storyboards, clarity is everything, but you are looking to “plus” the
script, make it more visual. It is important to show, not tell, and minimize
exposition’.21 The purpose of the storyboarding process, then, is not simply
to map out the story in a routinely ‘functional’ way, but to act as a space in
which the overall creative process of story development can be played out –
eventually leading to the ‘distilled’ or finalized boards that are used for the
final shoot.
This broad functionality of storyboards as a creative tool is something that

is common to all studios and production contexts, but it is equally apparent
that an artist or studio may utlize storyboards in different ways depending
on the specific production context and animation technique. For example,
Richard Phelan, storyboard artist for Aardman notes:
The differences between 2D, CG, and Stop-Motion often come into effect
later in the boarding process as the initial pass is an attempt to make the
story as good as possible. Afterwards [with stop motion] we will then go
through the boards to look for things like: what sets are needed, number
of puppets, camera movements, etc. and make amendments.22
This highlights the fact that, like any aspect of pre-production, assets like
storyboards (and here we can also include character designs or concept work
for locations/layouts) go through various iterations: Phelan’s reference to ‘the
initial pass’ is what many in the industry would refer to as ‘the rough’ (as in a
‘rough version’ of the board). Phelan emphasizes that the initial focus has to
be on story (and, in Aardman’s case, this more often than not means gags):
getting that right involves reiterations and reworking. However, Phelan’s
comment also points to a ‘second order of business’ when it comes specifically
to stop-motion animation production. Alongside thinking about making the
story ‘as good as possible’, the team need to go through the boards and think
logistically about sets, puppets, how the camera will navigate the space and
so on. Arguably, these are not things that other forms of animation need
to think about (or not in the same way, at least).23 They are more properly
thought of as production management – a vital part of the production
pipeline at Aardman, due to the fine balance of assets like puppets, sets and
props that need to be constructed, and the shooting and animating schedule
that needs to be mapped out. It is apparent, therefore, that the value of the
storyboards at Aardman is directly linked not only to the creative process,
but also to their important function in the overall production management
of the projects.
Aardman Production Manager Richard (‘Beeky’) Beek’s sense of the
purpose and function of storyboards confirms this, and links directly with
what Phelan says:
In stop motion the storyboard provides a great deal of the information

required by every department involved (what sets, puppet and props are
required) – but for this information to be of real value the storyboards
need to be applied to a schedule. This should be done repeatedly at every
stage of boarding – this not only allows each department to plan ahead
(build/delivery schedules) but also to be able to highlight potential

issues to Production/Director.24
Beeky’s reference to ‘every stage of boarding’ emphasizes that at this stage in

pre-production an overall schematic for the film will be mapped out (what
Phelan refers to as a complete ‘initial pass’ of the storyboard), but then more
detailed/polished versions of the boards will be produced that respond to some
of these logistical, production management questions. It is clear from this that
the specific requirements of storyboarding in stop-motion mean that they
have to be ‘readable’ as important planning documents in terms of production
management – a guide not just to how the story will unfold but also to set
building, puppet building, prop building and other aspects of delivery.
My argument to this point has focused mainly on how storyboarding
for animation is part of the pre-production process that distils or condenses
story ideas into a functional visual document. It ‘tells the story’, but it also
has other important functions – namely enabling the smooth planning and
management of the shoot, something that is of paramount importance for
stop-motion animation.25 Cook clearly identifies an aspect of this when he
summarizes what might be said at a board review: ‘OK, if that’s the shot,
how are we going to get lights and animators in there?’26 Clearly, whatever
the type of animation, the action, movement of characters and so on need
to make sense in terms of the logic of the story world. But stop-motion has
a particular set of constraints in the shooting process which means that the
shots need to make sense at that other important level – that of the animators,
director of photography, director and other members of the team working on
set. This observation is backed up by Beeky, when he notes some key criteria,
especially in relation to how boards need to be considered in the context
of budgeting and overall planning. In talking about the Shaun the Sheep
television series, he says:
The tighter the budget/schedule, normally the tighter the production

requirement from the storyboard – the Shaun the Sheep series is probably
the best example of how we create films/animatics around these very
detailed and strict production requirements. There are:
• A target number of shots per episode (averaged across the series)
• A target running time of animatic + small allowance for growth on
studio floor (handles on the shot)27
• Looking for repeat angles/reuses of set ups
• Shots shouldn’t regularly require camera moves and/or multiple
passes and should be sympathetic to required shot rate and
minimizing clean up/rig removal.
• Character count – avoid a reliance on shots which required large

numbers of characters.
• Boards should be realistic/work within parameters of existing sets
and be reasonably accurate in terms of scale – avoiding scale cheats
which cannot be replicated on the studio floor.28
As can be seen, there are a number of important production constraints that

need to be borne in mind at the storyboarding stage. His focus on Shaun the
Sheep (the TV series) means that the specific requirements of stop-motion are
foregrounded in his remarks. It is notable that there is a recognition to be mindful
of having too many characters in shots – something that most animation, not
just stop-motion, is likely to bear in mind – but most of his points here relate to
the production (and post-production) activities of stop-motion and the specific
labour involved. So, there is also recognition that storyboards should enable the
reuse of expensive-to-build sets and should avoid camera movement if possible.
Boards should be constructed with rig removal (the process in post-production
where puppet rigs/supports are digitally removed) and other post-production
clean-up in mind. In other words, storyboarding, as a phase of pre-production,
in order to be effective, needs to bear in mind the steps that need to be taken
during the production and post-production phases. The remark relating to rig
removal demonstrates that there are highly specific and detailed elements of the
workflow that will be ‘mapped out’ at the storyboarding phase. Storyboarders at
Aardman therefore have to be particularly mindful of the labour of others later
in the production process.
Another storyboard artist at Aardman, Ashley Boddy, notes the
distinction between boarding for different types of stop-motion project, in
particular the differences between commercials, broadcast (i.e. TV series
like Shaun the Sheep) and feature films. When talking about the broadcast
regime, his comments back up what Beeky says:
There is a fairly tight schedule so you get a couple of passes at an

episode and then, generally, it gets made. […] You tend to think more
economically in terms of storytelling … so you look for shot set-ups you
can re-use, the set you’re using (stop motion specific), [and] number of
characters on screen.29
In other words, the storyboard artist needs to keep in mind the economy
of storytelling and Boddy states that the storyboarders will look for where
they can ‘be smart with staging to get the same point across in less time’.30
Yet this economy in storytelling is also wedded to an understanding of other
types of economy in production. It is clear then that storyboards need to
have readability and be understood across the entire spectrum of production

activity by many different people. This links back to the point made earlier,
quoting Pallant and Price, about the materiality and functionality of
storyboards: the specific form they take (their materiality) and the purpose(s)
they serve in the workflow (their functionality) are crucial in helping us
understand how they modulate animation labour. Storyboarders therefore
need to have an intimate understanding of how their ‘working through’ of
the story elements will be interpreted by other people.
The production ‘domains’ of storyboard labour at Aardman

In her article on how storyboard artists work with and cognitively process
‘roughs’ as part of the overall storyboarding process, Janet Blatter notes:
Popular and industry publications depict a linear workflow process

that proceeds from script, graphic model packs, storyboard, timing
(line tests or animatics), rendered artwork and animation (characters
and backgrounds), sound and dialogue editing, and so on to post-
production. However, unlike the ideal presented in manuals, studio
animation practice is messier.31
The ‘ideal’ that Blatter refers to is part of the common sense/instrumentalist

discourse about parts of the process and the pipeline in general – the ‘we
do it this way because that’s the way it gets done/it gets done because
we do it this way’ tautology. As Blatter’s work demonstrates, this does not
mean that the people who work in animation studios are unthinking or
uncritical – far from it – but it does show that when parts of the process
are considered ‘routine’ or ‘non-problematic’ then they will be done on
what she calls ‘automatic pilot’.32 Again, this sounds like a pejorative term,
but Blatter makes clear through her use of the term ‘cognitive chunking’
that ‘experts […] remember complex ideas by structuring and clustering
them together’.33 So, their expertise and skill is in little doubt, but it is the
production cultures in which they are working that drive their activities in
a certain direction.
Blatter’s conceptual frame for understanding storyboards offers three
‘domains’ in which they function and need to be ‘read’: as an intended film
(filmic), as a hypothetical world (fictive) and as a future activity (directive).34
Paul Wells has picked up on Blatter’s points, noting that boards therefore
function as ‘a creative tool, a planning tool and a production tool’.35 Blatter
also notes:
The rough board is used to review the filmic and fictive worlds in terms of
editorial and practical consequences, and to direct the clean-up artists as
to what components need to be refined, detailed or added for line testing.
When a board is reviewed in the directive domain, it must be complete,
accurate, and display efficient use of human and financial resources. At
a local level, the rough must be complete and accurate enough for its
reviewers to evaluate it. Nonetheless, a rough is functionally incomplete;
if the panels included all of the elements, it would lose its effectiveness
as a sketch.36
Blatter’s focus is on the rough board as part of the entire boarding process,
and how these are ‘read’ from a cognitive perspective; she is interested in
how artists, animators and others involved in the production read or infer
from the inevitably ‘incomplete’ information present in different versions of
the boards. One of the central paradoxes here is also highlighted – namely
in what Blatter calls the ‘directive domain’, that the rough’s incompleteness
and ambiguity is both a strength (precisely because it is ‘open’ and enables
discussion around action and so on) and a potential weakness (precisely
because it is incomplete and open to manifold interpretation).
The paradoxical tension inherent in storyboards being both complete (in
the sense that they show a ‘shot by shot’ breakdown of a film) and incomplete
(in that they are open to interpretation and inferences from those working
with them) can be discerned in the aforementioned analogy of the ‘blueprint’.
Pallant and Price note how widespread the analogy is, whilst taking issue
with its accuracy and noting a preference for Kathryn Millard’s use of the
term ‘prototype’.37 The main problem with the term ‘blueprint’ of course is
that it implies a technical drawing that is meant to be followed to the last
detail (with things like room dimensions or window sizes in an architectural
blueprint, or the exact sizes of components in a piece of machinery) otherwise
the artefact being planned will not work. Storytelling – and the phase of
storytelling captured by the storyboard – simply isn’t like that and there are
multiple spaces within the process that not only enable but actively encourage
interpretation and further development work. Certainly the initial sketches,
followed by the ‘rough’ or first pass of the board, will embody a range of
possible approaches and outcomes, but even once the board is cleaned up and
locked down, there is still scope for creative interpretation.
Matt Stahl has examined the ways in which the labour of storyboard
artists needs to be seen in the context of the overall structure of the animation
industry, noting that there is an inbuilt tendency towards certain ‘below the
line’ workers engaging in what he calls ‘non-proprietary authorship’. Roughly
translated, this means taking ‘ownership’ of something for which you don’t
get remunerated. For example, storyboard artists who contribute and rework
gags when this is, strictly speaking, the work of the more highly paid writers,
who end up receiving formal credit and pay for this work. Part of the issue
here is that there are in-built (and seemingly inevitable?) ‘grey areas’ in the
pre-production process – we can see this in the already-cited comments
where a director might thumbnail or rough out a scenario, and perhaps even
contribute to later iterations of a storyboard, alongside the storyboard artists.
The notion of the boards functioning within a ‘directive’ domain (as a future
activity) again emphasizes the importance of seeing them as pre-production
artefacts that map out the future labour on the production in question.
Boddy identifies how such creative interpretation, story development and
(specifically) reworking of scenes/gags can continue during the shooting
stages of production.38 He notes at one point that ‘there’s always a last man
standing’ in the storyboard teams – meaning that, as the rest of the story
team are redeployed to other projects, one person remains on board in order
to rework specific shots as required. (Boddy fulfilled this role on Aardman’s
most recent feature Early Man.) This further emphasizes the importance
of storyboarding in the overall production. The initial boarding process is
about developing and then distilling the story as much as possible so that
the intense labour required at the animation stage is directed in the right
way (and no resources or labour are wasted). Nevertheless, some modifying
or reworking of scenes or actions is always going to be required and the
iterative dialogue noted by Boddy demonstrates that the storyboarders are
the essential link in this process and play an important role in all three of
Blatter’s ‘domains’ by helping to regulate the animation labour required at all
points in any given production.
What is notable about examining storyboarding through these ‘lenses’
is that it gives us important insight into how a studio such as Aardman
negotiates the specifics of its mode of production, and how it negotiates
the complexities of stop-motion animation from the pre-production phase
through to completion. One of the underlying points of this chapter has been
to examine the ways in which a pre-production process like storyboarding
is part of the managing of other people’s labour later in the production
pipeline. Storyboarding is certainly a creative and imaginative activity,
operating in the ‘filmic’ and ‘fictive’ domains, as defined by Blatter. The idea
of storyboards existing in a ‘directive’ domain, however, means they need to
be understood as an indication of future activity: the functional value of the
storyboards lies in the way they are used to regulate, manage and predict
workflow in this most labour intensive of production contexts.
Notes
1 See, for example, Paul Wells, Scriptwriting (Basics Animation) (Lausanne:
AVA Publishing, 2007) and ‘Boards, Beats, Binaries and Bricolage:
Approaches to the Animation Script’, in J. Nelmes (ed.), Analysing the
Screenplay (London: Routledge, 2010), pp. 89–105; Tony Tarantini, ‘Pictures
That Do Not Really Exist: Mitigating the Digital Crisis in Traditional
Animation Production’, Animation Practice, Process & Production 1, no. 2
(2012), pp. 249–71; Matthew Teevan, ‘Animating by Numbers: Workﬂow
Issues in Shane Acker’s 9’, Animation Practice, Process & Production 1, no. 1
(2011), pp. 83–96; Matt Stahl ‘Nonproprietary Authorship and the Uses of
Autonomy: Artistic Labor in American Film Animation, 1900–2004’, Labor:
Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 2, no. 4 (2005), pp. 87–105;
and ‘Cultural Labor’s “Democratic Deficits”: Employment, Autonomy
and Alienation in US Film Animation’, Journal for Cultural Research 14,
no. 3 (2010), pp. 271–93; Janet Blatter, ‘Roughing It: A Cognitive Look at
Storyboarding’, Animation Journal 15 (2007), pp. 4–23; Chris Pallant and
Steve Price, Storyboarding: A Critical History (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2015).
2 Work in this field is epitomized by John Caldwell’s book Production
Culture: Industrial Reflexivity and Critical Practice in Film and Television
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008) and the anthology
Production Studies: Cultural Studies of Media Industries (New York
and Abingdon: Routledge, 2009, ed. Vicki Mayer, Miranda Banks and
John Caldwell), as well as the online Media Industries journal (www.
mediaindustriesjournal.org/).
3 See Caldwell, Production Culture on how ‘common sense’ thinking
structures much of the professionalized discourses in media production.
4 Barry Purves, Stop-Motion (Basics Animation) (Lausanne: AVA
Publishing, 2010), p. 120.
5 It is in the nature of these sorts of books – ‘Art of …’ and ‘Making of …’
type books – that the production processes are ‘laid bare’, but this is
done in a very specific way, that ‘frames’ things normatively rather than
opening them up for critique. An honourable exception in book-length
form is Chris Pallant and Steven Price’s Storyboarding: A Critical History
(Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2015) which carefully examines storyboards
across a variety of contexts and identifies how they function in the overall
production process.
6 See, for example, Alice Gambrell, ‘In Visible Hands: The Work of Stop
Motion’, Animation Practice, Process & Production 1, no. 1 (2011), pp. 107–
29, who draws attention to various discussions of the labour-intensiveness
of animation in general and stop-motion animation in particular; Siobhan
Synnot, ‘Wallace and Gromit Creator Opens Up on Latest Animation’, The
Scotsman, 16 January 2018. Available at: https://www.scotsman.com/news/
wallace-and-gromit-creator-opens-up-on-latest-animation-1-4662240
(accessed 17 January 2018), who refers to stop-motion at one point as

‘perhaps the slowest, most labour-intensive artistic activity since the
building of the pyramids’; and Andrew Pettie, ‘The Painstaking Production
of Shaun the Sheep’, The Telegraph, 20 November 2009. Available at: http://
www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/6617069/The-painstaking-
production-of-Shaun-the-Sheep.html (accessed 17 January 2018), which
contains the exclamatory pun ‘Ewe won’t believe how long it takes to
make …’, and notes at various points that it is ‘preposterously laborious’, has
a ‘dizzying attention to detail’ and that ‘[w]orking methodically on these
scaled-down sets … requires the patience of a primary school maths teacher
and the precision of a keyhole surgeon’.
7 Pallant and Price, Storyboarding, p. 12.
8 Christopher Finch, The Art of Walt Disney: From Mickey Mouse to the
Magic Kingdom (London: Virgin, 1995), pp. 27–8.
9 Mark Langer, ‘Institutional Power and the Fleischer Studios: The “Standard
Production Reference”’, Cinema Journal 30, no. 2 (1991), p. 7.
10 Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation
(New York: Disney Editions, 1981), p. 195.
11 Ibid.
12 Stahl, ‘Nonproprietary Authorship and the Uses of Autonomy’, p. 100.
13 Ken Priebe, The Advanced Art of Stop Motion Animation (Boston, MA:
Course Technology/ Cengage, 2011).
14 Peter Lord and Brian Sibley, Cracking Animation: The Aardman Book of 3D
Animation (London: Thames & Hudson Ltd, 2010).
15 Purves, Stop-Motion, pp. 120–1.
16 Michael Salter, interview with author (10 March 2015).
17 Wells, ‘Boards, Beats, Binaries and Bricolage’.
18 LAVs is an acronym for live-action videos – brief recordings of the
animators, director, storyboard artists ‘acting out’ certain scenes, character
relations and actions, and so on. These are then used as reference material
for further development and iterations of the story, the characters and the
boards.
19 Cook, interview with author (22 January 2015).
20 Wells, ibid.
21 Cook, ibid.
22 Richard Phelan, interview with author (1 May 2015).
23 Clearly, other types of narrative animation – 2D/drawn and CG being
the main ones – also require careful planning of the story world and
mapping out of the spaces (and times) in which the narrative unfolds.
But the requirement of production personnel to actually ‘get into’ the
space physically is of course not the same at all. Stop-motion requires that
animators need to be able to manipulate puppets, lights and camera need
to be moved around, and the boarding of the scenes needs to be mindful of
these processes.
24 Richard Beek, interview with author (9 March 2015), my emphasis.

25 Clearly some of the characteristics I note here (about the stop-motion
animation shoot) are also applicable to storyboarding for live-action
filmmaking, and it is certainly true that stop-motion and live action have
some considerable overlaps at this level. What is intriguing is the extent to
which the storyboarding process for stop-motion helps to distil the story in
order to absolutely minimize the amount of shooting (i.e. animating) that
needs to be done. As Ashley Boddy notes in a video interview with Adam
Savage: ‘it’s almost like you’re making the mistakes [in storyboarding] so
that you’re eliminating all the possibilities down to just what it could be.’
[‘Storyboarding a Stop-motion Film’, YouTube video, 21 February 2018.
Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P99037H-Bac
(accessed 3 May 2018).]
26 Cook, ibid.
27 When Beeky refers to ‘handles’ on a shot, he is drawing attention to what
in live-action shooting would be a form of ‘coverage’ – i.e. ensuring that a
specific scene is ‘covered’ from a variety of angles, enabling cutaways in the
edit suite and so on. In the case of ‘handles’, these refer to animating a little
beyond what is strictly necessary for the shot itself, giving enough flexibility
in the editing stage for cutting and other transitions.
28 Beek, ibid.
29 Boddy, interview with author (13 February 2015).
30 Ibid.
31 Blatter, ‘Roughing It’, p. 11 (original emphasis).
32 Ibid., p. 14.
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid., p. 8.
35 Wells, ‘Boards, Beats, Binaries and Bricolage’, p. 92.
36 Blatter’s immediate focus in the point she is making is 2D animation, hence
the reference here to ‘line testing’, but the general points she is making
about board review and ‘completeness’ are applicable to other forms of
animation, including stop-motion. Blatter, p. 13.
37 Pallant and Price, Storyboarding, pp. 5–7.
38 ‘Storyboarding a Stop-motion Film’.
10
Life’s a Treat: Shaun, Timmy, Aardman

and Children’s Television
Linda Simensky
In addition to their well-known short films, feature films and commercials,

Aardman Animations has had significant impact on children’s television,
ranging from their series of shorts, The Amazing Adventures of Morph in 1980,
to their recent short form series Shaun the Sheep (2007–16) and Timmy Time
(2009–12). After Aardman’s success with Wallace and Gromit, along with
other award-winning short films and commercials, producing series for
television was a logical next step. Frequently, short films and commercials
are stepping stones to feature films and television series for successful
animation studios. Historically, television was particularly appealing for
studios aiming for the widest possible audience. However, television, with
its punishing production schedules, limited budgets, targeted demographics
and network executives, is not always a perfect fit for a production company
with quirky ideas and broad audience appeal. As such, Aardman’s work for
television has not always fit neatly within the confines of demographically
targeted television channels and programming blocks. Despite the success of
their children’s television series in the UK and internationally, the studio has
often found the television model more challenging than working in features,
shorts, commercials or even digital production.
Over the years, Aardman’s approach to television, particularly television
for children, changed several times. As shifts in the animation and
entertainment industries led to new or changing audience demographics
and changing funding strategies, Aardman encountered several challenges
as they considered producing series for television. First, they needed to
determine if the company wanted to be in the international television
market. And if they did, they needed to decide if their focus would remain
broad – family programming – or whether they would also produce
programming specifically aimed at children. Given the typical funding
structures of television co-productions, Aardman also had to decide
whether they would be comfortable sharing creative control with networks
or production partners. Despite these potential obstacles, Aardman created

a number of television series, several of them for children. This chapter
will examine Aardman’s forays into children’s television, with a look at two
of their popular series, the Wallace and Gromit spin-off, Shaun the Sheep
and that series’ spin-off, Timmy Time, and will consider the particular
challenges that children’s TV presented to Aardman’s working practices
and brand integrity.
Aardman first came to public attention with the Morph character (which
appeared in 1977), and they later gained wider recognition through the
original Creature Comforts short (1989) and the Wallace and Gromit short
films (1989–2008). This output reached a mass audience through television
and represented a unique sensibility that was funny for all ages. To an
international audience, the Aardman productions captured a very British
view of the world, through eccentric but charming characters such as Wallace
from Wallace and Gromit and, later, the farmer in Shaun the Sheep. The
timing of their earlier work was particularly auspicious – animation was not
only growing in popularly through the late 1980s and 1990s, but it was also
no longer being seen as only for children. The perception of animation as
family viewing had last been prevalent in the 1940s and 1950s with the
theatrically released short animated films, made by Disney and the other
animation studios of the time, that were screened alongside feature films.
Subsequently, the advent of television turned animation into children’s fare.1
The resurgence of animation overall in the late 1980s opened up a number of
opportunities for enterprising animators to present their work to a broader
audience once again.
With Aardman’s success in the early 1990s, the company was looking for
areas to diversify and grow beyond their half-hour specials, short films and
the commercials that helped fund the company. They had already committed
to producing feature films. The animation industry was still growing at this
point, but there were not that many outlets for production beyond film and
television. So, with their comedic sensibility and appealing characters, a
key potential area for growth was children’s television. Producing children’s
television, however, presented new, quite specific, challenges. The economics
of children’s television are of a different order to features and commercials,
which have much higher per-minute budgets and longer production times.
And while there is some freedom when producing for children over the age
of six, the educational and standards requirements of children’s television for
younger viewers can make television more restrictive to produce and, therefore,
more frustrating for those who are not specifically interested in speaking to
preschoolers. Furthermore, the expense of television programming frequently
Shaun, Timmy, Aardman and Children’s TV 171
requires a production company to take on international partners and devise

co-production schemes to fully fund a series. Producers have persisted,
however, because a successful series can lead to international recognition,
as well as important funding streams such as licensing, merchandising
and international sales to multiple platforms. For Aardman, television was
therefore a way to build the company and expand the audience for not only
their characters, but also the more general Aardman sensibility and brand.
Moving into children’s TV: Shaun the Sheep

Aardman’s first foray into children’s television animation was the Wallace and
Gromit spin-off series Shaun the Sheep in 2007. This series of seven-minute
shorts was broadcast on CBBC in the UK, the BBC children’s channel that
targets viewers aged six and up. The shorts also ran as interstitials between
longer series on the Disney Channel in the United States. Shaun the Sheep
is a comedic plasticine stop-motion animated series about Shaun, a fun-
loving sheep who lives with a flock on a farm run by an incompetent and
myopic farmer. The mere presence of an individualist, freethinking sheep
who could lead the rest of his flock to mayhem while solving problems is a
funny idea, made funnier by the ridiculous situations the sheep often find
themselves in.
The character Shaun made his debut in A Close Shave, the 1995 Wallace
and Gromit short. While Wallace and Gromit themselves were already
beloved characters, Shaun was the scene-stealing, comedic breakout
character in this film. When the idea for Shaun as a series first was developed,
Aardman director Richard Starzak2 was asked to direct the pilot. The original
writers of the pilot, David Fine and Alison Snowden, had taken the script
in a preschool direction with the overall and quite general series idea being
that Shaun would have adventures. In this version, Shaun had much of what
he needed. He had a bike and a cart, and he could use a computer. This
ultimately lacked tension, as Starzak pointed out: ‘Everything was fine for
Shaun. It wouldn’t generate any stories, and actually it had nothing to do with
sheep, you could replace all the characters with humans. There’s no point in
them being sheep, so I said it wasn’t sheepy enough.’3 Starzak then wrote his
own pilot script, Kite, in which the sheep needed to get a kite down from a
tree. His idea was that Shaun would emulate the silent film comedian Buster
Keaton. As such, the reference points the studio would use in developing the
series were not other stop-motion preschool series, but also silent films and
slapstick comedy.4
As for the direction of the series, Starzak commented:
Let’s go back to basics. What do sheep do? They eat grass, so that’s good,
there are restrictions on Shaun already. They’ve got sheepdogs … they
show the sheep into the field, they tell them when to start eating, when
to stop, when to get back in barn. So that’s good, we’ve got something for
Shaun to push against now. The introduction to the farmer, we’ve got this
hierarchy. We’ve got the farmer who’s actually in charge, but who’s not in
charge because he can’t see very well. We’ve got poor Bitzer who’s torn
between the farmer and the sheep, who wants to be one of the flock
but he’s also responsible to the farmer. It’s a nice complication to that
character. And Shaun wants to have some fun and doesn’t like to be told
what to do. The rest of the flock are the Greek chorus. It all seemed to
make sense, and naturally we saw that that created a lot of story ideas. We
showed the pilot to the BBC, they liked it, and commissioned the series.5
The biggest challenge for the series was the production budget from the BBC,
which the Aardman producers felt was too low for the first three seasons.
Originally Shaun was budgeted as a preschool series, where budgets are
usually smaller due to the perceived simplicity of the stories and visual
direction. However, because the shorts ended up being for the slightly older
audience of six- to nine-year-olds, the budget did not cover the increased
cost associated with the older demographic. Aardman covered this shortfall
for the first three seasons and by season four they were able to dictate a
budget that represented what the series would actually cost.6
The rest of the series came together easily. The model makers had just
finished making the feature film, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-
Rabbit (2005) and had thought expansively about how to build the Shaun
sets. In their enthusiasm, they built huge feature-quality sets, not television-
sized ones which would have been smaller and simpler, in keeping with the
smaller stories and limited costs of television production. The large sets
leant the world of Shaun a sense of scale more akin to the types of animation
shorts screened at festivals than a typical television series.
While broadcasters scheduled the series on television to target viewers
in the six-to-nine demographic, they found that the show’s broad humour
and Aardman’s pre-existing popularity meant the programme appealed
to the broader, extended family demographic. Starzak alluded to a reason
for this broad appeal when he commented that ‘the thing about Shaun is
that there is something of a family unit about the characters. The farmer
is like a parent; Bitzer is an older sibling; and Shaun is a younger sibling.
There’s a sense of a family unit there which again I think is a universal idea,
everybody recognizes that.’7 Furthermore, despite Shaun the Sheep being

targeted to children there was, in the Aardman tradition, a certain degree
of quirkiness and irreverence to the show. Shaun’s cheeky, fun-loving nature
and ambivalence to the farmer’s authority leant him a rebellious streak.
Such anti-authoritarian tendencies were atypical for children’s animation
and Starzak acknowledged that ‘I was being a bit subversive […] I had no
desire to make a preschool show, or even necessarily a children’s show. […]
what we were trying to do was make each other laugh.’8 In this way, Shaun
captured the Aardman sensibilities and transcended its intended audience of
young children, becoming instead family viewing. The series was successful
enough to form the basis for a summer 2015 movie targeted to a broad family
audience, Shaun the Sheep Movie, and a Shaun the Sheep 2015 Christmas
special, The Farmer’s Llamas, ran on the BBC 1 in a primetime slot.
Importantly, the Shaun the Sheep franchise had international appeal.
While the series’ lack of dialogue had been a practical decision – related to the
time-consuming, expensive nature of lip-synch – this approach encouraged
the production team to explore more visual cinematic language such as silent
comedy and slapstick. Ultimately, this slapstick humour and lack of dialogue
helped Shaun become a hit in non-English-speaking territories. The series
sold in 170 countries, with particular success in Japan, Germany, the Middle
East, Indonesia and Australia. The Aardman sensibility is particularly a
good match in Europe with public broadcasters, and in Asia, where there
is a growing fan base. However, the United States and Latin America are
somewhat more challenging for the Aardman brand for reasons that could
not be transcended by the series’ visual humour and lack of dialogue. In the
United States, the cable channels tend to target relatively specific audiences,
and rarely skew to the broad audiences that Aardman appeals to. Similarly, in
the Latin American region, stop-frame animation is often seen as specifically
for a preschool audience.9 In both contexts, a character like Shaun was hard
to fit into the quite rigidly demographically targeted schedules.
Off to preschool with Timmy Time

Timmy Time was a spin-off of Shaun the Sheep, and the series represented a
new direction for Aardman. Jackie Cockle, the creator of Timmy Time had
been the show runner on Bob the Builder (BBC/HIT Animation, 1998–2004)
and was hired at Aardman during the late 2000s to develop their preschool
slate. Cockle was asked by Miles Bullough, who was head of TV at Aardman
at the time, if there was anything she could do with Timmy. After watching
episodes of Shaun the Sheep, Cockle decided it made sense to send Timmy
to preschool, with the purpose of showing kids that preschool could be fun.
She remembered her own experiences at that age, when she was scared to
attend nursery, and wanted to depict preschool in a friendly light. She came
up with a world for Timmy that was different to that occupied by Shaun:
a more diverse universe featuring animals other than sheep. With this
new direction, a number of original characters were created for the series.
The look of the series was different, as well, as Cockle went with a more
preschool-friendly look – bright, colourful and saturated in a way that made
it visually distinct from the Shaun farm palate.10
Similar to Shaun, Timmy as a character was designed to be an enthusiastic
free spirit who did whatever he wanted, and thus, he found himself in trouble
regularly. As a motivating force for the stories in the series, Timmy needed to
learn to behave and get along with the other animals and the theme song of the
series promised, ‘a little lamb with a lot to learn’. Timmy Time stories included
many of the typical preschool themes, such as pretending and playing, and
art and music-related topics. But whereas Shaun was a classic unconventional
character in the Aardman tradition, Timmy was motivated to get along with
others and to see the advantages of following rules and conforming, in keeping
with the socializing goals of preschool television. It can often be difficult to
make purposeful topics like these humorous for preschoolers.
For Aardman as a studio, changes and realizations came about through
Timmy Time. First, for the studio to produce the volume of television
programming that a preschool series would demand, they needed to organize
productions in a more standardized fashion, and Cockle instigated new
processes for the television production team. With seventy-eight ten-minute
episodes to produce, she put a rolling production pipeline in place. Prior to
this, Aardman had worked more loosely, but the new, stricter pipeline was
necessary to keep the series on schedule and on budget.11 As such, producing
Timmy Time was a learning curve for the Aardman staff. They had to get used
to a faster pace and a television production schedule, where there was not as
much time to dress a set, for example.12
It also became clear that not everything that worked so well for Shaun
would work for Timmy. The Timmy Time producers made a similar decision
to produce the show without dialogue and focus on the visuals. But whereas in
Shaun the Sheep the lack of dialogue had been a creative catalyst for effective
physical comedy and subtle but comical facial expressions, Timmy Time
writers found this lack of dialogue to be more restrictive than productive.
For this show, the writers needed to determine how to tell preschool-friendly
stories without dialogue but also without the broad slapstick used in Shaun
the Sheep. Shaun’s level of physical comedy was not a viable an option for this
age group, because slapstick tends to be imitable, even dangerous at times,
and therefore of concern to parents and broadcasters. Instead, Timmy Time

used blinks and expressive visual reactions, dialogue-like sounds from the
characters that captured emotions (but didn’t sound like animal sounds or
dialogue), and clear body language, which were all more appropriate options
in this preschool context.13
Timmy Time was produced primarily for CBeebies, the BBC’s preschool
channel, which is targeted to children aged six and under, and the series
premiered in 2012. The series also ran on Disney Junior in the United States
from 2012 to 2014 and did well internationally. Despite this success, the
unfamiliar preschool sensibility, which with its conformist ethic is generally
quite earnest and direct, meant Aardman found it harder to capture their
typical quirky and irreverent sensibility. As a result, producing the series
felt less fulfilling for the company than most of their prior production
experiences and it was hard to fit the show comfortably into the Aardman
culture.
This compounded the decision by Aardman, around 2012–13, to shut
down the broadcast department, despite CBeebies wanting to commission
more episodes of Timmy Time. Instead, they opted to focus more on features
and initiatives they felt were a better fit for the company.14
Co-productions in children’s television

While Shaun the Sheep and Timmy Time were Aardman’s main forays
into children’s television as creator or producer, the company has also co-
produced several programmes for children’s cable channels. These included
the sketch comedy series, Planet Sketch (2005–08), created by Andy Wyatt,
Purple and Brown (2005–08), a short-form series created by Richard Webber
for Nickelodeon and Chop Socky Chooks (2008–10), a co-production for
Cartoon Network, produced with Decode Entertainment and DHX Media
in Canada. However, much as with Aardman’s own forays into children’s
programming, these ventures ultimately proved unsuccessful for the
company.
Planet Sketch, a co-production with Decode Entertainment in Canada,
was produced for Teletoon in Canada and CITV in the UK in 2005. This
fifteen-minute series was animated mostly in 3D CGI and deviated from
Aardman’s usual aesthetic and sensibility. Purple and Brown, a more typical
Aardman production, was a series of one-minute stop-frame shorts that
premiered on Nickelodeon in 2006. Purple and Brown were two comical
plasticine blobs who spent each episode laughing about something silly
and occasionally getting comically injured. Chop Socky Chooks, which
premiered on Cartoon Network in 2008, was a comedy/action CGI series

created by Sergio Delfino featuring three kung fu-practising chickens who
protected Wasabi World from the evil Dr Wasabi and his henchmen. All
these series were targeted to viewers aged between six and eleven.
Despite the fact that cable channels were eager to commission projects
from Aardman, Aardman found network commissions and co-productions
challenging to establish and that the overall experience was not in line with
the company’s ethos or typical mode of production activity. Deals for most
cable channels frequently involve a full commission. As such they also require
the transfer of ownership of the property to the channel, or at least include
ceding a fair amount of creative control. Neither the loss of intellectual
property nor doing service work was appealing for Aardman.15
Similarly, working on co-productions with deals that required work splits
(dividing the production between partners, with some work done at Aardman,
some work done in other countries at other studios) were too complicated
and were not creatively right for the Aardman. The producers found that the
experiences took them away from the Aardman sensibility and closer to a
broader and generic aesthetic. Ultimately, these co-production experiences
helped Aardman realize that any properties they worked on needed to be
created in-house, and the company needed to maintain full control of the
creative aspects of their material. This meant that, going forward, they would
generally deficit finance the projects they were passionate about rather than
depend on channels for full commissions and that they would only consider
co-productions when they would specifically allow them to try something
new that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to do,16 such as try out a new
computer animation program or produce a music video.
Strategy moving forward

Alix Wiseman, who oversaw international sales division for TV, DVD
and Digital Sales at Aardman from 2006 to 2016, confirms that by 2015
Aardman’s strategy was to focus on broad audiences and family viewing
with programmes featuring humour and storylines that worked on more
than one level. Shaun the Sheep remains a good example of this approach,
with its broad comedic stories that appeal to a wide range of viewers, specific
references to amuse adults, and comedic visuals, slapstick and action. This
approach would allow Aardman to focus on the kind of material they do
best. This meant that while there still would be potential interest in shows
for the six-to-twelve age range, preschool programming would be unlikely to
fit this approach, because such shows tend not to speak to a broad audience.
An older-skewing, edgy series might also be considered for shorts and

experimentation,17 but would not be enthusiastically embraced as a typically
Aardman sort of production.18
This approach led the management at Aardman to adjust their overall
television strategy. In focusing on features and family television, they were
not looking to bring in a large volume of production and co-productions.
The goal would be to do less and do it really well.19 Because it takes so long
for Aardman to develop and produce stop-frame animation, and it also
takes time to train highly skilled animators, there is a structural need within
the company to limit the volume of work. While not every studio has the
luxury of taking this approach, it can be a winning one for any animation
studio focused on high-quality production, overall excellence and brand
building. This business strategy is reflected in the company’s internal
positioning statement, which guides the company’s steering committee
through their decision-making. It includes a list of values that captures the
company’s philosophy and culture, such as creative integrity, the pursuit
of excellence, humour which is well-observed, quirky and true, and the
ability to be in charge of their own destiny. In addition, they committed
themselves to providing an open and collaborative working environment in
which to produce their work.20
In 2017, Sarah Cox, an animation industry veteran and creative director/
producer was hired by Aardman as Executive Creative Director of New
Content. Her remit has been to oversee the development of a new slate of
Aardman intellectual properties aimed at children and family audiences
across all platforms including digital and broadcast. According to a press
release on the Aardman Animations’ website, future commissions would
focus on the company’s signature humorous character-driven stories with
global brand recognition. The slate would combine Aardman’s hallmark
storytelling, character and comedy expertize with a variety of visual styles,
with Cox spearheading efforts to foster top-quality creative talent and
keep the company at the forefront of innovative content development.21 In
conversation, Cox noted that the leaders of the company have an eye on the
future, as in ‘what would Aardman look like in ten years?’ To that end, Cox
has been tasked with finding new characters to add to the slate and to grow
shows that would help build the brand.22
As of January 2018, Cox was working on the development of a few
children’s television projects, with a specific focus on a comedic book-
based property, Daisy Butters, about an imaginative eight-year-old girl
who questions things and challenges authority (mostly her mother) as she
confronts new situations.23 Regarding preschool, Cox notes that humour
remains important to Aardman, so while they have not ruled out new
preschool shows, they were also not a priority for the company. She noted
that for preschool, they were still considering new ways to use Timmy Time,
such as using a narrator and editing existing footage to teach English.24
Moving into the future

One of Aardman’s unique characteristics as a media production company
is that it is creatively led, rather than run by business decisions. This has
included making the decision that they are only going to do work that
makes sense for the company. The charming and lovable nature of their
characters has made Aardman seem like an obvious fit for children’s
television and the success of a property such as Shaun the Sheep has made
many fans hope that they will produce more series for this audience.
However, while animation for children might seem to some like a natural
direction and an area of growth for the company, the company’s vision
now is to move the art of animation forward by producing material for
the largest audience possible with the broadest approaches to humour
and storytelling. Beyond features and television, this includes content for
digital platforms such as YouTube and 360-degree animated films that
can be viewed interactively on phones. While Aardman has not turned
away from producing animated series for children, they are conscious of
how well various characters would fit the Aardman brand and work for
children. As Sarah Cox noted, ‘tone of humour and approach is the thread.
The Aardman sense of humour and attitude, the warmth and charm, the
self-deprecating, naughty and rebellious’ would be necessary in any sort of
programming they produce.25
As Aardman moves forward producing new features, specials, shorts and
digital material, they are focusing on the areas where they are most passionate
and the audiences they most want to connect with. They are also working on
platforms where they have more control of the creative content to best capture
the Aardman sensibility. These include newer and emerging digital platforms
that are less dependent on standard television demographic breakdowns and
more oriented to broader audiences and give production companies more
control over their own destiny than when working with broadcast and cable
channels. As audiences are increasingly viewing material on these digital
platforms, this is the direction for any company looking for more control
and a larger fan base. As viewing shifts to these digital portals that function
as entryways to larger repositories of content with fewer limitations on age
and target demographics, Aardman will be well-positioned to take advantage
of this migration.
Notes
1 See Amy Ratelle, ‘“Animation and/as Children’s Entertainment” and
Nichola Dobson, “TV Animation”’ in N. Dobson et al. (eds), The Animation
Studies Reader (New York: Bloomsbury, 2018), pp. 191–202 and 247–56.
2 When the Shaun the Sheep series was first developed, the director Richard
Starzak was known as Richard Goleszowski, and is still known as ‘Golly.’
3 Richard Starzak, interview with author (29 June 2015).
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 Alix Wiseman, interview with author (29 June 2015).
10 Jackie Cockle, interview with author (29 June 2015).
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid.
14 Wiseman, interview with author.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid.
17 Aardman had already produced material in this vein with the Rex the Runt
(1998–2001) and Angry Kid (1999–2007) series that aired on BBC 2 and
BBC 4, respectively.
18 Wiseman, interview with author.
19 Ibid.
20 Alix Wiseman, phone interview with author (5 November 2015).
21 Aardman.com, ‘Sarah Cox Joins Aardman as Executive Creative Director’,
9 February 2017. Available at: http://www.aardman.com/sarah-cox-joins-
aardman-as-executive-creative-director/ (accessed 28 January 2018).
22 Sarah Cox, phone interview with author (19 January 2018).
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
180
11
Shaun the Sheep – Buster Keaton Reborn?

Richard Haynes
[T]he silence of silent film is not simply a medium; it is an instrument.1
Aardman Animations’ long-running series Shaun the Sheep (2006–16) has

become one of the studio’s most successful properties. In 2015 Shaun starred
in his own feature film Shaun the Sheep Movie and a sequel was released
in 2019. When I began work on Series Two as an animator in 2009, having
stepped out of six years of preschool animation, I quickly realized it was a
new territory. This was performance-based animation, heavily reliant on
subtle eye movements and full-body slapstick to an extent that is unusual for
children’s animation. In fact, I quickly realized, Shaun the Sheep is essentially
silent comedy. None of the characters in the series or the film speak,
although some do communicate via non-vocal sounds, and other sound
is limited to music and sound effects. The lack of dialogue is a significant
guiding factor in the approach the studio took to conceiving Shaun’s creative
world. In particular, Shaun’s creators drew inspiration from the silent clowns
of early Hollywood such as Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy and, most
dominantly, Buster Keaton. Shaun the Sheep Movie’s co-director Richard
Starzak acknowledges that ‘Buster Keaton was always a model’ for the studio.2
However, the influence of silent film comedy on Shaun the Sheep extends
to more than inspiration for his creation. Silent comedy also pervaded the
process of animation and a picture of Keaton was ‘pinned on the studio door
just to remind the animators that they didn’t have to make it bleat too much,
or be too physical’.3
In this chapter I will explore, in part through reflection on my own
participation in the production of Shaun the Sheep as an animator, on the ways
that the series, and its subsequent feature film version, are in dialogue with
the practices of physical comedy in silent cinema of the 1910s and 1920s, and
in particular the work of Buster Keaton. I will look at common traits found in
the characters of Shaun and Keaton in order to argue that Shaun the Sheep
is not only a contemporary silent comedy, but also features a contemporary
silent star. In his book, Shadow of a Mouse, Donald Crafton has observed the
‘dissonance’ at the heart of our engagement with animated characters – that

they are both drawings and at the same time performers that we engage with
in a similar way to other on-screen stars.4 Here I will be thinking about how
my performance as an animator brings Shaun into being as a performer, or
star, in his own right, and how these elements of performance/performer are
informed by early silent film comedy acting.
Shaun the Sheep is not unique as an animation that owes much to the
on-screen clowns of the silent age. Crafton notes that Felix the Cat’s ‘balletic
movements and victimization by his environment are seen as derived from
Chaplin’s screen character’ and that Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, one of Walt
Disney’s first characters, ‘may be viewed as closer to Keaton and his ability
to transform the absurd mechanical environment of the modern world
into something useful and humane’.5 Later, Warner Brothers’ cartoonist
Chuck Jones, who was a key figure in the studio’s Golden Age of animation
production in the 1940s and 1950s, acknowledged the influence of Charlie
Chaplin on their work, in particular his use of exaggeration and ‘his body to let
you know something was funny’.6 However, in the landscape of contemporary
mainstream animation Shaun the Sheep stands apart in its continued
dependence on the tropes and techniques of early, silent film comedy.
Crafton suggests that animated characters can enact two types of
performance: figurative and embodied.7 The former is seen mostly
frequently in early animated cartoon shorts and was borrowed from silent
cinema, in particular from the likes of Keaton, Chaplin and others. This
type of character animation ‘emphasized movement that conveys signifying
gestures and pantomime typical of broad humour and slapstick rather than
emotive personality, character nuance, and emotional expression’.8 This
approach was the starting point for Disney, but he eventually favoured, and
indeed pioneered, the latter ‘embodied’ approach, described in the second
part of this quote. However, as Crafton also notes, the figurative and the
embodied in animation are not necessarily mutually exclusive, and in some
instances, ‘embodiment [can] overlay primarily figurative performances’.9
My suggestion is that Shaun is just such a character: while he is figurative
in terms of his characterization, he requires an element of embodied
performance by the animator in order to bring him into being.
Shaun the Sheep and the context of early silent comedy

Similar to Keaton’s on-screen persona, Shaun the Sheep features characters
who need/want to do something, cannot find the ideal means with which
to do it, before being inspired and utilizing an alternative means in order to
Shaun the Sheep – Buster Keaton Reborn? 183
realize their desire or intention. As Maarten Coëgnarts and Peter Kravanja

state of Keaton, ‘this gives rise to a large number of image metaphors’ and a
‘metaphorical power rests in the transference of qualities from the visually
absent domain […] to the present target domain’.10 One example of how this
manifests in Shaun the Sheep is the episode ‘The Snapshot’ in which Shaun,11
downhearted as a result of a missed photo opportunity, is inspired to create
a collage from a shredded photo of himself when he sees some Cubist art
in a shop window. Like Keaton, Shaun thinks pragmatically, immediately
adopting a ‘bright’ idea, enacted on the spur of the moment, rather than
taking time to consider the implications of his actions.
In this episode I animated a scene involving Shaun and Bitzer (the dog)
heading to the city to find a photo booth so that Shaun can have his picture
taken. This follows the disappointing result of the farmer’s attempts at
photographing the farm’s inhabitants in which Shaun was half left out of the
frame. The two characters each have the same target and motivation (to find
the photo booth and take Shaun’s photo) but they each have individual ideas,
initiated and inspired by a cause and then an obstacle. This relationship
is reminiscent of Laurel and Hardy, who often strived towards the same
outcome, but had very different ideas about the best way to achieve it. For
example, in The Music Box (1932) the comedy duo’s competing notions of
how best to drag a heavy piano up a long flight of steps leads to disastrous
consequences. Upon realizing their place within a busy city of humans, and
in an apparent attempt to conceal their anthropomorphic qualities, Shaun
physically suggests they should hide behind a display board by gesturing
towards it. He then engages in a pantomimic routine of sign language, trying
to express to Bitzer his ideas for their next move. Much time is spent on
the interaction between the two characters because it is important to convey
that Bitzer is not on the same wavelength. Shaun initially appears the more
intelligent of the two, and yet Bitzer has the idea to busk for the money they
need to pay for photos.
Here Shaun is displaying the ‘one track mind’ Noel Carroll suggests is
characteristic of Keaton’s comedy gags: he considers the job in hand, and
acts in a linear fashion.12 For Shaun, as for Keaton, the doing of the present
dominates his mind: they need photos, and to get them they need money, so
they busk in order to get the money. Unfamiliar with city life, they struggle to
operate the photo booth correctly, and after a moment of despair at the poor
results of the photographs, Shaun is inspired to combine pieces of previous
photographic attempts as Cubist art. This punchline isn’t delivered until the
next scene, so the audience, and Bitzer, are not yet aware of Shaun’s idea.
This recalls a scene from Sherlock Jr. (1924), where Keaton sets up a gag in
a series of stages that ultimately enables his escape from a room, through a
window, unexpectedly appearing dressed as an old lady. It’s a remarkable

stunt, and the cross-dressing reveal is one the audience cannot foresee. In
both examples, Shaun and Keaton adopt a degree of intelligence, proving
they have thought things through, initiate bright ideas and can see the bigger
picture. This may appear like they are straying beyond their one-track focus,
but they remain single-mindedly committed to the job at hand. In this way,
this example from Shaun the Sheep is exemplary of the series’ tendency to,
like Keaton’s films, ‘bring about a sense of fulfilment and give us a feeling of
inner accomplishment’.13
Shaun, like Keaton, is a neutral character, neither hero nor villain, merely
an instigator around which a plot is formed and who ‘has no emotions; he
obeys a metaphysical urge’.14 Yet he is the ‘star of the show’, as was Keaton. Both
are also figurative characters, in that their personalities are primarily defined
by physical and facial movement, or the lack thereof. In early animation
characters were drawn from stock poses using model sheets that ‘provided a
formulary of poses and facial expressions’.15 This was a practice adopted from
film acting, and theatre acting before it, and the ‘material circumstances
of dramatic presentation’ that required actors to ‘communicate with their
bodies’.16 Just as book illustrations were available to actors that linked ‘poses
and gestures to conventional meanings’, so too animation model sheets
‘enabled clarity and consistency of acting’.17 While we did not have to adhere
rigidly to model sheets when working with Shaun, the animation process
did require consistency across all the animators working with the character.
For example, when animating Shaun walking I had to be sure to replicate his
stylistic, identifiable walk established by the animators who had worked on
Shaun before me, which involves one leg raised from the ground and bent
at the knee for two frames, followed by the next leg for two frames, and so
on, all while Shaun is progressing steadily forward. It was important that
his walk was in keeping with other animators’ efforts because the walk is a
defining characteristic of an animated character and so it must be consistent
across all scenes, no matter who they were animated by.
In addition to movement, consistency is required in terms of the use
of facial expressions to convey Shaun’s emotions in a similar way to how
the silent comedians communicated their feelings to the audience. As
Christopher Bishop notes, referencing James Agee’s essay on Keaton that
appeared in Life magazine in 1949, ‘[Keaton] used this great, sad, motionless
face to suggest various related things’, including ‘a one-track mind near the
track’s end of pure insanity’.18 Shaun embodies such a motionless face and
his acts of instigation will often ignite from that same one-track mind, with
one simple task and the desire to complete it at the core of his motivation.
The combination of this singularity of focus and physical attributes centred
around clichéd, instantly recognizable facial expressions – whether it be

happy, sad, perplexed and so on – is a trait of early figurative animated
performances that themselves were adopted from silent film comedy.
Crafton has noted that ‘in the 1920s and ‘30s animators studied the physical
movements and personae of silent clowns Chaplin and Keaton, for example,
to re-perform them as Felix and Mickey’.19 As such, the broad, identifiable
and characteristic traits that originated from vaudeville were carried through
into short films and comic strips.20
‘Comedy,’ according to Aristotle, ‘is an imitation of inferior people – not,
however, with respect to every kind of defect: the laughable is a species of
what is disgraceful’.21 If a link can be drawn between humour and what is
‘ugly’ or ‘mishaped’ then a further similarity is apparent between the silent
clowns and Shaun.22 Silent comedy movie stars were often slightly out of
proportion or unusual in body shape (e.g., Keaton’s short height or Oliver
Hardy’s size), and the characters in Shaun the Sheep are exaggerated, ‘ugly’
forms of animals and humans. Shaun, like Keaton, is short and stout, with
a stance that exaggerates a sheep’s inherent gormlessness and that conveys
his at times idiotic, underhanded character. This emulates the physicality of
Keaton who, when static, would adopt a straight, balanced look that suggests
he is in control of a situation whilst appearing as if his mind is elsewhere.
Keaton was also able, with his well-trained body, to achieve his own stunts
and turn the unbelievable to believable by evidencing that it was, in fact,
him doing it – often within one long shot. As Bishop says, ‘[Keaton’s] control
over his seemingly rigid body was superb, much as it sometimes seems like
a piece of errant machinery.’23 Such rigidity is leant to Shaun in part through
the physical attributes of the stop-motion armature – the metal skeleton that
forms the basis for the puppet.
There are times, however, where animators adopt a more fluid and graceful
approach and the animation of Shaun often evidences a carefully timed
flexibility that further echoes Keaton’s comic performances. Animation is
often compared to dance, and I have animated numerous scenes that call for
balletic movements, whether it be running dogs, dancing sheep or squabbling
pigs. The desire to produce fluid, smooth animation results in an effective,
contrasting marriage between gracefulness in expression (movement),
rigidity in physique and ugliness in appearance (design). Keaton was
notable among the silent clowns for the way he ‘moves his graceful body in
spatial configurations characterized by order and symmetry’.24 This contrast
is a form of exaggeration – or, more precisely, simplification – applicable
to both Keaton and Shaun. Referencing Vincent Amiel’s 1998 essay ‘Le
Corps au cinema’, Peter Kravanja highlights that this contrast ‘considerably
reduces the validity of a possible “psychological explanation” of [Keaton’s]
behaviour. The truth of his body is felt to come not “from the inside” but
“from the outside”’.25 This is equally true of figurative animated characters
who, as extroverted characters that ‘accentuated dynamism and immediate
legibility’,26 audiences did not expect ‘to learn anything about their […] depth
of being’.27
Shaun’s gormless character, portrayed in facial and bodily expression,
is a source of physical humour and both Shaun’s and Keaton’s stories are
delivered through a series of one-off physical gags, another characteristic of
figurative animation performances that ‘resembled gags that one might see
in a comic strip [or] in a short film comedy’.28 An episode of Shaun the Sheep
is constructed in this way, although the pay-offs and contexts in which the
gags exist naturally vary. Interesting to note is a particular type of gag that
seems typical of silent comedy, known as automatism/inattention, ‘where
concrete intelligence fails’.29 As inhabitants of their worlds as we understand
them, Keaton’s and Shaun’s characters are successful at times and not at
others, and problems are often solved through sheer luck as much as through
careful, intelligent consideration. Sometimes unexpected occurrences will
benefit each of these characters, while at other times they each calculate
the mechanics of a situation step by step (which can be communicated by
either a series of clear, physical stages of changing or developing thought,
or through a simple, singular expression). In many ways then, Shaun
is the epitome of the figurative animated character – one that uses easily
recognizable movement and expressions in the service of physical, visual
gags and has much in common with the physicality and humour of early
silent comedy. However, as the following sections explore, Shaun’s animation
also relies on embodied methods of animation that require a certain type of
physical investment by the animator.
Animating Shaun: Timing, preparation and instinct

It is a Monday morning in April 2009. At Aardman, Aztec West, Bristol, I am
facing a puppet unlike any other I have worked with before. His name is
Shaun and he is one of many duplicates. Puppets I had previously animated
included the likes of Fifi Forget-Me-Not, Postman Pat and Rupert Bear, all of
whom have smiling faces and cheerful, colourful aesthetics designed to appeal
to their preschool audiences. Here before me stood someone quite different,
lacking a mouth, let alone a smiling one, or any colour at all. With a black
and white complexion and expressionless face, here was a miniature version
of Buster Keaton. Animating Shaun, I soon discovered, was performance-
based. As a director said on the first day, it’s all in the eyes for emotionally
driven close-ups and the body for physically driven wide shots. Such reliance
on the physicality of the animated character in the absence of any dialogue
to convey plot and humour has a significant impact on the animation
production process. Cosgrove Hall shows, such as Little Robots and Postman
Pat, which are aimed at a preschool audience, employ frequent ‘talking head’
shots, where a puppet stands for a good number of seconds, either conversing
with another character or addressing the audience. These are invariably
storyboarded and are generally simple and straightforward to animate, with
little preparation required. Lacking dialogue, Shaun the Sheep relies more
heavily on body language to communicate the characters’ states of mind
and motivations. In order to animate this communicative body language a
deep, physical investment into the characters is required by the animator.
In a way the characters become our avatars, as suggested by Don Graham,
drawing instructor at Disney during the 1930s, in that we must understand
or ‘get inside’ the characters before drawing or manipulating them.30 In this
way, Shaun can be seen as an animated character that evidences both the
figurative and the embodied. While his action is dependent on ‘distinctive
movements and characteristic gags’,31 his animation still requires the type
of embodied enactment described by Crafton as typical of the introverted,
internally complex characters that exemplify embodied characters.
In an effort to fully immerse myself in the characters I often found myself
acting out the action that I needed to convey through the puppets, much
like a silent comedian, but also something that Crafton describes as more
typical of the animation of embodied characters.32 Shaun the Sheep is an
example of the effective application of anthropomorphism and this depends
on animators successfully translating something in their own physicality
via the process of animation in ways that will evoke empathy. Empathy is
another characteristic Crafton aligns with embodied, rather than figurative,
characters.33 But, as Ed Hooks notes, the pursuit of empathy was also central
to Chaplin’s comedy and he ‘understood how to play to the heart, how to
evoke laughter one moment and tears the next’.34 This kind of connection
with the audience is one that the animator is also striving to achieve. It can
be argued that in the case of Shaun the Sheep, the animator is in fact the
performer, and the character projects the animator’s efforts, and hidden
presence from the past, to become the on-screen ‘star’. As a stop-motion
animator, I feel the very act of animating is, in itself, a performance, one that
relies heavily on both preparation and instinct.
Paul Wells has noted Chaplin’s determination to get things absolutely
perfect in relation to timing of the gag. Chuck Jones ‘liken[ed] the
numerous takes Chaplin would do to secure this perfection with the numerous
drawings that he threw away in a spirit of executing an exact sequence of
graphic choreography’.35 This lineage of precision in the pursuit of animated

gags is equally as present in the shot preparation for Shaun the Sheep as
in the Warner Brothers’ Looney Tunes animated shorts directed by Jones
and bringing Shaun to life required the same sort of exhaustive planning.
In particular, the timing of a shot, which when I began work at Aardman
I quickly understood sat at the top of the company’s implicit hierarchy of
importance regarding their animation process.36 For Shaun the Sheep, timing
of the action is always first and foremost, because the audience’s empathetic
response is wholly dependent on it.
In relation to the timing of gags, any experienced animator understands
that a hold, or pause, is a much more powerful communication tool
than a piece of action. These moments offer the audience the chance
to breathe, digest what they have witnessed and prepare for what they
are about to see (anticipation). Effective use of these pauses, referred to
as moving holds, has long been a characteristic of Aardman’s work and
were certainly prominent in Nick Park’s early films, including Creature
Comforts (1989). As an animator I am constantly aware of what a well-
timed hold can bring to the success of a shot. This is particularly the case
for Shaun, who has a limited number of moveable facial parts that can be
used to convey emotion or reactions. While Shaun’s neutral expression
is a gormless, mouthless look, his relatively limited range of emotions is
communicated through a selection of replacement mouths, consisting
of ‘open’, ‘teeth only’ and ‘closed’, which can all be flipped to suggest an
upbeat or downbeat emotion, and the all-important pair of eyes. His body
has to do the rest. The true key to the success in communicating emotion
with Shaun lies in body language and timing, much as was the case for
Buster Keaton.
For the episode ‘An Ill Wind’ I completed a shot featuring Shaun eating
grass on a windy day.37 The brief was to show Shaun responding to an
unusual noise coming from the farm behind. The length of the shot in the
storyboard was five and a half seconds and I had to calculate how much
of that was to be spared for each section of the brief, namely Shaun going
about his business, hearing the noise and then reacting, leaving time for
him to walk towards the farm. Planning the timing of shots sometimes
involves the use of ‘blank’ bar sheets,38 but much it comes instinctively.
I settled on sixteen frames of Shaun chewing and looking out one way,
followed by a turn to the opposite direction just over a second in. Two
seconds pass before Shaun begins to react, which consists of four frames of
tightly shut eyes and the head coming down (in anticipation) followed by a
big up movement and wide-open eyes with pupils turned slightly inwards.
This creates a somewhat perplexed expression, and is a sharp contrast to
the sleepy, relaxed mood of Shaun I conveyed, through application of half-

eyelids, for the previous two seconds.
Shaun’s movement here recalls that of Buster Keaton in Steamboat Bill,
Jr. (1928), where his reaction to a strong gust of wind is conveyed when his
eyes switch from sleepy to wide. In this example the effect of the wind against
Keaton’s remarkably agile body is shown through a series of long and wide
shots. He desperately tries to fight against the wind through slapstick falls,
swift turnarounds, jumps over flying debris and countless other moves before
suddenly standing still, at an angle, and tilting his head towards the camera.
This contrast to the action, communicated through the ‘moving’ hold, not
only has dramatic comedic affect but tells us the change in Keaton’s thought
pattern; he tried fighting the wind by use of physical action, which only
worked for so long, and so he adopts the fresh method of stillness – which we
know can only last so long too. This glance to the camera lasts for just under
a second and I adopt a similar length of time as an animator in order for a
hold to read (eight frames being a general minimum). I maintain Shaun’s
moving hold for, again, sixteen frames, and then animate Shaun swallowing
the food he has been storing in his mouth – represented by attached ‘bulging
cheeks’. The shot is now four seconds in, and I keep Shaun gazing (thinking
time) for ten frames before he investigates. Actions and holds are overlapped,
and timings are stretched and compressed accordingly to avoid repetition or
mechanical motion. This is similar to the way Keaton moves his body, where
the end of one movement, or one idea, overlaps and smooths over the start
of the next. Ultimately, as with Keaton’s comedy, the shot in ‘An Ill Wind’
flows at an appealing pace and the audience can appreciate Shaun’s thought
process.
The pacing of this shot is also facilitated by using the ‘rule of thirds’, in that
something is happening, something then disrupts that and this then leads to
a reaction to that disruption. This is also something familiar from the Keaton
sequence in which he fights the wind in his static, leaning pose, before a
load of boxes fly off a truck and into him, initiating a more extreme physical
action than the last. For me, animation is like music, and there is a rhythm to
the Shaun shot that doesn’t feel repetitious, and yet nothing feels too quick or
drawn out. In this way, while animating Shaun requires a great deal of prior
preparation, it also heavily relies on the animator’s innate sense of pacing,
rhythm and effect. As such, the animation process is a balance between
planning and instinct, similar to Chaplin and Keaton, who would not have
broken their timing down to the frame but did, as Paul Wells highlights, time
their gags extremely tightly, adopting their own instinctive processes.39
As observed above, the comedy of the photo booth scene in ‘The Snapshot’
also depended in part on timing, in particular the delay of the delivery of the
unforeseen gag regarding the Cubist art. This is also a common tendency in
Keaton’s comedy and the similarity is further demonstrated through exploring
the set-up for the punchline of his early short, One Week (1920). This film’s
final gag is beautifully staged and timed. Keaton and his wife are trying to
drag their recently completed house (built, with disastrous consequences,
by Keaton himself) off a railway track as a train is approaching. They realize
they can’t shift it and so step aside, eyes covered, dreading and awaiting the
inevitable. We, the audience, believe the train will hit due to the ingenious
framing of the image. The train, however, passes the house safely since it
is travelling on the adjacent line. We then cut to Keaton and his wife, who
display sighs of relief with which we, the audience, empathize. Moments later,
however, we cut to a wide shot, framing the entire house, just in time to see
a second train, travelling from the opposite direction and smashing through
the house. This, coupled with the instant reaction of the two unfortunate
protagonists, is funny because of the timing, framing and, most importantly,
build-up of anticipation towards the unforeseen gag.
This anticipation is created through a series of holds employed by Keaton,
clearly displaying his thoughts and changes of emotion in a way that calls
for nothing but empathy. This is why the impact is funny; we imagine what
it would be like to experience it ourselves, and Keaton’s failing attempts at
constructing the house correctly and sensibly up to this point invites us
to laugh unashamedly. Although simpler, a scene I animated in the Shaun
episode, ‘The Boat’ is built around this kind of anticipation.40 The characters
are playing on a huge boat on wheels but, when trying to shift it, they can’t
no matter how hard they try. One sheep (the hefty Shirley) lifts the anchor
with ease, before handing it to Bitzer. The extreme weight is conveyed in the
way Bitzer almost drops the anchor before lifting it with somewhat less ease
than Shirley. This build-up visually describes the anchor’s weight, and Bitzer
is left for a moment, holding it. Suddenly, a gust of wind starts pushing the
boat and we cut to Bitzer, at which point my task was to convey a series of
emotions that proves he realizes: the boat is moving, the anchor is attached
with rope, he is holding the anchor, so he’ll go flying with the boat. These
holds, providing the chance to read the dog’s thoughts and emotions, are
key to the anticipation behind the gag. Like with the Keaton gag, we know
something is going to happen but not how it will pan out, and we are then
entertained as a result. In this case, due to holding the anchor with the rope
slightly wrapped around him, Bitzer swiftly spins around before heading in
the direction of the boat. This makes the gag last longer and offers extra time
for the audience to digest. The moment of realization and the timing of that
‘look’ is what counts in both these examples, and the gags would not be as
humorous without them.
Conclusion
It is evident from my description of the process of animating Shaun the Sheep
that the series, in a similar way to early figurative animation, owes much
to the performances of the comedians of silent cinema: Charlie Chaplin,
Laurel and Hardy, and Buster Keaton in particular. Similar to the figurative
performances outlined by Donald Crafton, Shaun acts and reacts through
his outer self – through bodily movement and, at times, slapstick for the sake
of physical humour – in a way that often relies on easily readable physical
expression and movement. But he is also dependent on the embodiment
of the animator – brought into being through their physical actions in
narratives whose comedy often relies on their instinctive sense of timing
and movement. Like Keaton, he, through figurative attributes, is a ‘star’
but, unlike Keaton, through embodied attributes and by being performed
beforehand by careful timing by another being (the animator), he is an
avatar. Interestingly (and true of all team-based animation), Shaun is an
avatar of many beings (animators) who have to conform to the expectations
audiences have of him – he has a particular walk, specific facial expressions
and so on. Keaton’s performances were created by Keaton alone, but Shaun’s
were created by many individuals striving for consistency.
Notes
1 Jeremy Cott, ‘The Limits of Silent Comedy’, Literature/Film Quarterly 3,
no. 2 (Spring 1975), p. 103.
2 AFP, ‘Buster moves: “Shaun the Sheep” Modelled on Silent Movie Star’,
Expatica, 21 March 2015. Available at https://www.expatica.com/uk/news/
country-news/Buster-moves-Shaun-the-Sheep-modelled-on-silent-movie-
star_467029.html (accessed 20 May 2018).
3 Ibid.
4 Donald Crafton, Shadow of a Mouse: Performance, Belief and World-Making
in Animation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), p. 17.
5 Donald Crafton, Before Mickey: The Animated Film 1898–1928 (Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993), p. 295.
6 Paul Wells, ‘The Chaplin Effect: Ghosts in the Machine and Animated
Gags’, in D. Goldmark and C. Keil (eds), Funny Pictures (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2011), p. 27.
7 Crafton, Shadow of a Mouse, pp. 23–48.
8 Ibid., p. 23.
9 Ibid., p. 53.
10 Maarten Coëgnarts and Peter Kravanja, ‘Metaphors in Buster Keaton’s
Short Films’, Image & Narrative 13, no. 2 (2014), p. 138.
11 This episode was originally broadcast in the UK on 15 March 2013.

12 Noël Carroll, Comedy Incarnate: Buster Keaton, Physical Humor and Bodily
Coping (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), pp. 1–14.
13 Peter Kravanja, ‘Buster Keaton’s Comedy of Hegelian Beauty’, Image &
Narrative 20 (2007). Available at: http://www.imageandnarrative.be/
inarchive/affiche_findesiecle/kravanja.htm (accessed 20 May 2018).
14 Carroll, Comedy Incarnate, p. 13.
15 Crafton, Shadow of a Mouse, p. 29.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid.
18 Christopher Bishop, The Great Stone Face (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1958), p. 10.
20 Ibid., p. 24.
21 Kravanja, ‘Buster Keaton’s Comedy of Hegelian Beauty’.
22 Ibid.
23 Bishop, The Great Stone Face, p. 15.
24 Kravanja, ‘Buster Keaton’s Comedy of Hegelian Beauty’.
25 Ibid.
27 Ibid., p. 24.
29 Coëgnarts and Kravanja, ‘Metaphors in Buster Keaton’s Short Films’, p. 142.
30 See Crafton, Shadow of a Mouse, p. 40.
31 Ibid., p. 23.
32 See Crafton, Shadow of a Mouse, p. 45, in which Crafton describes how
acting out characters’ parts was a significant part of the animation process
at Disney.
33 Ibid., p. 24.
34 Ed Hooks, Acting for Animators (London: Routledge, 2011), p. 49.
35 Wells, ‘The Chaplin Effect’, p. 26.
36 Lower on the hierarchy, although still important is that the models should
be clean and any plasticine should be well sculpted and smoothed out. Less
important is the actual smoothness of the animation, although as animators
we always strive to make our animation fluid. When one studies much of
Aardman’s work the natural imperfections of stop-frame animation are
sometimes visible, and yet they don’t detract from the storytelling.
37 This episode was originally broadcast in the UK on 14 December 2010.
38 Bar sheets, otherwise known as ‘X-sheets’ or ‘dope sheets’, are charts that
animators use to work out their timing. Frames are displayed in real
time, and so details can be added to help animators keep on track with
movement and performance.
39 Wells, ‘The Chaplin Effect’, p. 26.
40 This episode was first broadcast in the UK on 17 May 2010.
Section Four
Surface and Performance

194
12
Aardman’s Neo-Baroque: The Dual

Nature of Special Effects in Aardman’s
Feature Film Production
Thomas Walsh
The use of special effects to depict the destruction of various vegetables

throughout Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)
culminates in a particularly poignant moment where Gromit’s hopes of
winning the local vegetable competition with his giant marrow are literally
smashed to pieces. In Gromit’s attempt to save Wallace, his marrow is
destroyed by a collision, and although in itself the marrow cannot emote
sadness or disappointment, the slow viscous movement of clay used to mimic
the marrow’s innards is as expressive of Gromit’s feelings of disappointment
and failure as are his facial expressions and body language. As a visual
metaphor, it literalizes the shattering of his dreams. This particular scene
raises the central concerns to be addressed by this chapter: in the absence
of an anthropomorphized character, which might suggest an underlying
presence of androcentric motivations and emotional states, to what extent
can special effects animation be considered a dramatic performance
in its own right, and not just the simulation of natural phenomena as an
adjunct to character performances? Additionally, in what way is this type of
performance informed by the tactile nature of the materials being animated?
It is important to note that Aardman is unusual in terms of how special
effects fit into its production pipeline. Effects elements in hand-drawn or
computer-generated animation feature film production are usually dealt
with by a distinct department with its own disciplines and discrete set of
relationships between effects animators that is separate from character
animation. At the Aardman studio, however, animators handle both
characters and effects together on a shot-by-shot basis, with no distinct
effects department specialized in animating non-character phenomena
on set. This process, where an animator is involved in manipulating both
character puppets and non-androcentric materials as part of a single cohesive
performance, prompts the consideration of the special effects element as

another type of avatar,1 similar to but distinct from the character puppet.2
Aardman’s feature films Chicken Run (2000), Wallace and Gromit: The Curse
of the Were-Rabbit (2005) and The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!
(2012) utilize both analogue and digital methods of effects production
to generate non-character phenomena. This chapter will consider the
implications of this hybrid production process and how the resulting effects
elements comprise part of a dramatic performance.3
For stop-motion effects, animation that involves the movement of physical
materials in front of a camera, there is a lingering trace of what might be
described as a more ‘concrete’ process of special effects working alongside
the post-production procedure of digital visual effects. This trace helps
preserve the sense of profilmic space, something which can be regarded as a
component part of contemporary stop-motion aesthetics in general; and one
that more specifically informs Aardman’s distinctive house style of animation,
thus helping to determine approaches to the effects production process itself.
The deployment of the concrete process of using physical materials has a
distinct impact on how effects elements relate to the body of the animator
and also how they are experienced by an audience. As such, they can be seen
to constitute an embodied perception of the world that can be considered in
relation to the phenomenological theories of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and
Edmund Husserl. In the Aardman films under discussion in this chapter,
the mixing of analogue and digital processes constructs the special effect as
a site of tension between Aardman’s signature tactile aesthetic (which is a
signifier of a corporate entity that produces commercial animated products),
the animator’s mimetic performance of the effect on set within the dramatic
context of the shot and the audience’s haptic knowledge of the materiality of
two distinct worlds: Aardman’s fabricated world projected on-screen, and a
lived world which they inhabit and experience phenomenologically.
Aardman’s neo-baroque
Special and visual effects work produced for Aardman feature films occurs
within a particular production context – that of ‘orthodox’ commercial
animation production.4 Inherent in this context is the use of digital
compositing to efface the ontological difference between physical objects
and virtual effects in order to present the illusion of a single, cohesive image
world on-screen.5 This concern is an overpowering element of commercial
animation production that seeks to reduce the more subversive potential
of animation’s propensity to foreground its own production processes. As
Aardman’s Neo-Baroque 197
a commercial form of film production, the Aardman feature film might

be seen to partake in the aesthetics of what Sean Cubitt calls a Hollywood
neo-baroque mode of filmmaking,6 where digital processes formulate a
seamless experience of ‘enclosed and enclosing worlds’.7 Live-action and
animated effects elements produced under these conditions are seamlessly
integrated to the extent that there is little or no evidence of the production
process which makes their on-screen presence possible. In a similar way, the
final Aardman image seeks to efface the difference between physical effects
photographed on set and digital effects produced in post-production. The
‘enclosure’ of their on-screen world is a result of the digital simulation of
tangible materials and the aesthetics produced by practical effects processes.
In reflecting on some of the practicalities of planning effects work that
seeks to create a seamless blend of physical and digital processes, Aardman
production manager Richard Beek pointed out how effects elements are
identified as part of a storyboard reviewing process, and that it was preferable
to construct as many production effects elements physically in front of the
camera as possible. This is due to the relative expense of producing visual
effects digitally in post-production, but also the importance of preserving a
sense of what he called ‘surface contact’:8 the sense of effects elements existing
within the space of the set and thereby making physical contact with both
character puppets and other parts of the surrounding environment, rather
than being added digitally in post-production. This practice of in-camera
effects work was noted as part of the production process for Aardman’s first
feature film Chicken Run by Computer Film Company’s senior visual effects
supervisor Paddy Eason who explained:
They’re quite smart at getting everything they can in-camera […] At

one point for example, the chickens dig a tunnel under the fence of the
farm, using an egg whisk to excavate the earth, with all these bits of earth
flying up in the air and landing again. They did that using a series of dirt
elements applied to sheets of glass placed before the camera – sort of
the dimensional equivalent to cel animation […] but then it fell to us to
match that look in CG.9
As intimated by Eason, computer-generated elements could be deployed in

post-production to achieve certain types of effects that would be difficult
and time-consuming to enact on set with physical materials. For example,
clay, the main substance used for the puppets in Aardman films, has tactile
qualities that can be problematic for the representation of certain types
of more ephemeral phenomena, such as smoke or dust clouds. Digital
effects produced in post-production can be used to overcome the physical
limitations of what might be possible on a live set, as well as enhancing the

effects that were filmed on set. However, it is important that any computer
elements or digital enhancements match the analogue stop-motion elements
photographed on set.
Ironically, although this simulation of actual materials helps to provide
a coherent, enclosed on-screen world, it is simultaneously contingent on
maintaining a sense of connection to an outside world of real materials and
handmade production processes, which are important aspects of Aardman’s
signature style that help differentiate the studio in the commercial, feature
animation marketplace. Aardman’s distinct charm is inherently linked to in
the robust and clumsy qualities of clay figures. Although the studio has long
since moved towards silicone puppets and digitally sculpted replacement
parts for greater ease and accuracy of production in a feature-length format,
the pliable properties of clay remain at the heart of its signature style. This
is particularly evident in Chicken Run, where a mixture of silicone bodies
and plasticine parts was used to realize the studio’s ‘chunky’ tactile aesthetic,
established by director Nick Park’s Wallace and Gromit short films in the
late 1980s and 1990s.10
Brian Sibley has described Aardman’s house style as presenting ‘unlikely
characters and zany situations […] in a super-realistic style that believably
locates their otherwise bizarre scenarios in the world of our own experience’.11
The super-realistic style that Sibley refers to is carried through the realistic
rendering of environments (and at times effects elements) in terms of scale
and materials which are recognizable as being similar to the everyday world of
human experience, with characters given an ‘unlikely’ appearance and ‘zany’
potential through their rendering in plasticine and silicone. It is primarily
the characters that establish clay as a primordial substance of sentient
beings in the Aardman cinematic universe – the chickens in Chicken Run
are given an illusion of a particular type of materiality that has an inherent
‘zany’, cartoon potential, encoded with the mutable organicism of clay as
a natural substance. However, they do not exist in an entirely clay-based
world – environments and effects elements possess the illusion of materials
equivalent to what an audience might expect to encounter in a real world
– chicken coops have the texture of wood, chunks of soil flying through
the air look like actual soil, and bath bubbles have the translucency and
lightness of real suds. This results in moments where the Aardman image
can consist of a startling disparity between realistic environmental elements
and the fantastic characters that exist within these spaces. For Chicken Run
in particular, external spaces are rendered as realistic, human-proportioned
spaces, with careful approximation of accurate scale in set construction and
atmospheric perspective in lighting, whereas internal spaces are rendered as
more caricatured and fantastical, better suited to more intimate moments

with clay figures.
The practical effects elements deployed in external/internal instances can
be seen to conform to a similar scheme of caricature and realism depending on
whether it is an internal or external environment. This tailoring of the effects
elements in relation to the environment helps to create a greater coherency
and sense of surface contact between the characters and their environments.
As described above by Eason, in the opening sequence from Chicken Run,
when the protagonist Ginger digs underneath a security fence, the flurry of
soil flying through the air looks and behaves according to real-world physics,
whereas later when we enter into the fantastical inner world of Mrs Tweedy’s
pie machine globules of gravy and pastry have been sculpted and accentuated
for dramatic or comic effect, allowing animators and designers to indulge in
the more plasmatic forms of animation imagery that resist stable, allotted
forms. In the first instance the effect is used to give Ginger a sense of agency
in a realist world, despite being an obvious cartoon incursion in a real space.
In the second instance the pliable properties of clay used to simulate more
gelatinous substances such as gravy and pastry reinforce the illusion of the
plasmatic potential of the puppets as clay figures – even though in reality
their rigid armature and silicone construction lack the potential for fluid
transformations.
As this discussion has demonstrated, at times the relationship between
environments, effects and character puppets can differ in relation to levels of
realism and caricature. However, the importance of preserving the stylistic
integrity of physical production techniques in the final image is paramount in
creating a distinctive Aardman aesthetic. In terms of special effects production,
the effort to maintain an illusion of physical production techniques in certain
instances required the generation of effects in-camera from a variety of
sources, including both animation and live-action, and combining them with
other elements in post-production, as was the case with the animation of fog
elements in Curse of the Were-Rabbit. This process included a testing phase
of cloud shapes projected onto gauze that could be manipulated on a frame-
by-frame basis, to the shooting of fog plates on an empty set and combining
these plates with characters in post-production.12 Throughout this process
the visual effects supervisors at Motion Picture Co. were aware of the need
for a ‘slightly stylized realism’ to maintain consistency with the overall design
of the production and Wallace and Gromit’s signature style,13 first established
in Nick Park’s debut short film A Grand Day Out (1989) and described by
production designer Phil Lewis as having ‘a handmade quality […] The
Wallace and Gromit look therefore has much to do with the use of texture –
everything’s got a characteristic texture – and colour’.14
Issues surrounding the incursion of digital visual effects into stop-motion

production have been discussed by Andrea Comiskey, who addresses the
use of special effects in stop-motion film as part of a discourse involving a
‘handmade imperative’ that is opposed to ‘the presumed dematerialization of
culture’ wrought in more general terms by computers and digital processes.15
Comiskey states:
Central to the handmade ethos are the tactile interactions of craftspeople

with tangible materials, the most privileged instance of which is the
animator’s manipulation of the array of physical objects within an actual
profilmic space.16
Aardman’s aesthetic seeks to preserve this sense of physical objects existing

in a profilmic space, regardless of the production technique being deployed,
be that a special effect or visual effect, or the dramatic register intended
for the audience, be that realist in nature or more caricatured. Similar to
Cubitt’s notion of a Hollywood neo-baroque, Aardman’s neo-baroque
filmmaking creates an enclosed stop-motion world with the illusion of one
production technique being used: the manipulation of real materials in a
profilmic space. The aesthetics of this world are predicated on a handmade
imperative, regardless of whether or not elements of the on-screen image
have been produced digitally in post-production. Although the visible
difference between types of production process (physical and virtual) has
been erased, thereby creating a coherent enclosure, the aesthetic of the final
image is still connected to an external world through its consistent use of
tactility as a point of reference for the audience (even if some of this tactility
is a computer-generated simulation).
Arguably, the practical effect that preserves a sense of a physical
production process within the on-screen diegesis can provide a challenge
to the seamlessness of other types of digital filmmaking. This might return
us to a more substantial sense of self-awareness in relation to real tactile
experiences, which have been captured within the traces of actual human
participations in a material world rather than their virtualization in a
digital world. For stop-motion effects in particular, there is a lingering
trace of what might be described as a more ‘concrete’ process underlying
the procedure of digital manipulation, helping to preserve this sense of a
profilmic space. Animator George Griffin, in his attempt to define a form
of concrete animation, notes how contemporary use of the term ‘concrete’
includes the sense of a ‘defiant backlash against the pervasive reach of
digital processing and its tendency towards virtual reality’.17 He goes on
to state:
I propose to link concrete to actual materials, objects not just images,

and the processes which cause them to spring to life […] the tactile,
the tangible, the real, the stuff which is often forgotten in the river of
illusion.18
In a similar way the Aardman film can be seen as a more concrete form of
animated filmmaking, with its use of ‘tactile’ and ‘tangible’ materials acting as
a reminder of a real world as opposed to a virtual world of ‘digital processing’.
In terms of effects production processes this is the difference between the
special effect enacted in front of the camera and the visual effect added
digitally in post-production.
In the Aardman film, the physicality of the special effect not only helps to
preserve a profilmic space and give fantastical cartoon characters a sense of
agency in a realistic world, but also reminds the audience of their own tactile
experiences of the real world. The movement of real material objects as part
of a practical special effects process engages both the ‘optical’ and ‘haptic’
viewing positons of the audience – the recognition of movement on the one
hand and materiality on the other.19 These viewing positions are bound up
with the complexities of animation as a type of performance. As with other
forms of animation, multiple bodies are performing and performed in the
practical, special effects image; the animator’s body, the audience’s actual
body and the ‘epiphenomenon’ of the animated bodies projected on-screen,
which are ultimately co-animated by both viewer and animator.20 Although
we can identify multiple bodies involved in producing effects animation,
the process can be seen to be governed by two fundamental aspects: the
mechanical simulation of real-world physics and the caricaturing of action
to help express the dramatic context of a scene; this duality of effects
performance is discussed in the next section.
The duality of effects performances

Animator Barry Purves, in his account of stop-motion history seems to
make a distinction between stop-motion as special effect and stop-motion as
performance, noting how early special effects practice played an important
role in the genesis of stop-motion film production. He states in relation to
Ladislaw Starewicz’s 1930 feature film The Tale of the Fox that ‘[t]his early
film […] was one of the very first times that stop-motion was used to create
a performance rather than a special effect’.21 Similarly, in relation to the final
moments of King Kong’s battle with a tyrannosaurus rex in Willis O’Brien’s
original 1930s production, he states that ‘there is a thought process and
a special effect becomes a performance’.22 Implicit in these comments is a

reading of the special effect as something to be executed mechanically by
the animator and that lacks the underlying ‘thought process’ or sentience
we might otherwise expect from a character performance. For Purves, the
simulation of sentience is a necessary element in defining stop-motion
movement as a performance. Thus, what Purves alludes to is the dual aspect
of effects performances: on the one hand the necessarily mechanical nature of
mimicking natural phenomena that behave in relation to real-world physics,
and on the other how effects elements reside in a dramatic context and might
be used by the animator to express an emotional or psychological intention,
albeit not necessarily an anthropomorphic one. With this in mind, effects
can still be considered a performance but a performance of a different order,
one that exists outside the anthropomorphic simulation of an emotional/
psychological realism.
The dual nature of the effects performance, divided between the mimicking
of physics and the necessity for dramatic caricature, can be explored in
relation to how Donald Crafton, in Shadow of a Mouse (2013), identifies
different types of animated performances. He defines animated performances
as being either ‘embodied’, in the sense that animator and audience are asked
to engage with animated characters as emotional and psychological beings,
or ‘figurative’ in the sense that animators and audiences recognize and utilize
archetypal forms and movements to generate meaning.23 Stop-motion special
effects work can be seen to be bound in a similar way: materials can be pre-
sculpted to be identifiable as different phenomenon in a figurative sense and
then can be manipulated by the animator through the timing of movement
to give an audience a deeper sense of meaning and embodiment. Although
there are still distinctions to be made, special effects elements can be seen
to be what Crafton calls ‘avatars’,24 and are used to embody the internal
motivations of animators, even though as simulations of natural phenomena
they do not possess internal psychological or emotional motivations in the
same way as a supposedly sentient character within a conventionally realist
Aardman diegesis. The sculpted globules of goo slowly oozing from Gromit’s
smashed marrow in Curse of the Were-Rabbit give rise to feelings of sadness
and disappointment, even though real marrows do not possess the capacity
to express emotional states.
In their performance of the effect, an animator must negotiate a dialectic
of science and representational artifice; an understanding of the physical
properties of natural phenomena and how these might be caricatured as
part of a dramatic representation. This simultaneous engagement with both
science and representation can be explained in phenomenological terms as
adopting two separate attitudes to the world. The first attitude is shared
with what Schopenhauer calls morphological and aetiological sciences –

the science of categorization and description of causal relations.25 This
attitude is what Husserl calls the ‘natural attitude’, which ‘is built around
the tacit “positing of ” or “belief in” the world as an independent horizon
of being’.26 In other words, the world is something external to be observed
and quantified. Both Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger have outlined the
importance of the body in providing a set of originary coordinates
for experience. According to Merleau-Ponty the body has ‘non-thetic
awareness’, a sort of automatic orientation that helps us to negotiate the
world, and this is important in constituting the natural attitude towards
the world. This can help us to understand how the animator approaches
objects to be animated as part of a production process, the extent to which
they suspend their non-thetic awareness in utilizing objects as avatars in
relation to a particular set of originary coordinates provided by a body. It is
also useful in understanding the positon of an audience that relates to the
animated image based on their natural attitude to the world and their own
set of originary coordinates.
In the absence of the psychological/emotional realism of character
animation (which tends towards androcentrism, anthropomorphism and the
originary coordinates of a human body), we might question how an effects
animator relates to the subject/object of his study. If character animation is
androcentric (embodying a subjective natural attitude to the world), can
effects animation be seen to approach natural phenomena as ‘things-in-
themselves’, and deploying a phenomenological epoché:27 the suspension of
everyday assumptions concerning a world of things external to the self? If
character animation is anthropomorphic, with constant recourse to allotted
human form, can we examine the effect as metamorphic, constantly shifting
and liberated from final form, as pliable as Aardman’s illusion of clay?
On a pragmatic level, in the Aardman stop-motion feature film effects
elements are planned and tested before their final performance on set. This
process might involve other departments, such as model making who sculpt
specific physical parts, and with the testing of materials and techniques at
times undertaken by junior animators who will not be involved in the final
performance on set. This leaves animators the task of reproducing techniques
established in test footage as an adjunct to their own performance with
character puppets. Arguably this model of reproducing techniques reduces
the creative intuition and experimentation in relation to effects elements and
allows such elements to be treated as a mechanical task on the periphery
of character animation. However, this reductive approach to effects work in
a stop-motion context is not always the case. Richard Beek states how the
effect has to ‘work creatively in the context of the shot’,28 and this is a point
taken up by animators themselves where the creative act lies solely in the
movement of objects and not in their design or construction.
As with other forms of commercial, realist-inflected animation, the
stop-motion animator’s performance resides in the incremental distances
that a still object must be moved which, when projected back at twenty-five
frames per second, speaks to an audience’s phenomenological experience
of being a three-dimensional object moving through a three-dimensional
world, and subject to the laws of speed and inertia. This simulation of real-
world physics draws from the natural attitude and originary coordinates
of animators and speaks to the non-thetic awareness of audiences. For
the Aardman animator in particular this pursuit of movement must also
take place within a dramatic context as part of Aardman’s whimsical take
on the ordinary.29 The behaviour of effects elements that resonate with an
audience’s first-hand experiences of natural phenomena helps to reinforce
a sense of ‘ordinariness’ as a counterpoint to the more fantastical nature
of characters and dramatic situations, thereby playing an important part
in generating what Wells calls Aardman’s ‘quasi-documentary style’ – the
sense in which the Aardman film attempts to generate the sense of a real,
mundane world.30
However, the animator can distort our perception of natural physical laws
for stylistic and dramatic effect through altering the rate of change on screen.
This is echoed in the experience of Richard Haynes, animator on Aardman’s
The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! and Shaun the Sheep Movie.
Haynes described animating a sequence in Pirates! involving bath suds,
which resulted in a complex process using tacky wax, ali-wire and magnets,
and described his animation as being more than just replicating the physics
of the phenomenon, but also consciously using the timing of special effects
elements to achieve the dramatic intentions of the scene, adding subtle
exaggerations to enhance the ‘mood’ or ‘flavour’ of the shot, in this case a
fast action sequence.31 The Pirate Captain, in his pursuit of the nefarious
Mr Bobo finds himself in a bath full of soap suds, bobsleighing through
Charles Darwin’s house and picking up various members of his crew on the
way. The effects in the sequence engage ‘optical’ viewing of movement (the
reading of motion itself) and ‘haptic’ viewing of materiality (the reading of
what the object is made of), both being experiences of viewing stop-motion
imagery, as discussed by Cordelia Brown in relation to art historian Alois
Riegl.32 In the particular case of bath suds, the effect has been achieved by
sculpting plastic beads into ‘foamy’ looking mounds of bubbles. However,
the uniform size of the beads does not quite achieve the organic qualities of
real soap bubbles, even though the animation timing gives them a kinetic
sense of being lighter than air. This mismatch of material and movement is
a common element of stop-motion imagery, and gives it a sense of unease

and uncertainty, which both confirms and confounds the audience’s a priori
experience of natural phenomena, and thereby in this case infusing the
physical effect with its sense of play, invention and joy.
Throughout the sequence in The Pirates!, the secondary movement of bath
suds is used to accentuate the primary impacts of the bath tub as it careens
down a seemingly never-ending staircase and collides with walls and various
pieces of Darwin’s collection of natural history curiosities. The spumes of
suds act mechanically to give characters weight as they displace foam from
the tub, and clumps of foam are whipped out of the frame to express the
acceleration of the tub through the sequence. In terms of behaving in relation
to the dramatic context of the sequence, the effects act as exclamation
points to punctuate the energy of a descent through the house. As part of this
dramatic punctuation, they are used in a humorous character reveal when
the Pirate with a Scarf emerges from the tub wearing a tribal mask, and in the
final denouement, a light smattering of suds generates a pregnant pause
while marking the spot where an Easter Island head subsequently crashes to
the floor. The contrast between the lightness of suds and heaviness of stone
is communicated through an optical reading of weight-through-movement
and haptic viewing of materiality-through-texture, and this helps to generate
a satisfying punchline to the chase, and also expresses a sense of risk for our
characters who have narrowly missed being crushed.
A similar rollercoaster-style sequence opens Curse of the Were-Rabbit,
where protagonists Wallace and Gromit leave their domestic environment
and identities behind by descending through various trap doors and
automated chutes. During this descent, the duo gradually adopt their alternate
roles as Anti-Pesto pest exterminators and finally arrive in their pest-
control van. Throughout this sequence the pair are flung joyfully through
various mechanisms that help in their transformation, the synchronized
choreography of movements and crossing of paths solidifying a sense of their
camaraderie for an audience who might not be familiar with the characters
and their relationship. Towards the end of the sequence their domestic world
intrudes one final time when a celebratory clinking together of their mugs
of tea forces large globules of liquid to launch into the air and land in the
opposite mug. The effect is used to sum up the sequence: a synchronized
choreography of movement and the switching of characters to opposite
sides of the frame, thereby reinforcing the good-natured intimacy of their
friendship. Although the dramatic needs of the shot provided the animator
with some context in how they might approach the animation of the tea as it
flies through the air, it is also possible to consider how the animator inhabits
the tea as a non-sentient character in its own right, a thing-in-itself that
partakes of the dramatic energy and flow of imagery to generate meaning

for an audience.
In phenomenological terms, character animation can be seen to preserve
the originary set of coordinates of our human corporeality through acts of
anthropomorphization. Without a recourse to androcentrism, the effects
animator must develop a sense of ‘things-in-themselves’. As David Abrams
points out, drawing on the writing of Merleau-Ponty, acts of perception
go beyond the confines of the human body and are ‘an attunement or
synchronization between my own rhythms and the rhythms of the things-
in-themselves’.33 Rather than the effect being anthropomorphic in its
manifestation, at times it is metamorphic, where forms undergo constant
change. In a stop-motion context, the character animator considers the
energy of an action as a conceptual line in space, which is then clothed in
the corporeality of volume and the stability of manipulating the character
puppet. The animation of effects can be less constricted by stable volumes,
especially when using clay or KY Jelly to mimic more fluid liquids such as
water or tea, and the animator’s conceptual line of action is liberated through
the constant rhythmic metamorphosis of forms in time.
This returns us to Gromit’s sad marrow, and the pathos expressed in the
metamorphosis of materials. The marrow’s innards, once released from the
vegetable’s tough exterior, lack defined boundaries and possess a more fluid
plasmatic form. The marrow’s internal world has now been literally externalized,
enabling the internal emotional state of Gromit to take on an external form,
generating a sense of his perception of the world as a complex reciprocal
relationship. In this instance the animator has expressed Gromit’s consciousness
of his physical surroundings as being informed by less quantifiable emotional
and psychological states and this suggests how consciousness in general is both
structured by and structures acts of perception.
The reminder of a lived body in acts of perception problematizes the
primacy of the eye and notions of a Cartesian cogito that stands separate from
an external objectified world. Husserl establishes a ‘prereflective Lebenswelt’
or Lifeworld in which we are embedded, and in which the boundaries
between subject and object are occluded. Martin Jay points out that for
Merleau-Ponty ‘the lived body was irreducible to a static image observed
from without’,34 and the effects animator’s ability to enter into phenomena
through the construction of a moving image is important in this regard. Jay
points out how Husserl and Merleau-Ponty re-conceptualized perception as
embodied and reciprocal, going on to explain:
Perception, Merleau-Ponty implied, was intertwined not only with

scientific and rational intellect, but also with the artistic imagination
[…] the great artist does not negate perception; he or she renews it
by returning us to that primordial experience before the split between
imagination and sensation, expression and imitation.35
As described above, the effects elements in Curse of the Were Rabbit are
not only used to establish the physics of the world for an audience in a
scientifically rational manner but are also simultaneously used to express
the internal emotional perceptions of characters and project them into the
physics of their world. In moments where special effects animation engages
more fluid materials, we can see how this type of animation draws on the
primal plasmatic freedoms of early animation as described by Eisenstein.36
During these more metamorphic moments of effects animation, the
Aardman film is allowed to approach the relationship between characters
and natural phenomena at a more primordial level that at times crosses the
boundaries between internal and external states, thereby expressing notions
of the lived body as being a perceiving object but also indivisible from the
world perceived. Gromit is the marrow, and the marrow is Gromit.
Conclusion
The nature of effects performances in Aardman’s feature films has a dual
aspect, where animators must find an aesthetic balance between expressing
the physical nature of their fictional worlds on the one hand and supporting the
dramatic and emotional content of their scenes on the other. The manipulation
of actual physical materials on set to describe natural phenomena is helpful
in finding this balance, allowing the animator to produce a more holistic
performance as a lived body rather than supplementing the live performance
on set with post-production digital effects. In the particular case of Aardman,
the use of physical materials also allows for a preservation of ‘surface contact’
and a greater sense of a ‘handmade imperative’, both of which are seen as key
aspects of the studio’s defining style.
The pliable quality of clay, and the freedom it gives to morph one shape
into another, is also an important aspect of Aardman’s distinctive style,
even though contemporary production processes have moved towards
greater use of sculpted silicone parts. The special effect is one of the final
components of the animation process where clay is still used to animate
more fluid phenomena, thereby preserving the potential of metamorphosis
as part of Aardman’s aesthetic. The potential for metamorphosis, and its
resistance to final allotted form, in part embodies the inherent plasmatic
nature of animation, but also can be seen to produce a flow of forms and
images in a neo-baroque mode of cinematic image production that collapses

the distance between perceiver and perceived. This lack of final allotted
form expresses the relationship between the animator’s lived body and the
natural world as one of diminished individualism, where the animator can
experience ‘things-in-themselves’ beyond the imperatives of androcentric
emotional/psychological verisimilitude. This in turn can engage a similar
awareness in audiences through acts of both optical and haptic viewing.
Notes
1 Donald Crafton, The Shadow of a Mouse (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2013), p. 40.
2 This notion of effects elements as an avatar for an animator’s performance is
not necessarily limited to stop-motion animation, however, but might also
be considered as an aspect of effects animation in other types of animation
processes, including hand-drawn and computer-generated films.
3 The term ‘special effects’ will be used to denote physical effects animated in
front of a camera as part of a production phase of a filmmaking process as
distinct from ‘visual effects’, which are computer-generated elements added
in a post-production phase.
4 Paul Wells, Understanding Animation (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 35–43.
5 For a further discussion of the relationship between physical and visual
effects in Aardman’s feature films, see Wood’s chapter in this volume.
6 In his book The Cinema Effect (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004), Sean
Cubitt uses the term neo-baroque to describe a particular development in
Hollywood cinema emerging in the 1980s and 1990s where earlier forms
of cinema predicated on linear narrative, planar composition and realist
representation were abandoned in favour of the dynamics of movement
and a heightened sense of spectacle. Cubitt argues that this type of cinema
engaged a mode of representation similar to that of sixteenth-century
imitatio, where there is a heightened appreciation of technique rather than
the accuracy of representation in realist terms.
7 Cubitt, The Cinema Effect, p. 244.
8 Richard Beek, interviewed with author, 22 June 2015.
9 Kevin Martin, ‘Poultry in Motion’, Cinefex 82 (July 2000), pp. 118–31.
10 Brian Sibley, Chicken Run: Hatching the Movie (Oxford: Boxtree, 2000),
pp. 112–16.
11 Ibid., p. 30.
12 Rachael Bosley, ‘A Model Thriller’, American Cinematographer 86, no. 10
(October 2005), pp. 36–7.
13 Ibid., p. 36.
14 Ibid., p. 37.
15 Andrea Comiskey, ‘(Stop)Motion Control: Special Effects in Contemporary

Puppet Animation’, in D. North (ed.), Special Effects: New Histories/
Theories/Contexts (London: BFI Palgrave, 2015), p. 52 and p. 55.
16 Ibid., p. 52.
17 George Griffin, ‘Concrete Animation’, Animation: An Interdisciplinary
Journal 2, no. 3 (November 2007), p. 260.
18 Ibid., p. 260.
19 Cordelia Brown, ‘Flowerpot Men: The Haptic Image in Brian Cosgrove
and Richard Hall’s Animations’, Animation Studies Online Journal (2007).
Available at: https://journal.animationstudies.org/cordelia-brown-
flowerpot-men/ (accessed 21 February 2018).
20 Crafton, The Shadow of a Mouse, pp. 52–3.
21 Barry Purves, Stop Motion: Passion, Process and Performance (London:
Focal Press, 2008), p. 16.
22 Ibid., p. 37.
23 Crafton, The Shadow of a Mouse, p. 23.
24 Ibid., p. 40.
25 Patrick Gardiner, Schopenhauer (Harmandsworth: Penguin Books, 1963),
p. 133.
26 Matheson Russell, Husserl: A Guide for the Perplexed (London:
Continuum, 2006), p. 61.
27 Ibid., p. 66.
28 Beek, interview with author.
29 Wells, Understanding Animation, p. 60.
30 Ibid..
31 Richard Haynes, interview with author, 8 January 2016.
32 Brown, ‘Flowerpot Men’.
33 David Abrams, The Spell of the Sensuous (New York: Penguin Random
House, 1996), p. 54.
34 Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth Century
French Thought (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), p. 310.
35 Ibid., p. 306.
36 Sergei Eisenstein, Eisenstein on Disney, J. Leyda (ed.) (Calcutta: Seagull
Books, 1986), p. 21.
210
13
Performing Authenticity through Clay

in the Wallace and Gromit Films
Laura Ivins
The first glimpse we get of our now-famous heroes – Wallace and Gromit – is
a close-up of Gromit’s hand as he picks up a book, Where to Go. Small cracks
are visible between the four fingers, making it readily apparent from the start
that we are watching clay figures. It is common in narrative animation to
disavow the hand of the animator, to create a world that feels self-contained
and absorbing. Consider, for example, the smoothly sculpted, all-clay
worlds of Will Vinton, which seek to minimize elements that take audiences
out of the narrative,1 and favour tools over hand-sculpting ‘to maintain a
meticulously clean, smooth texture’ on the puppets.2 Conventional wisdom
dictates that the materials should not take us out of the story.
However, when watching an Aardman film like A Grand Day Out (Nick
Park, 1989), our eyes are drawn to the surface texture of Wallace and Gromit.
Their clay skins bear the marks of their production process: fingerprints,
dents, smooshes, folds and occasional cracks. The effect is similar to
something like the Fleischer Studio’s Out of the Inkwell series (1918–29).
Even though we do not literally see the animator, as we do with the Fleischer
films, the fingerprints on Wallace and Gromit’s skin remind us constantly of
Nick Park’s creative touch. The animator’s presence is literally imprinted on
Wallace’s face.
In this chapter, I examine the cluster of meanings created by the
physicality of clay in the Wallace and Gromit films, arguing that the marks
on clay serve as metonymy for authenticity for Aardman Animations. The
qualities of clay animation impact performance meanings, and discourses
about the clay characters’ surface texture work performatively to construct
Aardman films as authentic, personal, artistic creations. As we will see in
this chapter, Wallace and Gromit’s clay skin produces meanings about their
characters, inviting audiences to engage in haptic heuristics during viewing.
Critics writing about the Wallace and Gromit films make note of clay’s
tactility, with cultural ideas about tactility infusing their understanding of
Aardman Animations’ studio identity.
Performance and clay animation

Performance is inherently physical. When we watch characters move
on screen – whether human, puppet, drawn or digital – we interpret
their intention by reading their bodily movement and vocal inflection.3
Although dialogue certainly matters, a performer can alter the meanings
of words through embodied performance: gestures, facial expressions,
movement through space and vocal intonation. Just think of how changes
in a simple line reading – such as the phrase ‘I love you’ – impact how we
interpret the words. If the actor’s voice breaks and if she makes sustained eye
contact with her co-star, then we are likely to read the words as earnest. If her
voice is flat and monotone, and if she barely looks at her co-star as she speaks
the sentence, then we might interpret the words as disingenuous. In both
instances, the actor utilizes her physical body (vocal cords, head and eyes)
to inject complex meanings into the phrase, ‘I love you’. This is equally true
for animated characters as it is for human, live-action ones. Although the
animated figure relies on its human animator for its performance choices,
audiences nonetheless respond to it using similar viewing heuristics as
other fiction filmmaking. In Shadow of a Mouse, Donald Crafton argues,
‘Cartoon stars rival human ones as recognizable celebrities and in the avidity
of their fans. As do human stars, cartoon characters create a sense of being
live and present in the film experience.’4 Just like with live-action, when
watching narrative animation, we immerse ourselves in the story on screen,
interpreting characters’ motivations through bodily movement.
However, although performance is grounded in the body, it does not
create meaning on its own. Rather, performances are always culturally
embedded. Actors and animators frequently draw from the dominant
performance styles of their time period and culture in order to construct
characters. For animation, this may also involve utilizing stylistic tropes from
illustration or puppet theatre, as when popular Japanese anime appropriates
manga tropes for facial expressions. Moreover, audiences’ interpretations
of performances vary. ‘Historical consumers of these films, then as now,
experience them within their own diverse and evolving understanding.’5
Donald Crafton uses the example of a Second World War cartoon, which
was received quite differently by 1942 audiences than it would be today.
What read as patriotic in one period might read as jingoistic in another.6
Furthermore, even within the same period, divergent receptions inevitably
emerge, based on an individual audience member’s cultural context, their
understanding of their personal identity and their individual experiences.
Crafton writes, ‘Performance isn’t a sender–receiver communication model
but rather a galaxy of relationships, many of which remain unknowable.’7
Performing Authenticity in the Wallace and Gromit Films 213
This galaxy of cultural relationships informing performance will be critical

further on when we examine the construction of authenticity in relation to
the Wallace and Gromit films.
Still, certain modes of production do invite certain interpretative
frames. One of the appeals of 3D stop-motion is its tactile qualities, since its
characters and settings are actual things we can touch.8 This is particularly
true of clay animation, where the physicality of the clay provides enjoyment
for audiences. Michael Frierson writes, ‘Clay forms have a presence that
is striking, no matter how crude the form, because they naturally cast
shadows, exhibit surface detail, and create perspective.’9 For Wallace and
Gromit audiences, the tactile qualities of clay animation emerge as a core
source of enjoyment and further help distinguish Aardman Animations as
creators of ‘authentic’, handmade films.
Performance styles in the Wallace and Gromit films

As the first Wallace and Gromit film, A Grand Day Out is the least polished,
something that contributes to the film’s charm. The film began as Nick Park’s
student film for the National Film and Television School, and he made it
largely himself, though Aardman Animations helped him complete the short
after David Sproxton and Peter Lord recruited Park to work for the studio.10
The figures of Wallace and Gromit display the marks of their sculpting and
re-sculpting during the animation process: bumpy skin, folds, indentations,
dirt, sags in the clay and of course, fingerprints left by Nick Park and
his co-animators. Such marks have come to be thought of as charming
imperfections, evidence of the loving labour that Park puts into Wallace and
Gromit. In early films, they perhaps also indicate an inexperienced animator
still learning how to sculpt. However, these charming imperfections – even
in the first couple of Wallace and Gromit films – are balanced by finely
crafted performances that show an animator who has an excellent grasp on
his characters. Below, I give an overview of how Park and his collaborators
approach performance, and then I analyse how the textual qualities of clay
impact both performance choices and audiences’ engagement with Wallace
and Gromit.
Animators are frequently compared to actors. For example, in the 1930s,
Disney created an in-house training school for animators that emphasized
acting principles for creating believable movement. ‘This, in fact, was one
of [founder Don] Graham’s refrains: that the animator must understand
the character before drawing it.’11 Furthermore, Disney animators studied
Stanislavsky and other acting techniques to improve their animated
performances.12 Similarly, Aardman co-founder Peter Lord emphasizes the

centrality of performance in the studio’s films, saying in one interview, ‘What
I think’s the really important part of animation is the acting. The important
part is how the character is expressing emotion and expressing, in the way he
moves, what he is thinking about.’13 Character animators draw from the same
gestural vocabulary as human actors, adapting gestures to suit their medium
and expressive goals.
In A Grand Day Out – which tells the story Wallace’s quest for cheese
on a bank holiday, leading him and Gromit to a have a picnic on the
moon – Nick Park’s initial choice of whether to have Gromit speak came
down to expressivity. As Andy Lane reports, Park initially employed Peter
Hawkins to give voice to Gromit, ‘but Nick eventually decided to drop the
idea of Gromit speaking when it became clear how expressive the dog could
be just through small movements of his eyes and brow. The voice was never
heard.’14 Peter Lord echoes this sentiment, saying of Gromit’s brow, ‘A few
grams of plaster speaks volumes, doesn’t it?’15 For example, during the first
scene of A Grand Day Out, Wallace attempts to eat crackers without cheese,
but finds the snack lacking. Then, he gets an idea for their trip. ‘Gromit,’ he
says, waving his hands back and forth in one of his characteristic gestures,
‘that’s it! Cheese! We’ll go somewhere where there’s cheese!’ Gromit pushes
the right part of his brow down and the left part up, giving the camera a
sceptical look. The movement is subtle and brief, yet expressive. It begins
to establish Gromit as the more thoughtful, clever half of the duo. We never
have to hear him speak to intuit his intelligence.
In interviews, Park demonstrates a keen attention to how the characters’
movement habits communicate personality. For example, he explains a key
contrast in the movement patterns of his two heroes: ‘Wallace is pulled by
his legs; he does everything feet first, literally. He heads into everything feet
first – he has an idea, sees something, and walks over without thinking.
Gromit is probably more pulled by his eyes. He notices everything, and
goes cautiously in.’16 It’s easy to think of examples of the intelligent hound
looking around thoughtfully. In addition to the above example from A Grand
Day Out, in A Close Shave (Nick Park, 1995) Gromit and Wallace discover
multiple objects around the house that have been chewed on, including a
television cable that’s frayed in the middle. Gromit raises his eyebrows as if
to say, ‘What could’ve done this?’ Then, he scrunches his brow down before
moving on to investigate further. As explained by Park, this furrowed brow
frequently precedes movement for Gromit.
However, I would argue that Wallace’s arm and hand movements are
actually the central components of his character, rather than his feet. In fact,
across the Wallace and Gromit series, Wallace frequently finds himself led
along by his contraptions or some mishap, rather than moving intentionally.

His inventions often go wrong, flinging him to and fro against his will. An
example of this is in The Wrong Trousers (Nick Park, 1993), when the thieving
penguin rigs Wallace’s morning routine so that the chute leading from his bed
delivers him into a pair of mechanized Techno Trousers, rather than into his
usual clothing. The penguin controls the Techno Trousers, forcing Wallace to
march haphazardly around the neighbourhood. All the while, Wallace flings
his arms around, expressing his powerlessness in the situation. In general,
Wallace tends to hold his hands up around his chest, palms facing out and
fingers curled over. He shakes them from side to side when he gets excited
or nervous, such as in the above example from A Grand Day Out, and he
stretches them and curls them back sometimes to express anticipation. An
example of the latter appears towards the end of A Close Shave, when Wallace
has decided to get over his heartbreak with a nice bit of cheese. He wiggles
his fingers, saying, ‘All the more for us, and not a sheep to worry us!’ Wallace’s
character frequently conveys emotion through the hands, and like Gromit’s
brow, such expressivity is enabled through the malleability of clay. Clay can
fold over and stretch back out, allowing for a high degree of articulation in
the fingers, something that can prove more challenging with puppets made
of other kinds of materials.
With its high degree of malleability, clay also possesses qualities that
could be perceived as limitations, in that its surfaces are easy to ‘mess up’.
Dirt, fingerprints, dents or mistakes in re-sculpting all draw attention to
the figure’s surface. ‘The sheer weight of the clay makes larger forms sag,
sometimes imperceptibly, over successive frames during filming. When
projected, such sagging is often clearly visible to the viewer.’17 This creates a
tension between figuration versus texture and gives the Wallace and Gromit
figures their ‘handcrafted’ look. Their skin bears marks that belie the process
that created them, but instead of undermining an appreciation of the films, it
enhances audiences’ connection to Wallace and Gromit. The fingerprints on
Wallace’s nose draw attention to Wallace’s ‘thingness’. He is a puppet, made
of clay, moved by a person we cannot see. This should take us out of the
story, and yet audiences and critics often speak of the visible fingerprints in
Aardman films as a source of charm. For example, one reviewer of The Curse
of the Were-Rabbit writes, ‘The clay-crafted characters are incredibly detailed
but still have a few visible fingerprints, a quaint hand-made touch held over
from the shorts.’18
In The Skin of Film, Laura Marks draws a distinction between what
she calls ‘optic visuality’ and ‘haptic visuality’. Optic visuality focuses on
figuration, visual comprehension and character identification. Generally, it
is this viewing heuristic that dominates narrative cinema, and it frequently
depends on filmmaking techniques like continuity editing, high-key lighting

and expositional dialogue. In contrast, haptic visuality focuses on surface
texture and may eschew clarity or character in favour of intimacy.19 Films
utilizing this heuristic may employ extreme close-ups that obscure the
person or object being filmed, soft focus and expressionistic juxtapositions
in editing. ‘Haptic cinema does not invite identification with a figure – a
sensory-motor reaction – so much as it encourages a bodily relationship
between the viewer and the image.’20 Marks uses haptic visuality to describe
experimental cinema made by diasporic filmmakers who seek to create
connections to cultural experiences that lie outside narrative constructs.
The films she discusses differ significantly from Wallace and Gromit films,
but her notion of haptic visuality importantly posits a viewing heuristic that
emphasizes affect and is centred in the body of the viewer. What I suggest is
that viewers of stop-motion engage in optic heuristics and haptic heuristics
simultaneously. That is, optic visuality does not necessarily dominate when
we watch the Wallace and Gromit films; instead, the two forms of visuality
mutually reinforce each other in stop-motion filmmaking.
At its core, haptic visuality is about undermining dominant visual
strategies that privilege narrative clarity in order to promote heuristics that
lead viewers back into their own bodies. However, cinema as a medium
frequently promotes the haptic, as it so often records 3D space. Marks writes
that ‘it is common for cinema to evoke sense experience through intersensory
links: sounds may evoke textures; sights may evoke smells (rising steam or
smoke evokes smells of fire, incense, or cooking). These intersensory links
are well termed synesthetic.’21 As such, ‘Cinema is not merely a transmitter of
signs; it bears witness to an object and transfers the presence of that object to
viewers.’22 Stop-motion, as we know, is a form of animation that perpetuates
cinema’s propensity to bear witness to objects, frequently drawing our
attention to the physical properties of things set in motion. For theorist
Jennifer Barker, the inherent tactility of stop-motion makes the viewer more
aware of their own body, and she cites the visible fingerprints on Wallace
and Gromit as one of her examples.23 She writes that ‘stop-motion animation
even more so is a haptic art form, one that addresses itself first and foremost
to the fingertips, provoking our desire to touch, caress, squeeze, and scrape
the images before us’.24 The tactility of stop-motion creates intimacy – not
just with the figures, but also with the filmmakers. Nick Park has remarked
that ‘clay animation is so personal,’25 and he laments having to pass the
hands-on animation to someone else as his projects grew more ambitious.26
Seeing Nick Park or his co-animators’ fingerprints evokes that personal
connection with the filmmaker, and thus with the film. We can literally see
evidence that a human being created this world. For critics and audiences,
these fingerprints act as a metonymy for authenticity in Aardman’s clay

animation films, creating cultural meanings around Wallace and Gromit that
help differentiate Aardman from its Hollywood counterparts.
Fingerprints and the construction of authenticity

‘Authenticity’ is a contentious term, one that anthropology, performance
studies and star studies have long grappled with. What makes a performance
authentic? How can performers cultivate authenticity when building
relationships with their audiences? When we critique the concept of
authenticity, are we invalidating the credibility of audience experience? It’s
important to note that authenticity is a construct, an effect that informs how
audiences and critics react to cinema, and not an inherent quality of a work.
Rather than considering whether Aardman Animations’ films are or are not
‘really’ authentic, I am interested in how authenticity is created and how it
impacts audiences’ relationships to the films.
In a 2001 special issue of Discourse Studies devoted to the subject
of authenticity, Theo Van Leeuwen remarks that within the context of
performance, authenticity depends upon cultural expectations.27 ‘If we
exceed the norms valid in a certain context’, Van Leeuwen writes, ‘if, for
instance, we use too wide a pitch range and too much dynamic variation
in our speech, this may be seen as excessive and hence inauthentic, and not
trustworthy.’28 He goes on to note, ‘It hardly needs to be pointed out that
such norms are culturally specific.’29 Not only are they culturally specific, but
constantly negotiated and thus changeable. What is considered authentic by
one person might be interpreted as fake, false or too commercial by another.
What we consider inauthentic in one cultural moment might be reinterpreted
as genuine years later. So, when I say that authenticity is constructed, it is
in the service of analysing the operative norms that produce it. This is not
to invalidate viewer responses, since there can exist a weight of ‘truth’ and
‘fake’ that plagues critical discussions of the authentic, either implicitly or
explicitly. Rather, I would agree with Van Leeuwen that ‘authenticity could
be considered to be a special kind of modality’,30 one where particular
mechanisms contribute to audiences’ understanding of a work.
Within media industries, those mechanisms include public relations and
marketing materials, interviews with filmmakers, critical reviews, gossip
magazines and websites, and behind-the-scenes videos or articles. According
to star studies scholar Richard Dyer, materials originating from the studio or
the star intend to shape the public’s perception of a star as ‘sincere, immediate,
spontaneous, real, direct, genuine and so on’,31 manifestations of authenticity
that help sell the star persona as something more than a pre-packaged,
commercialized construct.32 The authentication of the star occurs beyond
the film itself, extending to extratextual representations of their ‘real world’
selves.33 Of course, Wallace and Gromit do not have the same kind of ‘real
world’ existence as a human actor, but one can argue that they are stars, and
they do exist in real physical space. If we visited Aardman’s studios, we could
(if allowed) pick up the puppets and perhaps leave our own fingerprints on
their bodies. Such real-world existence contributes to audiences’ perception
of puppet animation’s authenticity, especially in contrast to larger-budget,
Hollywood animations, which for audiences often lack such obvious, real-
world referents.34
Similarly, what we might call auteur animation – films that seems to
originate from an author who orchestrates the film’s content and production
process – possesses that same connection to a ‘real’ self. With such
animation, audiences identify a single person (or small group of people)
who is responsible for envisioning the film. In contrast to films strongly
identified with a large (Hollywood) studio, auteur films feel like personal
expressions, connected to the ‘real’ self of the author. Such a fan conception
of the animator is similar to fan conceptualizations of stars, since both
encourage personal connections to a performer (with the animator as a kind
of actor). Auteur animation might then be contrasted with what Paul Wells
terms ‘orthodox animation’, in which individual artistic style is subsumed in
favour of a consistent studio identity.35 While the divide between orthodox
animation and auteur animation is not necessarily a tidy separation,36
reviewers and audiences often draw upon such a distinction, defining the
positive aspects of auteur animation against the perceived negative aspects
of industrialized, studio animation. Hollywood has commonly – though
not exclusively – been framed as a significant example of the homogenizing
effects of globalization,37 and while this narrative is simplistic,38 it contains
elements of truth and proves powerful for how critics and audiences frame
their experiences of animated film, with ‘local’ productions often discussed
in terms that imply cultural authenticity.
In her essay, ‘Framing National Cinemas’, Susan Hayward makes a case
for retaining ‘national cinema’ as a critical concept, arguing that it does
matter if one industry (i.e. Hollywood) holds hegemony over global media
cultures. She considers national cinemas to be valuable articulations against
hegemony, though national cinemas are never a simple thing, and can
themselves have a homogenizing effect.39 A desire for a national identity
distinct from and more genuine than Hollywood productions contributes to
the appeal of the Wallace and Gromit series. Quigley writes about this in her
article, outlining the localized elements of Aardman films. For example, ‘The
quintessentially “English” characters and rituals of the Wallace and Gromit

films draw on director Nick Park’s childhood experiences (his father’s
toolshed, drinking tea) and evoke a more innocent age populated with
simple people and problems.’40 We see here, the ‘quintessentially “English”’
qualities of Wallace and Gromit are inextricably tied to the aforementioned
concepts of authorship and personal expression. The national identity
expressed through the Wallace and Gromit films grows out of the personal
experience of its creator, authenticating the genuineness of the films’ cultural
perspective.
In a feature on Wallace and Gromit for The Times newspaper, animation
scholar Paul Wells extrapolates from Wallace and Gromit as a particular
example to discuss the distinctness of British animation more generally. ‘As
the new BBC Four series Animation Nation insists, British animation has
always fought not to look and feel American. Where an American cartoon
whizzes, bangs and wallops, its British counterpart dwells more on sly wit and
subtle observation.’41 Note that American animation is implicitly synonymous
with a particular style of commercial animation, described by Wells with
colourful verbs describing on-screen action. To contrast, British animation
is characterized with nouns denoting intellectual content and implying
that such animation is more substantive than its American counterparts.
Of course, we can easily think of exceptions to the above characterizations:
American cartoons like Daria (created by Glenn Eichler and Susie
Lewis, 1997–2001) contain plenty of subtle wit, while British cartoons like
Danger Mouse (created by Brian Cosgrove and Mark Hall, 1981–92) pack
plenty of wallop. (Wallace and Gromit, I would also argue, mixes plenty of
wallops in with its clever wit.) However, pointing out those exceptions does
not keep Wells’s statement from feeling true, just as Quigley’s discussion of
the globalized elements of Aardman’s Chicken Run (Peter Lord and Nick
Park, 2000) does not prevent that Hollywood-funded film from feeling like a
local production. ‘The film, like the chickens, seems, at least on this occasion,
to have overcome the threat posed by “imperialism” and technology.’42 In
other words, Aardman’s animated films overcome cultural homogenization
and retain a distinct, genuine voice associated with their local milieu.
Quigley’s mention of technology introduces another aspect to Wallace
and Gromit’s perceived authenticity. In addition to the implied cultural
homogenization of Hollywood, technological homogenization factors
heavily into narratives of authenticity within animation. Quigley even argues
that ‘Park and Lord’s dedication to their traditional clay animation technique
enables their maintenance of artistic freedom’.43 Similarly, reviewers writing
about the Wallace and Gromit series repeatedly contrast the hands-on stop-
animation process with computer animation. In his feature, Wells writes,
‘Aardman Animation’s 3D stop-motion clay puppet films, for example,

are almost a wilful riposte to the slick computer-generated aesthetics of
contemporary American animation.’44 Using very similar language, recall
the film reviewer, quoted earlier, who wrote about The Curse of the Were-
Rabbit: ‘Their clay-crafted characters are incredibly detailed but still have a
few visible fingerprints, a quaint hand-made touch held over from the shorts.
The slightly rough edges are a refreshing change from the slick look of today’s
computer-generated animation.’45 We see the word ‘slick’ used repeatedly
as a pejorative for American (computer) animation, implying that such
animation is so polished that it lacks substance, personality or other qualities
connoting genuineness. One reviewer even refers to computer animation as
‘gimmickry’.46 In these reviews, we again find that the fingerprints on the clay
figures act as powerful signifiers of the personalized labour involved in the
Wallace and Gromit films.
Conclusion
Performativity is an utterance that enacts a reality. It arises in more than
a single performance or a single-speech act, but is rather a matrix of
utterances, both discursive and embodied, that create and modify cultural
realities through their repetition. In the context of animation, Crafton refers
to this matrix as the ‘Tooniverse’, which includes animated films, ‘but also
implicates the responsive performances by the viewers as their reflections,
conversations, affection for the characters, and other reactions develop over
time.’47 This common space is our shared culture, which we all have a hand in
negotiating, creating and modifying through our communicative actions. It
is a performative space where cultural realities come to life.
Through the tactile qualities of clay animation and through the cultural
discourses surrounding the Wallace and Gromit films, Aardman films are
posited as more genuine than US commercial animation. And yet, such
authenticity is both real and a construct. That is, the clay performances
are tactile and labour-intensive and do have that physical connection to
the animator’s touch, but as Christopher Holliday’s chapter in this book
demonstrates, Aardman’s CGI (computer-generated imagery) films also
contain similar visual markers – namely fingerprints – that stand as a
metonymy for authenticity for Aardman Animations. On the one hand,
the perceived uniqueness of the films is based on properties inherent to the
production process, and on the other hand, it’s a discursive construct that
elides complexities in the post-production, financing and marketing of the
films.
Clay is certainly a tactile medium. But themes of ‘personalness’ and

‘handmade’ radiating out from that premise – especially when laden with
judgements on the value of different modes of production – elucidate
as much about how animation interacts with culture as it does about the
inherent properties of a particular mode of production.
Notes
1 Michael Frierson, Clay Animation: American Highlights 1908 to the Present
(New York: Twayne Publishers, 1994), p. 136.
2 Ibid., p. 9.
3 See Cynthia Baron and Sharon Marie Carnicke, Reframing Screen
Performance (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2008), p. 17;
and Rudolf Laban, The Mastery of Movement (London: Macdonald &
Evans, 1960), p. 2.
4 Donald Crafton, Shadow of a Mouse: Performance, Belief, and World-
Making in Animation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), p. 16.
5 Ibid., p. 18.
6 Ibid., p. 18.
7 Ibid., p. 18.
8 See Barry J.C. Purves, Stop Motion: Passion, Process and Performance
(Amsterdam: Focal Press, 2008), p. 104.
9 Frierson, Clay Animation, p. 134.
10 Howard Walker, ‘David’s Big Risk Playing Chicken’, The Journal (Newcastle,
UK), 10 July 2000, p. 11.
11 Crafton Shadow of a Mouse, p. 40.
12 Ibid., p. 38.
13 Michael Bodey, ‘More cheese Gromit?’, The Age, 5 April 1996, p. 19.
14 Andy Lane, The World of Wallace & Gromit (London: Boxtree, 2004), p. 43.
15 Bodey, ‘More cheese Gromit?’, p. 19.
16 Andy Lane and Paul Simpson, The Art of Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of
the Were-Rabbit (London: Titan, 2005), p. 37.
17 Frierson, Clay Animation, p. 2.
18 Brandy McDonnell, ‘Wallace, Gromit’s First Feature Film Full of Fun’, The
Oklahoman, 7 October 2005, 7D.
19 Laura U. Marks, The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment,
and the Senses (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2000),
pp. 162–4.
20 Ibid., p. 164.
21 Ibid., p. 213.
22 Ibid., p. xvii.
23 Jennifer Barker, The Tactile Eye: Touch and the Cinematic Experience
24 Ibid.
25 Andy Klein, ‘Park: Oscar Shorts King’, Variety, 24–30 June 1996, p. 92.
26 Ibid.
27 Theo Van Leeuwen, ‘What Is Authenticity?’, Discourse Studies 3, 4 (2001),
Special Issue: Authenticity in Media Discourse, p. 394.
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid., p. 396.
31 Richard Dyer, ‘A Star Is Born and the Construction of Authenticity’, in
Christine Gledhill (ed.), Stardom: Industry of Desire (London and New
York: Routledge, 1991), p. 133.
32 Ibid.
33 Ibid., pp. 135–6.
34 In fact, promotional materials for some animations highlight real-world
referents as a means of forging audience connections with the film. One
prominent example is the promotion of actor Andy Serkis’s labour in acting
as the referent for the animation of Gollum in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the
Rings trilogy. The connection to that actor assisted in constructing Gollum
as ‘real’ (i.e. more than a cartoon).
35 Paul Wells, Understanding Animation (London and New York:
Routledge, 1998), pp. 36–9.
36 In fact, Aardman Animations possesses some aspects of orthodox
animation. They have a recognizable studio style and have grown
increasingly industrialized since their inception.
37 See Marian Quigley, ‘Glocalisation versus Globalization: The Work of Nick
Park and Peter Lord’, Animation Journal 10 (2002), p. 85.
38 Ibid., p. 86.
39 Susan Hayward, ‘Framing National Cinemas’, in M. Hjort and S. MacKenzie
(eds), Cinema and Nation (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), p. 99.
40 Quigley, ‘Glocalisation versus Globalization’, p. 88.
41 Paul Wells, ‘Gromit Saves the Day’, The Times (London), 9 April 2005, p. 16.
42 Quigley, ‘Glocalisation versus Globalization’, p. 91.
43 Ibid.
44 Wells, ‘Gromit Saves the Day’, p. 16.
45 McDonnell, ‘Wallace, Gromit’s First Feature’, p. 7D.
46 Ong Sor Fern, ‘Chick Flick with Pluck’, The Straits Times (Singapore),
30 September 2000, p. 22.
14
Between Plasticine and Pixel: Aardman’s

Digital Thumbprint
Christopher Holliday
This chapter takes as its focus the two computer-animated films made by
Aardman Animations during the studio’s ultimately short-lived digital phase:
Flushed Away (David Bowers and Sam Fell, 2006) – the first computer-animated
film produced as part of its twelve-year, four-film $250-million agreement
with DreamWorks Animation – and Arthur Christmas (Sarah Smith, 2011),
a co-production with Sony Pictures Animation released following the
premature termination of Aardman’s multi-picture deal with DreamWorks
in January 2007.1 Both Flushed Away and Arthur Christmas function as
curious sites of negotiation, animated intermediaries that present a two-way
exchange between computer-animated film aesthetics and the workflow of
Aardman’s stop-frame processes. While Aardman’s familiar rough edges and
visible indentations might have been threatened by the pristine illusionism
of computer animation, the trace of handmade production and their labour-
intensive stop-motion processes were maintained as integral to the kind
of compromise aesthetic developed by the studio across its two computer-
animated features. This chapter argues that the self-reflexive narratives of
technophilia and technophobia in Flushed Away and Arthur Christmas are
supported by a mode of production and visual style momentarily suspended
between the frames of digital and more ‘imperfect’ stop-motion animated
forms. Through a consideration of animated character design, space and
perspective, this chapter identifies how Flushed Away and Arthur Christmas
complement their digital aesthetic with gestures to the more physical
form of stop-motion animation and traditions of silicone-based plasticine
synonymous with the Aardman studio. The aim of what follows, then, is to
nuance this brief period of computer-animated Aardman, and to interrogate
the varying textual and industrial terms of the studio’s conciliatory position
between plasticine and pixel.
Handmade Aardman
Since they first ventured into stop-animation with moveable figurines
(popularizing a process known as ‘claymation’) on British television with the
character of Morph in the 1970s, the cultural imaginary of Aardman has been
firmly rooted in the aesthetics and craft of silicone-based plasticine, a legacy
that has continued to underwrite both critical and popular approaches towards
the studio as purveyors of a material form of animation. Despite Aardman
having already moved towards computer graphics during the late 1990s with
short films Owzat (Mark Brierley and David Sproxton, 1997), Al Dente (Mark
Brierley, 1998) and Minotaur and Little Nerkin (Nick Mackie, 1999), as well
as in its range of computer-animated television commercials, the iconicity
of its claymation animation strongly constitutes their public face. Even with
the expansion of mixed media animated production at the Aardman studio –
computer pre-visualizations, or the imbrication of claymation with digital
imagery – there persists the common cultural consensus, particularly in the
UK, that Aardman remains a stop-motion studio recognizable by the terms of
its signature style. It is, as reviewer Tim Robey puts it, the handmade look of
the studio’s stop-motion work that constitutes what ‘we’ve come to know and
love from Aardman’.2
Claymation has therefore become the place where style conflates with
‘spirit’, expressing something of a quintessential ‘Aardman-ness’ denotative
of a set of visual traditions and practical techniques that would ultimately
prove a particular lure for outside (US) distributors. Aardman’s unique
claymation style was certainly viewed by many commentators in America
as a ‘welcome anomaly’ within the DreamWorks production slate when
the two studios’ distribution deal was signed in October 1999.3 Following
the dissolution of the Aardman/DreamWorks partnership, and Aardman’s
subsequent three-year arrangement with Sony Pictures Animation
(announced in April 2007), Sony CEO Michael Lynton expressed a similar
desire to maintain the British studio’s ‘distinctive animated voice’.4 Such
comments anchor potentially abstract concepts of Aardman’s ‘charm’ and
‘beauty’ to the specificity of their signature stop-motion technique. The
precise ontology of stop-motion animation as a handmade, tactile medium
is fully entwined with Aardman’s specific production culture and set of
associated craft practices.
Strongly underlining the essentialist rhetoric of Aardman and
fundamental to the craftsmanship of three-dimensional ‘clumsy’ plasticine
models are the visible results of their own sculptural formation. Discussing
what he terms the ‘handmade-ness of it all’ as the cornerstone of Aardman’s
stop-motion technique, Aardman co-founder Peter Lord explains:
Aardman’s Digital Thumbprint 225
To me, it’s very like a live performance by a live band, whether that be a
classical orchestra or a Cajun band. Slightly inaccurate – like accuracy is
not the most important thing – but full of life, and full of, everywhere,
all the cues that tell you these are real people doing real things. So in the
band, it would be the real sound of a string twanging and the real sound
of wood vibrating. In artists, it’s the sight of fingerprints; it’s the slight
inaccuracies; it’s the knowledge that it’s real, tangible, touched by hand,
that I believe comes across onscreen.5
The animators’ fingerprints are as much a part of the design of Aardman’s

characters as the furrowed brows, widened mouths and over biting teeth
popularized by Creature Comforts (1989; 2003–07) and continued as a staple
of the many Wallace and Gromit shorts and later feature films. Aardman co-
founder David Sproxton notes of the studio’s synonymy with claymation that
‘there’s a texture that’s inherent in model work – the fingerprints on the clay.
[…] That look is distinctly Aardman. I would say it’s our trademark’.6
Fingerprints are visible marks that index the human labour of the
otherwise ‘invisible’ artist both in and on the surface of the art, operating
as a fundamental principle of documentation. The genesis of contemporary
fingerprint systems, including the shaping of hands into an evidential process
representing human involvement and bodily action, has been traced back
through the history of clay as a pliable material. Harold Cummins plots a
trajectory of ‘historical ceramic technology’ through the human handling of
clay, from skin furrows found in Chinese clay seals to Assyrian tablets and
coiled Pecos pottery.7 Drawing from Cummins’s typology of how fingerprints
have been utilized and recorded throughout history, the traces of prior
human activity found in the surface of Aardman’s animated figures can be
aligned with what he terms ‘chance prints’. For Cummins, this label signifies
that ‘as prints they were not applied purposefully, notwithstanding purpose
in the act of grasping or modelling the soft clay’.8 Such ‘chance prints’ exist
as accidental by-products of a process ‘designed for another purpose than
to produce prints’ rather than appearing intentionally by design.9 Naturally
arising from the energies and intimate labour of the artist, the resultant
indentations recast the handled object as a fossilized mould that admits the
process of its manufacture.
Aardman’s animation therefore provides a more intimate re-evaluation of
the ‘hand of the artist’ trope of early cinema described by Donald Crafton,
in which the animators’ hands would interject into the animated image
and corrupt the sanctity of its graphic space.10 Whereas this trope of artist
self-figuration has extended the genealogy of animation to include the
lightning sketch vaudeville tradition, the hands of Aardman’s animators
are less audacious in their usually fleeting presence. Early animation’s sight
of hand was frequently coerced into an autonomous exhibitionist display,
with the animator always made available or ‘on hand’ so that early animated
characters (including Koko the Clown and Felix the Cat) might impetuously
leap onto the intruding artist’s appendage in the pursuit of entertainment.
The hand of the Aardman artist, by comparison, becomes an abstracted
or once-removed presence, metonymically re-presented on-screen as
the unique spectral impression in the clay left by the peaks and troughs
of friction (or epidermal) ridges present on human hands. The concave
shallow trace of humanity left through digit transfer registers a presence/
absence of the artist geared less towards the comical spectacle of ‘impossible’
intermediality, but is instead anchored to its status as a physical imprint.
This is what Annabelle Honess Roe means when she asserts that fingerprints
in clay divulge ‘a physical connection between image and [the] profilmic’.11
Aardman’s animated objects announce through their very animation that
they are under external manipulation and control. But the presence on-
screen of ‘chance’ fingerprints reminds us of that physical proximity that
exists between off-screen animator and on-screen animated, as well as the
activity that occurs in between frames.
Impressed upon the material substance of the plasticine, the visible
fingerprints pushed into Aardman’s moulded clay models traditionally
celebrate, rather than obfuscate, the spectators’ registration of the labour
of stop-motion animation (sculpting, positioning, incremental character
movement), and authenticate the animators’ workmanship by laying bare
the trace of production through the truth of its surface flaws. Aardman’s
subsequent shift to computer-animated film production for Flushed Away
and Arthur Christmas, however, placed their historical associations with
stop-motion as a labour-intensive ‘hands-on medium’ on a collision course
with the ulterior ontology of digital media.12 Far removed from discourses of
human intervention and the control of touch within animation production,
contemporary digital imagery and computer-generated imagery (CGI)
remains wrought with negative associations centred on its ‘flatness and
unrealistic seamless perfection’, inferences that can be squared to the current
industry standard of digital effects guided by the presumed teleology of
convincing cinematic realism.13 For many theorists of animation, a weakness
or fault of the ‘perfect’ digital image is the way in which the pristine sheen
and persuasive aesthetic illusionism readily achievable in computer graphics
erases the general indices of animation production (surface fingerprints,
pencil marks, brush strokes). As Manohla Dargis explains in relation to
Aardman’s stop-motion practices, ‘fingerprints whorls are reminders that
these movies were made by people who molded clay with their hands instead
of only manipulating symbols on computers. […] That’s partly why the

movies seem more personal than many computer animations.’14 Computer
animation has therefore been charged with removing evidence of the skilful
artisan by easily effacing the lingering (and labouring) ‘marks of the maker’ so
often visible in stop-motion processes, and replacing animated craftsmanship
with the impersonal and indirect process of slick digital manipulation.15
Flushed Away and Arthur Christmas – as computer-animated films made
by Aardman – would then appear to forfeit the tactile workmanship and
materiality of physical effects that traditionally support the studio’s signature
‘handmade’ productions.
Given the possible tensions between the handmade tactility of claymation
and the digital’s computerized production, the playful addition of simulated
‘chance prints’ in Aardman’s first computer-animated feature Flushed Away
therefore works to ground the trusted stop-motion studio in a familiar (public)
discourse of the clumsy and the crude. The visual recollection of stop-motion
processes through counterfeit fingerprints embedded into the surface of the
film’s digital characters ultimately (and falsely) exploits the indexes of stop-
motion animation to call into question the faultlessness of computer graphics
through the recreation of visual imperfection. Accounts of the cinematic
imperfect have suggested that such aesthetics of deficiency have historically
occupied a position of opposition, one that resists conventional critical
and cultural approaches to art and representation, whilst offering a form
of provocative ‘counter aesthetic’.16 Yet what connects many notions of the
imperfect across art and culture, which include the performative spontaneity
of Jazz music and the more contemporaneous, technologically determined
practice of ‘glitching’, is the appearance and appreciation of the authentic.17
Explored among philosophical ethics, theology and studies of spirituality,
imperfection has often been conceptualized as a virtue and property of
authenticity, just as authenticity makes allowances for the presence of the
imperfect by rescinding, tempering or compromising culturally informed
ideas of perfection.
Signalled through retrospective and entirely false impressions of human
touch, Aardman’s computer-animated films outwardly frolic in the realm
of the flawed and mark a creative investment in the pleasurable deficiency of
irregular, imperfect images. Yet the replicating of ‘on set’ plasticine
puppets moved in profilmic space ‘by hand’ through fake prints is just one
of the many ways that Aardman might be seen as inflecting, reshaping
and deforming prior standards of computer-animated film production and
aspects of its visual style. Arthur Christmas co-producer Chris Juen argues
that ‘Because they [Aardman] work in clay, there’s an endearing imperfection
to the characters. However, trying to make a computer image imperfect
is a very complicated thing to do. We spent some time messing with the
symmetry of the characters – as they become less perfect, I think people
relate to them more’.18 The conciliatory ‘imperfect’ identity of Aardman’s
computer-animated feature films can be understood through a series of
significant creative compromises and approaches, which both acknowledged
the landscape of digital animation whilst respecting the material physicality
of Aardman’s own stop-motion tradition. In an era of computer-assisted
effortlessness and precision, Aardman’s ‘imperfection’ of the image through
faked fingerprints functions becomes one element of the wider compromise
aesthetic present in both Flushed Away and Arthur Christmas that works to
counter the digital’s ‘perfect’ illusionist credentials through a conciliation
with stop-motion practices.
The narratives of both Flushed Away and Arthur Christmas certainly
share an apparent investment in the joy of objects created ‘by hand’. Flushed
Away tells the story of Roddy St. James, a privileged society mouse who is
accidentally ‘flushed’ from his affluent lifestyle in Kensington down into the
subterranean sewers of London, where he discovers an underground micro
city composed entirely of reclaimed junk. The technologies of this buried city
identify its culture as one predicated on a discourse of sustainability. Salvaged
washing machines, chipped porcelain mugs, phone boxes, discarded food,
a jukebox and a portable toilet cubicle are all sculpted together by the
inhabitants into handmade versions of famed London landmarks. The
division that Flushed Away erects between the luxurious interior space
of Roddy’s gilded cage (he is kept as a domestic pet by his owners above
ground) and the reclaimed cityscape below narrativizes a tension between
the plush architectural splendour of Roddy’s Kensington home and the
‘handmade’ reassembly of cultural detritus by resourceful amateurs. Arthur
Christmas, however, more obviously trades on the reconciliation of old and
new in its explicit opposition between technological modernity and ‘by-
hand’ traditions. The film reveals Christmas to be a highly technological
operation conducted from a mission control base beneath the North Pole. At
the centre of its apparent technophilia sits the S-1, a sleek spaceship/sleigh
hybrid piloted at 1860 times the speed of sound by militaristic officer and
heir apparent Steve Claus. The S-1 combines the shape of traditional sleigh
replete with an interior of control rooms and computer stations, all in service
of ‘Operation Santa Claus’ that is meticulously executed via satellite tracking,
navigation and data analysis.
Yet Arthur Christmas posits a phobia of yuletide technology at the same
time as it embraces the spectacular possibilities of digital machinery. Not
only does the S-1 fail by leaving one present undelivered (‘a child has been
missed!’), but the film celebrates the handwritten personalized responses
Figure 14.1 Arthur’s workspace emphasizes the diligence of attentive labour

in Arthur Christmas (dir. Sarah Smith. Aardman Animations/Sony Pictures
Animation, 2011).
written by the eponymous Arthur (Santa’s youngest son) to each child’s letter
to Father Christmas. Indeed, the introduction of Arthur crouched over his
desk as he formulates his messages (Figure 14.1) uses the character’s intimate
artistry to challenge the mediation of Christmas through the multiplicity of
computer screens adorning S-1’s luminescent control room. This perilous
fallibility to the automated, impersonal delivery of presents is therefore set
against Arthur’s tailored, bespoke treatment of children as names rather than
numbers, which is marked through his custom-made handwritten letters
rather than the anonymity of mechanical, computerized distribution. The
vision of Arthur sitting alone within his darkened workspace additionally
evokes many promotional images of Aardman animators, in which their
attention, care, skill and precision is made central to the Aardman company
brand.
Echoing Roddy’s precariousness in Flushed Away between the modern
technology (flat-screen television, sound system, microwave) of his
Kensington townhouse and the functional junk art of the alternative
rodent metropolis, the eponymous Arthur is likewise caught between
two worlds: the hi-tech modernity of his parents and older sibling, and
his personal space in which labour is conducted by hand. Flushed Away
and Arthur Christmas – as computer-animated films about differing
forms of technology – can, however, be understood as mobilizing cultural
conceptions of Aardman old and new, plasticine and pixel, as not necessarily
in irresolvable conflict, but operating in mutual support of one another. In

Arthur Christmas, the Claus family are ultimately forced to balance old and
new festive protocols by delivering presents using both the S-1’s gadgetry
and more old-fashioned methods (embodied by Grandsanta’s ‘relic’ sleigh
‘Evie’ that works without the trappings of ‘electrickery’). Behind such
self-reflexive narratives of conciliation, however, lies Aardman’s own
appeasement of technologies via the terms of a striking ‘compromise
aesthetic’ that integrates the workflow and production pipeline of stop-
motion together with the possibilities enabled by computer graphics.
While Aardman’s previous feature films Chicken Run (Peter Lord and Nick
Park, 2000) and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (Nick Park
and Steve Box, 2005) were already conjunctions of computer graphics and
claymation, Flushed Away and Arthur Christmas are more overtly hybrid
zones of intermediality that marry digital technology together with the
specific stylistic and narrative traditions of Aardman. The composite and
combinatory quality of these films operates not at the level of competing
ontologies and the seamless integration of digital and non-digital effects
(as in Curse of the Were-Rabbit). Rather, it is a feature that emerges out of
the variant ways in which Flushed Away and Arthur Christmas articulate
their own hybridity through character design, camerawork and the precise
organization of their animated worlds.
A happy medium?
A central component of Aardman’s compromise aesthetic – evident in
both Flushed Away and Arthur Christmas and indebted to degrees of
imperfection in the digital image – involved situating the possibilities
of animated performance within the expressive freedoms afforded
within stop-motion to re-conjure in CG the particular visual traditions
of Aardman’s handmade heritage. As Juen’s comments on the ‘enduring
imperfection’ of Aardman make clear, the ‘imperfect’ design of the
characters in Arthur Christmas involved a conscious asymmetry within
their expressive physiognomies, with ill-proportioned limbs and flawed
features introduced to unbalance the CG perfection of their bodies. For
Linda Sunshine, there was likewise ‘nothing perfect’ about the film’s
ensemble cast, with particular textural details and stylistic variations ‘quite
unusual for a CG film’ that intentionally crafted a rustic aesthetic of the
handmade.19 Visually replicating the handmade materiality of Aardman’s
silicone-based plasticine puppets in digital imagery, Flushed Away similarly
combined complex facial rigging systems and all-digital wireframe models
with Aardman’s character designs (borrowing heavily from Wallace’s

widened ‘coat hanger’ mouth that had also been a staple of the character
designs in Chicken Run).
To support elements of character design, the computer as an animation
tool had to provide the same procedural flexibility for Aardman’s animators
experienced in moving plasticine faces and bodies incrementally by hand.
This was because, as Character Technical Director Supervisor Martin
Costello explains, ‘obviously we can’t just give the computer a giant thumb’.20
In order to emulate the plasticine aesthetic of its British-based partner studio
for Flushed Away, the team of animators at DreamWorks used a stop-motion
rig to transpose Aardman’s ‘unique performance style’ onto a computer-
animated world.21 Rigged in Autodesk’s Maya software, the intention
was to emulate the limited facial expressions and surface imperfections
of their moulded clay counterparts, including the monobrow (normally
overhanging plasticine above the eyes), frown lines and overall look of pre-
modelled plasticine heads as if ‘sculpted with traditional modeling tools’.22
In Flushed Away, then, certain formal restrictions governed the expressivity
of its characters to faithfully integrate the look of clay stop-motion puppets
efficiently with the computer-animated feature film for the first time. Most
notable was the scoring of replacement mouths, which were generated from
‘digital clay’ so that mouth shapes could be digitally changed in between
frames, thereby replicating the labour-intensive stop-motion technique.
Rather than the typical CG muscle-based systems and detailed articulation
points driving digital performance, each character in Flushed Away had
between ten and thirty replacement mouths, which could be swapped
according to each phoneme or unit of sound spoken. This process was
supplemented by bodies that likewise mimicked the skeletal structures and
localized joint movement traditionally found in Aardman’s claymation style.
The limited articulation of these puppets therefore had the counterintuitive
effect of inaugurating new creative possibilities rooted in the expressiveness
and acceptance of visual imperfection.
The complementary – rather than adversarial – relationship in Aardman’s
computer-animated films between stop-motion production and new digital
processing is also reflected in the organization of space and distance.
Stop-motion commonly involves theatrical tricks such as false or forced
perspectives to craft the illusion of three-dimensional space through sets that
gradually reduce in size and scale. As Brian Sibley explains with regard to the
purposeful distortion in Aardman’s earlier Chicken Run:
The countryside is constructed in parallel sections with access gaps

running between this wall and that field, this fold in the valley and that
steep incline. Walk back to where Mrs. Tweedy is parading up and down
in front of the rows of terrified chickens and the scene recreates itself
before your very eyes.23
Such optical effects falsely declare the dimensions of space through the
violation of human depth perception that allows centimetres to stand in for
miles. In this trick of spatial (mis)representation, objects diminish in size
away from the camera, while perpendicular lines are replaced with angular
geometry to exaggerate the spectators’ ‘true’ comprehension of otherwise
‘false’ spatial relations.
All animation that is driven by the orthodoxies of realism fundamentally
incorporates the ‘cheat’ of ‘forcing’ perspective into the design of individual
shots. Horizon lines, linear perspectives and vanishing points can all be
used to construct a believable relativity of sizes and positions, as well as
presenting the illusion of a three-dimensional environment receding far into
the distance. Stop-motion in particular coerces flatness into apparent depth.
Dimensional cues are often used to counter logistical factors, budgetary
constraints and the practicality of available filmmaking space given that
vistas and panoramas are achieved within what is often an extremely limited
space of table top production. Indeed, as Flushed Away co-director David
Bowers put it when discussing the vast scope of Aardman’s first computer-
animated film ‘[t]here just wouldn’t have been room in the studio to do it.
And there wouldn’t have been enough plasticine or clay in the world to do
it.’24 Sproxton similarly notes that with Arthur Christmas, ‘[t]here was no way
we were going to build a million elves as individual puppets! We knew that
the only way to do it was CG.’25
The challenge posed by scale and space – notably Flushed Away’s
narrative predicated on Roddy’s spontaneous movement between spaces
as he is ‘flushed’ from street to sewer – necessitated a turn to computer
animation as a way of sidestepping physical constraints and creating
the illusion of spatial expanse. This perspectival intrigue is played out
during a comical sequence early in the film, one that reprises the Looney
Tunes gag in which Wile E. Coyote paints a convincing tunnel onto a
sheer rock face (only for the Road Runner to impossibly enter into this
graphic subspace). When Roddy is flushed from the riches of Kensington
to the depths of London, the camera discloses a cityscape panorama from
a seemingly great height. It is only when the three-dimensional digital
Roddy lands onto a flat cartographical image that the camera pulls back
to reveal the latter as nothing more than a detailed pavement painting
(Figure 14.2) aimed at ‘cheating’ the audience’s comprehension of
animated perspective.
Figure 14.2 Roddy’s fall into the underground ‘London’ in Flushed Away
(dir. David Bowers and Sam Fell. Aardman Animations/DreamWorks
Animation, 2006) manipulates animated perspective.
Despite this graphic deception, Flushed Away actually seems to register an

understanding of space drawn less from stop-motion’s traditional creation
of convincing spatial coordinates, and more from the conventions of live-
action filmmaking (albeit convincingly simulated by computer). Frank
Passingham, Director of Photography on Chicken Run, commented that in
Flushed Away ‘the perspective is “real,” unlike the false perspective we often
have to use in a stop-frame animation studio’.26 The visual trick with the
voluminous Roddy landing onto the flat painted image is therefore one not
pursued by the film (only one shot in Flushed Away employs a painted matte
backdrop of London). This is because digital imagery and green/bluescreen
technologies have offered a viable replacement for false perspectives, with
less need for multiple stop-motion sets (and characters) of variant scales.
However, that is not to say depth cues and the illusion of dimension cannot
be further exaggerated in CG in spite of its three-dimensionality. J.P. Telotte
argues that the cartoonal stylization of recent computer-animated film space
often exaggerates, distorts or ‘caricatures’ visual reality, and the technology
evokes ‘a traditional filmmaker [who] might use forced perspectives or
special lenses to create particular atmospheric or thematic effects’.27 However,
the establishment of a compromise aesthetic in Flushed Away and Arthur
Christmas can be further squared to the combination of spatial manipulation
with virtual camerawork that equally reflects the push-pull relationship
between two image-making technologies.
In stop-motion, the inseparable alliance of camera with ‘character’ is, of

course, integral to the illusion of movement. The registration of an object
or puppet as sentient is entirely reliant on the veiling properties of editing,
which hides the discontinuous, intermittent process of animation occurring
invisibly in between the frames. The fixed position of the camera in stop-
motion also makes available other forms of deception. For example, in
Chicken Run, characters were often present as incomplete, partial models
(headless, or even as simply appendages) depending on how much of
their animated bodies would be visible on screen.28 The camera’s masking
potential reduces the need for superfluous animator effort, whilst implicating
the apparatus more readily into the stop-motion process. However, in CG
animation such tricks are not required because, as for Flushed Away and
Arthur Christmas, each digital character is modelled in their entirety as
scratch rigs on a computer. Once placed inside the three-dimensional CG
sets, the virtual camera is then able to rotate freely around the character to
capture each gesture, compressed/expanded facial pose and sculpted bodily
movement. Another logistical implication of the stop-motion camera is its
operation as physical equipment. Barry Purves explains that ‘stop-motion
sets are usually built with a “front” – this not only helps orientate the
viewer, but it helps practically with all the rigging and the lighting’.29 The
frontal position of the set housing the physical camera apparatus, lighting
rigs and the animators ultimately comes to bear upon the movement of
the camera that cannot move through the space with the same freedom as
digitally assisted camera positions. When anchored in space, the stationary
physical camera apparatus provides a counterpoint to the volley of swooping
spectatorial viewpoints that have now become a staple of the untethered
style of digitally enhanced camerawork.
However, to replicate stop-motion production and aesthetics within
computer animation, Flushed Away used regulated, ‘grounded’ camera
movement that adhered to stop-motion’s ‘studio-based tracking and
motion control systems.’30 This is most notable during the sequence in
which Roddy encounters Rita’s parents and the trappings of working-class
British domesticity (a moment that directors Sam Fell and David Bowers
suggest through its interior detailing is the ‘most Aardman’).31 As Roddy is
greeted by Rita’s many nieces and nephews, it is the camera position that
remains fixed throughout the scene, while the home space tilts perilously
back and forth as it seesaws atop a discarded oil drum. In its treatment of
British eccentricity, the sequence reprises the observational, interview-style
aesthetic of Creature Comforts, particularly in the way Roddy witnesses the
family’s chaotic, quirky sensibilities. Yet the fixed, ‘grounded’ (rather than
weightless) camerawork remains only one part of these films’ visual regime.
Indeed, such shots coexist with more formally vigorous moments that
are entirely accomplished through the possibilities of digital camerawork
moving through virtual space.
In an early action sequence from Arthur Christmas, Santa’s elf battalion
parachutes down from the S-1 to traverse the snowy rooftops in a co-
ordinated delivery of gifts undertaken with military precision. With its
visual iconography borrowed from the contemporary spy thriller genre
(notably the Mission Impossible film series [1996–]), this frenetic delivery of
presents across horizontal and vertical planes is accompanied by a swooping
camera that is always in service of the elves’ erratic, frenzied actions. The
boat chase in Flushed Away through the cavernous underwater sewer rapids
between Roddy, Rita, Spike and Whitey likewise employs roving, untethered
camerawork to capture Roddy’s spiralling ascent and descent as he is pulled
on a harness through (and above) this subterranean version of London. This
particular sequence inverted the normal Aardman production pipeline,
with a virtual set constructed around the characters that could be amended
and altered as the chase progressed. Yet the desire for visual continuity
with Aardman’s previous stop-motion features is indicated by the use of
simulated 35 mm and 24 mm prime lenses for its virtual cinematography.32
This enabled not only the ‘material immediacy’ and ‘knowable quality’ of the
stop-motion set to be re-conjured by cameras that often behaved with gravity
as if moving through tangible space, but permitted the focus to be literally
pulled onto CG and stop-motion cinematography in their alignment.33
Individual shots in Flushed Away ‘very difficult to do in the stop frame studio’
were allied with qualities more germane to ‘the Aardman feel’ from weighted
cameras, deep space shooting to certain lenses that fully captured its textured
‘CG sets’.34 So just as Rita’s home in Flushed Away lurches horizontally on its
unstable foundations, Aardman’s computer-animated features demonstrate
the precariousness of their own stylistic balancing acts no less held in delicate
compromise.
The ‘pushing’ of credible representation ‘beyond the parameters of the
real’ that Telotte argues has come to define recent digital animation bears
out the increasingly important role of stylization against the false logic of
technological determinism towards ever-increasing photorealism. Yet
Aardman’s computer-animated feature films have stretched this relationship
between aesthetic discourses of realism and illustration even further. Both
Flushed Away and Arthur Christmas employ an aesthetic style and formal
design that counter the digital’s illusionist credentials by respecting and
reflecting the material physicality of the studio’s own stop-motion traditions
and enduring handmade heritage. Aardman’s computer-animated films
ultimately present a uniquely combinatory, conciliatory space that integrate
traditions of stop-motion production and a visual style germane to the studio

into a contemporary digital context. The outcome of such an arrangement
of elements is that Flushed Away and Arthur Christmas creatively oscillate
between the familiarity of Aardman’s house style rooted in discourses of
imperfection and the affordances of digital techniques. This interrelationship
ultimately positions Aardman’s CG image as somewhere between the
claymation aesthetic of the studio’s past and its possible computer-animated
future.
Remoulding a reputation
The received narrative concerning cinema’s relationship to technology is
often one that unfolds along a teleology of acceptance and rejection, loss or
gain, economy and aesthetics to articulate the manifold styles and practices
brought into relief as a consequence of breaching new technological frontiers.
The stable consolidation of film’s digital history and the acceleration of
CGI as mainstream animation’s default language may have relegated
stop-motion to a more marginal position, but this marks but one axis of
debate among the many afforded by Aardman’s brief digital makeover. As
the only two completely computer-animated features made to date by the
studio, Flushed Away and Arthur Christmas function as lingering reminders
(and remainders) of a fleeting period of the studio’s history, culminating
the progressive absorption of digital technology into their stop-motion
features in ways that hybridized elements of their production, design and
composition. These consecutive films plotted a possible future for computer-
animated filmmaking not governed by mimetic disguise and seamlessness,
but by a compromise visual style that exploited computer graphics yet looked
back to the workmanship and imperfect achievements of the handmade.
While this expressive future for mainstream Hollywood animation has
yet to be fully realized, the popular criticisms of a ‘chronic identity crisis’
levelled at Aardman’s computer-animated films anticipate the numerous
bargains continually being struck between animated traditions within the
contemporary digital animation landscape.35
Paying their respects to Aardman’s claymation ancestry, both Flushed
Away and Arthur Christmas demonstrate their courage to be imperfect,
seeking to promote the retention of the studio’s highly marketable house
style whilst cloaking it in the expectations of an increasingly expanding
computer-animated film context. An early shot from Flushed Away seems
particularly playful in this respect. Hastily pulling garish outfits out of his
wardrobe to try on at the start of the day, Roddy removes Wallace’s iconic
Figure 14.3 Roddy’s wardrobe brings together Aardman past and present in
Flushed Away (dir. David Bowers and Sam Fell. Aardman Animations/Dream-
Works Animation, 2006).
green tank top, white shirt and red tie and positions it up against his body
(Figure 14.3). Taken alongside the film’s many intertextual references to the
Aardman oeuvre (e.g., a stuffed Gromit toy and bunnies from Curse of the
Were-Rabbit sit outside Roddy’s cage), this image of the rodent dressed in
familiar clothes briefly superimposes Aardman’s claymation past onto its
computer-animated present in a self-reflexive gesture that dresses up new
Aardman in old clothes. Embodying the studio’s rich formal precariousness
between competing animated styles, Roddy’s attire momentarily points to
Flushed Away and Arthur Christmas as curious meeting places for a divergent
set of values that are always vying for visibility and ascendency.
Following the release of Arthur Christmas, Aardman’s return in 2012 to
stop-motion processes for the second film in their Sony distribution deal The
Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! (Peter Lord and Jeff Newitt, 2012) was,
on the one hand, unsurprising given the post-millennial resurgence of the
form from an earlier period of digitally induced dormancy. Corpse Bride (Tim
Burton and MIke Johnson, 2005), Coraline (Henry Selick, 2009), Mary and Max
(Adam Elliot, 2009), Fantastic Mr. Fox (Wes Anderson, 2009), ParaNorman
(Sam Fell and Chris Butler, 2012), Frankenweenie (Tim Burton, 2012), The
Boxtrolls (Graham Annable and Anthony Stacchi, 2014), Hell and Back (Tom
Gianas and Ross Shuman, 2015), Anomalisa (Charlie Kaufman, 2015), Kubo
and the Two Strings (Travis Knight, 2016), My Life as a Courgette (Claude
Barras, 2016) and Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson, 2018) all showcase the pleasures
of object animation at a time when computer graphics largely dominates

the English-speaking animation market. Advancements in 3D printers and
rapid prototyping have enabled studios to produce variant models and body
parts within the construction of characters, thereby ‘infusing’ in new ways
the craft of stop-motion with digital technologies.36 Two recent computer-
animated films, The LEGO Movie (Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, 2014)
and The Peanuts Movie (Steve Martino, 2015), also reflect a growing industry
nostalgia for pre-digital, stop-motion techniques of animated image making.
But within the specific production context of the Aardman studio, the
turn back towards stop-motion marked something of a homecoming. Indeed,
despite the assimilation of stop-motion foam latex and pliable silicone in its
models with digital green screen effects, The Pirates! In an Adventure with
Scientists!, Shaun the Sheep Movie (Richard Starzak and Mark Burton, 2015)
and Early Man (Nick Park, 2018) all resume the imperfect traditions of more
‘authentic’ Aardman true to their history in response to their momentary
cessation of claymation techniques. Even the very production of The Pirates!
In an Adventure with Scientists! marked, for many UK reviewers, a ‘return to
form’ as it was the product of ‘painstaking processes concomitant with a high
level of attention to detail’.37 These kinds of critical and popular perspectives
further identify Flushed Away and Arthur Christmas as erroneous digital
experiments that were designed to plunge Aardman headfirst into a lucrative
computer-animated film market. But from a position of retrospection, these
discourses add to the mythology surrounding the studio’s pixel-for-plasticine
substitution. Flushed Away and Arthur Christmas persist as intriguing
footnotes within both Aardman’s feature film history and the still-evolving
history of the computer-animated cinema, exposing not just the studio’s
mouldable history but also their significant, if only transitory, contribution
to creatively compromising the computer-animated film’s visual language.
Notes
1 Matthew Garrahan, ‘DreamWorks Ends Tie-Up with Aardman’, Financial
Times, 31 January 2007. Available at: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/
dd114c62-b0cf-11db-8a62-0000779e2340.html#axzz3pUpyDhxM
2 Tim Robey, ‘Flushed Away’, Daily Telegraph, 1 December 2006, p. 33.
3 Ben Fritz, ‘DreamWorks: Toons in Transition’, Variety, 25 September 2005.
Available at: http://variety.com/2005/digital/news/dreamworks-toons-in-
transistion-1117929595/ (accessed 30 December 2015).
4 Michael Lynton, quoted in Adam Dawtrey, ‘Aardman Signs with Sony’, Variety,
2 April 2007. Available at: http://variety.com/2007/digital/markets-festivals/
aardman-signs-with-sony-1117962348/ (accessed 30 December 2015).
5 Peter Lord quoted in Tasha Robinson, ‘Aardman Animations Co-Founder
Peter Lord Reveals the Best Gag in His New Film The Pirates! Band Of
Misfits’, A.V. Club, 25 April 2012. Available at: http://www.avclub.com/
article/aardman-animations-co-founder-peter-lord-reveals-t-72973
6 David Sproxton, quoted in ‘Flushed Away: Production Notes’ (2006).
Available at: http://madeinatlantis.com/movies_central/2006/flushed_away.
htm (accessed 30 December 2015).
7 Harold Cummins, ‘Ancient Finger Prints in Clay’, Journal of Criminal Law
and Criminology 32, no. 4 (1941–1942), pp. 473–5.
8 Ibid., p. 474.
9 Ibid., p. 479.
10 Donald Crafton, ‘Animation Iconography: The ‘Hand of the Artist’,
Quarterly Review of Film Studies 4, no. 4 (Fall 1979), p. 414.
11 Annabelle Honess Roe, Animated Documentary (London: Palgrave Macmillan,
2013), p. 38.
12 Andrea Comiskey, ‘(Stop)Motion Control: Special Effects in Contemporary
Puppet Animation’, in D. North, B. Rehak and M.S. Duffy (eds), Special
Effects: New Histories. Theories, Contexts (London: Palgrave, 2015), p. 52.
13 Lisa Purse, Digital Imagery in Popular Cinema (Edinburgh: Edinburgh
14 Manohla Dargis, ‘Swashbucklers Roiling Madcap Seas’, Variety, 26 April
2012. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/27/movies/the-
pirates-band-of-misfits.html?_r=0 (accessed 30 December 2015).
15 Rachel Moseley, Hand-Made Television: Stop-Frame Animation for Children
in Britain, 1961–1974 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), p. 103.
16 For a discussion of a ‘counter-aesthetic’, see David E.W. Fenner, ‘In
Celebration of Imperfection’, The Journal of Aesthetic Education 38, no. 2
(Summer 2004), p. 68. See also Julio García Espinosa, ‘For an Imperfect
Cinema’, Jump Cut 20 (1979), pp. 24–6.
17 Greg Hainge notes that that the glitch is a ‘reminder of the imperfect, noisy,
lossy nature of the machine […] [that] counters our contemporary digital
culture’s positivistic faith in technology as providing order’. Greg Hainge,
Noise Matters: Towards an Ontology of Noise (New York and London:
Bloomsbury, 2013), p. 129.
18 Chris Juen quoted in Anon., ‘Santa Goes High Tech in “Arthur Christmas”’,
Computer Graphics World, 12 January 2012. Available at: http://www.cgw.
com/Press-Center/In-Focus/2012/Santa-Goes-High-Tech-In-Arthur-
Christmas.aspx (accessed 30 December 2015).
19 Linda Sunshine (ed.), The Art and Making of Arthur Christmas: An Inside
Look at Behind-the-Scenes Artwork with Filmmaker Commentary (London:
HarperCollins, 2011), p. 25.
20 Martin Costello, quoted in ‘Flushed Away: Production Notes’.
21 Martin Costello, ‘Stop Motion Puppets in CG’, SIGGRAPH (2006).
Available at: http://staffwww.itn.liu.se/~andyn/courses/tncg08/sketches06/
sketches/0660-costello.pdf (accessed 30 December 2015).
22 Ibid.
23 Brian Sibley, Chicken Run: Hatching the Movie (London: Boxtree, 2000),
pp. 135–6.
24 David Bowers, quoted in ‘Flushed Away: Production Notes’, p. 3.
25 David Sproxton, quoted in Anon., ‘Santa Goes High Tech in “Arthur
Christmas”’.
26 Frank Passingham quoted in Anon., ‘Flushed Away’, British
Cinematographer 19 (January 2007), p. 15.
27 J.P. Telotte, The Mouse Machine: Disney and Technology (Chicago:
University of Illinois Press, 2008), p. 166.
28 Sibley, Chicken Run, p. 139.
29 Barry Purves, Stop-Motion Animation: Frame by Frame Film-Making with
Puppets and Models (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), p. 138.
30 Brad Blackbourn, ‘“Flushed Away”: A Virtual Cinematography Dream
Team’, Animation World Magazine, 3 November 2006. Available at: http://
www.awn.com/vfxworld/flushed-away-virtual-cinematography-dream-
team (accessed 30 December 2015).
31 Sam Fell and David Bowers, quoted in Flushed Away DVD [Audio
Commentary].
32 Blackbourn, ‘“Flushed Away”: A Virtual Cinematography Dream Team’.
33 Chris Pallant, ‘The Stop-Motion Landscape’, in Chris Pallant (ed.),
Animated Landscapes: History, Form and Function (New York:
Bloomsbury, 2015), p. 34.
34 Frank Passingham, quoted in Blackbourn, ‘“Flushed Away”: A Virtual
Cinematography Dream Team’.
35 Catherine Shoard, ‘Flushed Away’, Sunday Telegraph, 3 December 2006,
p. 21.
36 Matt Kamen, ‘How Boxtrolls Studio Revolutionised Stop motion
Animation’, WIRED, 8 September 2014. Available at: http://www.wired.
co.uk/news/archive/2014-09/08/boxtrolls-travis-knight-interview
37 Laurence Phelan, ‘The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists, Peter
Lord (U) Wrath of the Titans, Jonathan Liebesman, (12A)’, The
Independent, 1 April 2012. Available at: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-
entertainment/films/reviews/the-pirates-in-an-adventure-with-scientists-
peter-lord-u-wrath-of-the-titans-jonathan-liebesman-12a-7605929.html
15
Aardman! In an Entanglement with CGI!

Aylish Wood
On its release in 2012, The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! was
widely promoted as an Aardman stop-motion (or stop-frame) animated
feature film with the significant addition of visual effects (VFX). The Pirates!
was not the first time the Aardman Studio used CG work in an animated
feature. During its collaboration with DreamWorks, Aardman had produced
Flushed Away (2006), and with Sony Pictures Animation Arthur Christmas
(2011).1 The Pirates! was significant as a return to stop-motion, a return that
was modulated by the combination of the tactility of handmade animation
with the intangibility of digital work. The combination of handmade and
digitalmade is where my interest lies, and in particular how The Pirates!
negotiates a way through the dual prism of tradition and innovation. The
negotiation is fascinating for what it reveals about two facets of The Pirates!:
the ways in which Aardman’s stop-motion claymation tradition is invoked
to disguise digital interventions, and how VFX create and activate a hybrid
digital–physical space.
Inherent to this negotiation is the extensive hybridity of The Pirates’
imagery. I approach this imagery via analyses of both the animation and
the publicity materials. Like most feature films, The Pirates’ release was
accompanied by a range of publicity materials, newspaper and magazine
reviews. These are full of detail about the puppets and sets, costumes design
decisions, actors and their voice work, as well as the stop-motion techniques.
Even as these emphases draw attention to the handcraftedness of stop-motion
and performance, explanations of digital techniques ensure the hybridity of
the images also remains foregrounded. Publicity materials, then, explain the
materiality of animation processes; as such they are discursive disclosures
that negotiate the interplay of Aardman’s tradition and digital innovation.
To make sense of this negotiation, I use an entangled perspective. An idea
initially found in quantum physics, entanglement describes particles as
understood through their interactions rather than their independent status.
In the context of The Pirates!, a pirate character, when it appears as a moving
figure on screen, can only be described as an interaction between handmade
and digitalmade elements, it has no independent existence. Entanglement is

not just a complicated sounding word for interaction, though. In the context
of science and technology studies, entanglement refers as well to how those
interactions are discursively understood.2 Taken at face value, the words
stop-motion and digital VFX simply describe techniques. In marketing
and publicity disclosures they come associated with other words, such
as hybridity, tradition and innovation. These associations are not neutral,
and an entangled perspective allows me to trace out the assumptions and
implicit connections which accumulate around the seemingly transparent
words handmade or digitalmade. These words, partly material descriptors,
are not stand-alone but interrelated, shaped and contoured by their relations
with other sets of ideas. Working with the term hybridity, I explore the
entangled associations surrounding handmade and digitalmade in a range
of The Pirates’ marketing and publicity materials and also the imagery in the
feature. I first look at the hybridity of the puppet faces and how this generates
a discourse about the traditions of the studio. Secondly, in the final section,
I argue that hybridity enables a novel configuration of space that extends the
actions of the puppets.
Hybridity and The Pirates!

To begin explaining entanglement, I start from image hybridity. In Animation
World Network, Bill Desowitz enthusiastically appraised the digital work
evident in The Pirates!:
One glimpse of The Pirates! Band of Misfits!3 and you can instantly
tell that Aardman has gone way beyond Wallace and Gromit. The
legendary Bristol stop-motion studio has fully embraced the digital age:
the puppets are slicker and rapid prototyped with replaceable mouths,
the sets are more lavish (the pirate ship is breathtaking and Victorian
London is a marvel to behold) and the VFX is more authentic (the CG
water is a revelation).4
Desowitz draws attention to the hybridity of the imagery as he notes the

impact of digital techniques on stop-motion ones. Hybridity in animation is,
of course, neither a new phenomenon nor a special feature of The Pirates!.
Beyond examples associated with the technique of stop-motion, animations
have often combined live-action footage and cel animation. Some very familiar
examples include the Out of the Inkwell series (Fleischer Bros, 1918–29), the
Alice Comedies (Disney, 1923–27) Anchors Aweigh (George Sidney, 1945) and
Aardman! In an Entanglement with CGI! 243
Who Framed Roger Rabbit (Robert Zemeckis, 1988). Within the context of

special and visual effects, animation techniques have frequently supplemented
live-action, and in the current era of digital VFX, hybrid imagery is both
prevalent and often unnoticed. Within this longer history, The Pirates!
stands out as one of the first stop-motion animated features to use VFX in
conjunction with handmade craft. Foundry, a London-based computer
graphics development company who worked with Aardman on The Pirates!,
reference an emphasis on stop-motion even as they celebrate the use of their
software in the project. With the feature relying on 1,550 VFX shots, Foundry
claim: ‘The studios’ latest film, The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!
is the most advanced yet, and is widely considered to be the world’s first full
stop-motion visual effects movie.’5
As a stop-motion VFX movie, The Pirates! shares an approach to hybrid
imagery found in VFX-based live-action filmmaking more widely: a
tendency to map the overall look of the film to an aesthetic defined by live
action or ‘shot on the studio’ footage. Lev Manovich suggests that though the
emergent aesthetics of hybrid imagery exists in endless variations, it follows
a logic where there is a:
[J]uxtaposition of previously distinct visual languages of different media

within the same sequence and, quite often, within the same frame.
Hand-drawn elements, photographic cutouts, video, type, 3D elements
are not simply placed next to each other but interwoven. The resulting
visual language is a hybrid.6
Although such a range of possibilities exist, and these different opportunities

can and sometimes are visibly exploited in making films, television
programmes, animations or games, it is not always the case that such
juxtapositioning is straightforwardly evident on-screen. Even though an
image’s materiality may be hybrid, the potential of a hybrid aesthetic is only
narrowly employed so as to match a live-action element. This is as true for
the set designed in the production of The Pirates! as it is for a live-action film.
Since an Aardman animation set and its puppets are scaled and styled to a
particular look, I use the phrase ‘Aardman realism’ to describe the stop-motion
animation associated with the studio and the way the VFX are matched to that
look. Consequently, the hybridity of the image, though present, is less visible.
The faces of the characters in The Pirates!, for instance, appear to be typical
Aardman plasticene-modelled faces (Aardman realism), but they are also
hybrid since they are modified by digital techniques used in post-production.
Given its reduced visibility, revealing the hybrid materiality of The Pirates’
imagery relies on exploring the feature’s production culture disclosures. As
noted already, production materials, especially those released as marketing

and publicity materials, are a source of information about the production
processes of any film. They are increasingly used as a starting point for
pulling out the details of how some images are created, and for The Pirates!
give insight into their hybrid materiality. To many people used to seeing
Aardman’s stop-motion puppets, it might come as a surprise that the pirates’
faces were a combination of handcrafted material (plasticine, silicone and
sometimes foam), 3D-printed pieces based on digital modelling and digital
compositing in post-production. With such an explanation it is not only the
materiality of a pirate puppet’s face that is mixed, but so are the meanings
associated with it. Writing about entanglement in the theatre, Chris Salter
asks, ‘how technology has mediated and scrambled meanings and categories,’7
and the explanations of The Pirates! production expose digital tools as
having scrambled the meanings and categories of images in the animation.
As we begin to understand a pirate puppet’s face to be both handmade and
digitalmade, its material and discursive entanglements become visible.
Entanglement takes things to exist relationally, only explainable as a set
of interactions,8 and The Pirates! offers a ready opening for a discussion of
entanglement because the images are materially entangled: trying to hold
apart the physical and digital elements of the image only shows how far they
are connected. At any given moment in The Pirates!, the Pirate Captain’s or
Queen Victoria’s face is a combination of digital and handcrafted elements.
At the same time, the surrounding publicity, ‘making of ’ and review material
are consistent in calling into play a set of ideas about these faces, often
referencing dualities around digital, stop-motion, tradition or innovation.
So far, I have talked about how the materiality of a puppet face is understood
relationally, through its associations with sets of ideas running through
marketing and publicity materials. It is important at this point to also note
that how we grasp materiality is not wholly set in place by social or cultural
ideas. What can be said about a puppet’s face depends on the substance of
its materiality, for instance, the malleability of plasticene. To explain, Michel
Callon, when writing about scientific statements says of them that they
are ‘entangled with the device that produced what it describes; the device
and the series of actions undertaken are shaped by the statement, and vice
versa’.9 Putting this another way, materiality provokes certain conditions and
statements which then reveal and frame those conditions. Plasticine is soft
and malleable, and visible traces of touch, such as thumb prints, provoke
statements about handmade craft. Traces of touch are not framed as blemishes
but as a link back to stop-motion animators as artists. Karen Barad makes
explicit another dimension of framing: ‘Discourse is not what is said; it is that
which constrains and enables what can be said. Discursive practices define
what counts as meaningful statements.’10 In this way, discursive practices

can often be boundary making practices. In the material entanglements of
The Pirates!, evidence of touch sets a boundary around which tradition and
innovation are negotiated.
VFX and disguise

Part of the charm factor of Aardman puppets lies in the range of expressions
animating their faces. The greatest degree of hybridity in the puppets in The
Pirates! is found on their faces, which makes them ideal as a starting place for
exploring the entanglements between handmade and digitalmade elements.
Touch, as in a physical connection between animator and puppet (as opposed
to a digital manipulation sometimes referred to as touching a frame), both
materially and discursively institutes a connection with Aardman tradition.
As I describe below, in production disclosures material traces of touch and
ideas about touch are entangled as they not only establish the presence of
handmade craft but also disguise the presence of digitalmade work.
In the book The Making of The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists
stop-motion animators are invited to talk about their craft. Through their
words, Brian Sibley puts into play one of the corner stones of stop-motion
tradition: touch.11 Evidence of touch and an appearance of touch is one of the
key boundary terms in the negotiation between handmade and digitalmade
images. Touch appears in explanations of how an audience is persuaded to
accept a puppet’s performance. Just as in any kind of performance, the quiet
moments of a stop-motion sequence are as consequential as those which are
action packed. Discussing his work on The Pirates!, animator Lee Wilton
notes the importance of ensuring audience recognition when crafting a
convincing performance: ‘you might have a four-second shot of a character
thinking, or giving a little look off-screen – it seems easy, but you have to
make certain that the audience is interpreting it the way you’re intending’.12
Within the tradition of Aardman stop-motion shorts and features, there
is a connection between touch, plasticine and crafting that little look off-
screen. Loyd Price, Animation Supervisor on The Pirates!, makes this clear
when he says: ‘You take a lump of clay … and you breathe life into it. People
respond to it as if it’s a sentient being.’13 Breathing life into the lump of clay
or indeed plasticine means shaping expressions to facilitate an audience’s
way into the character of a puppet.14 Running across these explanations is an
entanglement involving the tangible malleability of plasticine. Through these
disclosures about touch, the material of plasticine facilitates two things: the
performance of the puppets and establishing touch as a boundary term that
is deployed as a means of validating the hybrid puppets as Aardman puppets,

even when a print is digitally added.
Making a puppet perform relies on an artist’s ability to convincingly
manipulate a puppet’s features and operate within the conventions of an
Aardman style of performance. A viewer with knowledge of the studio’s
work is likely to anticipate expressions playing across a specific set of facial
characteristics, the most familiar of which is the coat hanger smile with a mouth
full of segmented teeth and simplified close-set eyeballs. In their discussion of
how an audience makes sense of images, Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuven
say: ‘the dominant criterion for what is real and what is not is based on the
appearance of things’.15 Kress and Leeuven are making the point that there is
a correspondence between what is normally seen of an object in an everyday
setting, and how it is seen in a visual representation. The point is also true of
Aardman realism. The tradition of the studio can be invoked along as there
is enough correspondence between the hybrid faces in The Pirates! and those
familiar from the era of Wallace and Gromit and Chicken Run. An important
aspect of this correspondence is that it relies too on the apparent material of a
puppet face looking like plasticine, even if silicone or foam is used.
Questions of appearance are not limited to facial features and the subtle
nuances of shifting expressions, the tiny details used to provide an evidential
trace of hands touching plasticine are part of the entanglement too. These
details and the materiality of plasticine provoke not only a performance but also
the disclosures framing our understanding of the puppets. There is a recursive
quality here, which is revealed through taking an entangled perspective.
Plasticine is soft, fingers and thumbs leave indents that are easily visible to an
audience when the image is projected on screen. The material evidence of touch
frames disclosures around handmade work on the puppet faces, and therefore
sets boundaries with which digitalmade work has to negotiate. At Double
Negative, a visual effects company involved in the production of The Pirates!,
the VFX supervisor involved in digital compositing decided how many stop-
motion artefacts, such as thumb prints or random glue spots, were necessary on
the puppet faces to maintain the handmade appearance of the work:
In order to retain the hand crafted soul of the work, Jody Johnson
(DNeg’s VFX supervisor) would study each frame and decide which of
these errors to selectively leave and which to remove. It was important to
Aardman that the work was finished to an incredibly high standard but
still retained a hand crafted look.16
Entanglement here holds together the materiality of plasticine and

statements such as ‘hand crafted soul’ and ‘hand crafted look’ by leveraging
the evidential trace of touch. The comments by Jody Johnson quoted above
reveal how entanglement runs out from handmade materiality, through a
series of framing disclosures and turns again to frame The Pirates’ hybrid
materiality. The presence of thumbprints and glue materially and discursively
disguises the hybrid images in an entanglement that validates a connection
to a handmade look.
For the keen eyed, the design of Queen Victoria’s mouth is a good
example of hybridity that slips beyond its disguise. Aardman’s stop-motion
figures, such as Wallace and Gromit, have tended to have wide mouths with
relatively few and largish teeth. In contrast, a puppet such as Victoria has
thinner lips, smaller teeth and a range of more subtle expressions difficult
for animators to accurately and consistently sculpt. To achieve these subtle
expressions the production team turned to rapid prototyping (RP).17 The
technique was developed at Laika Studio, first for Coraline (2009) and used
again for the productions of ParaNorman (2012) and Boxtrolls (2014).18
Whereas Laika used RP to digitally print full-face resin models for the
technique of replacement animation, Aardman printed only the lower
sections of the face (mouths, tongues, jaws). In both cases, the resin model
was not fully formed, but required significant intricate work from model
makers to remove printing artefacts and paint the flesh tones and detail
onto faces or face parts. In addition, for The Pirates!, post-production
techniques were used to seamlessly integrate the plasticine (or silicone)
pieces with the resin mouths and jaws. The hybridity of the imagery of The
Pirates! is both most and least evident in the faces of all of the characters,
not just Victoria’s. Some 80 per cent of frames in The Pirates! included
digital work in post-production, and the facial work contributes to that
number in a significant way as every set of actions in which lip-synch is
involved generated post-production work.
A deeper description of rapid protoyping reveals not only the digital
process involved in animating the puppets faces, but also the interplay
between the handmade and digitalmade technique, which Loyd Price
describes as ‘a real mixture of model making and CG’.19 In this mixture,
digital technology scrambles and mediates our understanding of the
puppets.20 It scrambles our understanding by revealing the hybridity of
the puppet’s expressions, and mediates by extending the range of subtle
expressions available to animators for a puppet such as Victoria. Based on
drawings of the figures, a sculpt (clay sculpture) of the model is made. Once
approved, a second version of the model with articulated parts, including
the head, is constructed. The heads were used as the model on which the
rapid prototyping was based. With hair removed, they were scanned and
the data imported into the 3D software Autodesk Maya, where digital
modeller Helen Duckworth built a digital version of the head, and also
the numerous mouths necessary for the lip-synch.21 Creating physical
resin versions of these CG mouths meant using RP, which both sped up
production and changed the available repertoire of expressions. Using
these techniques, an array of mouths was generated for each character
in the animation, and across the whole film some 6,818 were created.22
Consequently, for very many shots, the puppet had a join line just under
the eyes. If it was not possible to hide these joins under a beard, glasses or
clothing, removing the lines required a significant amount of compositing
work, which was undertaken using the Foundry’s NUKE software. This
technique generates a digital colour patch which was then added to the
puppet faces in post-production. Along with composites using this patch,
digital modelling and RP combine to scramble our understanding of
the material nature of the puppets and mediate the craft of stop-motion
animators. The array of digital processes does not in the end simply copy
the physical versions of facial expressions, but mediates as it modifies and
extends the range of emotive responses available, something especially
evident in Queen Victoria’s case.
Peter Lord, co-founder of Aardman and the animation’s director,
remarked: ‘Pirates! is faintly nostalgic sometimes,’ … ‘and we’re celebrating
those Aardman things we love to do, but on an even bigger stage.’23 The
production disclosures outlined above go some way in negotiating a way
through nostalgia and moving towards the sense of a bigger stage. For
Queen Victoria, the puppet’s hybrid materiality parlays into a wider range
of expressiveness, and from these arise the nuanced performance of her
varied machinations. In this example, entanglement goes from materiality
to characterization, as handmade and digitalmade intersect to transform
the expressive possibilities of stop-motion puppetry. But this move towards
a bigger stage is always discursively constrained, again through an act of
disguise invoking touch. The now mainly notional boundary between
handmade and digitalmade never fully dissolves away, continuing because
it serves the useful marketing purpose of framing a connection to Aardman
tradition. For instance, commenting on the NUKE patch used to hide the
joins between the resin mouths and the plasticine of the puppet, Loyd
Price says:
I don’t think people should be aware of it […] Nathan, who was

our TD on the rapid-prototyping team, was able to make it so that
we could put little fingerprints on the characters’ ears and textures
on their noses, so that when you get in close on them, you have this
textural feel.24
As these comments reveal, a visible fingerprint turns out to not necessarily

be an evidential trace of handmade work; instead, it can be a digitalmade
disguise of hybrid puppet faces. This disguise discloses another dimension
in the material-discursive framing of plasticine materiality, where
entanglements with touch and Aardman tradition deflect attention away
from digitalmade interventions towards handmade ones instead.
Making and remaking space

Above I suggested entanglement connects between materiality and
characterization, as handmade and digitalmade intersect to transform the
expressive possibilities of stop-motion puppetry. In the following I take this
idea to The Pirates! more widely and argue that connections run between
materiality and the spaces of the animation when the hybrid possibilities of
working in a digital environment are exploited to rescale the spaces of action.
Some digital interventions are simply additions to an existing space, but
others open up space in ways that are wholly dependent on the intersection
of handmade and digitalmade space.
The Foundry team involved in rescaling the spaces of action comment:
One of the unique features of The Pirates! was the scale of the world that
the Director, Pete Lord was looking to depict. A big part of the VFX
challenge here was extending sets with matte paintings and CG models,
and increasing the on-screen population with ‘digital extras’. Big sets and
big crowds can be very expensive and time intensive for stop-motion.
Furthermore effects like explosions, flames, oceans and splashes would
have been either too crazy or simply impossible to attempt in pure stop-
motion.25
Explosions, flames, wide open oceans and wave splashes are visible examples
of CG extensions to the imagery of The Pirates!, as are the crowd scenes on
Blood Island, the Pirate Awards and the Royal Society meeting of scientists.
There are many examples of what might be called conventional set extensions
in The Pirates!. For instance, in addition to the digitally populated crowd
scenes already noted, digital mattes were used to create the background
details of foliage in Blood Island, and also the rooftops of Victorian London.
Extensions such as those to the set of Blood Island create a greater sense of
place via an expansive terrain that contributes to the richness of the imagined
location. Even so, these extensions remain a backdrop, a support to activities
taking place in the foreground of the harbour. The addition of digital roofs to
the set of Victorian London serves a different purpose by generating a hybrid

space which in turn allows a camera to be arced over the top of the buildings.
Because they facilitate a camera movement that brings into existence a
more expansive terrain for looking, such extensions do more than fill space.
Not simply the backdrop to action, they function to reconfigure otherwise
unusable onset space into one where actions become possible. Without the
set extension, the camera movement would be unfeasible. Playing a part in
generating space, digital technologies mediate in making a hybrid space,
which in turn facilitates a new location for action. Because of this, the added
space is an entangled one, where hybrid materiality connects to the spaces
of an animation.
The post-production activity of wire and rig removal, often referred to as
cleaning up, also has the capacity to reconfigure and rescale on-set space and
so constitute action, again through the production of hybrid and entangled
spaces. In live-action cinema, post-production wire removal is a time-
consuming necessity used to clear the imagery of details that might disturb
the credibility of the fictional world. The same is true in The Pirates!. In stop-
motion sequences that are not digitally manipulated during post-production,
movements occur in a physical space in front of the camera. Any rigging
needed to suspend a figure or move a vehicle can be hidden through careful
alignments between figure/vehicle, camera, elements of the set and costume.
The scope of movements within such a space is constrained by the fabric
of the shot, which includes the limits of the rigging, availability of camera
view angles through which to obscure rigging and the influence of gravity.
If digital manipulation is also involved, movements again occur in front of
a camera, their scope mediated by gravity-defying action sequences which
rely on complex rigging subsequently digitally removed. Wire removal not
only keeps imagery credible, but it generates hybrid spaces which add to the
dimensional possibilities of an action shot, rescaling through an extended
verticality in segments of the virtuoso bathtub chase and Polly’s the Dodo’s
rescue from Queen Victoria.
Animating movement through air in the absence of contact from the
ground or another object is difficult when working with physical puppets
and objects. Before digital techniques were available to remove a rig’s
cables and wires, animators relied on nylon wires to create the least visible
support for puppets in a scene. With the capability of removing the rigging
via mediating digital technologies, Aardman’s animators have been able to
exploit the possibilities of appearing to animate movements through air.
David Vickery, a CG Supervisor at Double Negative, points to a difference
that rigging removal makes when he suggests that for The Pirates! Aardman
puppets are not as limited in their movements as other live-action puppets:
They can fly through the air, jump, somersault, stand on one leg and
defy gravity. Of course it requires a lot of clever rigging to achieve all
this. Rigs ranged from exposed metal armatures supporting character
poses to fine lines used to pull on sails or curtains. Shooting stop motion
even gives you the freedom to completely swap rigs out from one frame
to another.26
The rigging described by Vickery necessitates a complicated process of

removal, and usually discussions of the imagery are left by simply noting how
digital techniques clean up the shot. By taking more note of the hybridity of
this space, we can also ask if space is able to do more as its materiality is
reconfigured and activated through digital manipulation.
A short moment in the bathtub chase of The Pirates!, which, despite its
length (only thirty-one frames) forms a significant action showpiece, is useful
for exploring this further. This sequence features the bathtub containing
the Strangely Curvaceous Pirate, the Pirate Captain and the Pirate with a
Scarf, still filled with foamy water, careening down the central stairwell of
Charles Darwin’s mansion. Darwin has precipitated these events by getting
his servant, a monkey called Bobo, to try and steal Polly. In the melee that
follows, both the Pirate Captain and Pirate with a Scarf end up in the tub
with the Strangely Curvaceous Pirate (who was already there having a bath).
The moment of the chase which interests me is when the bathtub flies across
the balcony space beneath a swinging dinosaur skeleton.27
The sequence links the motion of the dinosaur skeleton swinging left to
right through the air, with first Bobo and then the bathtub containing the
three pirates travelling in the opposite direction. A range of techniques were
used to coordinate the movements of the different elements making up the
shot. In keeping with the stop-motion work throughout the animation, each
of the figures was manipulated by hand to animate their reactions as the
tub nearly collides with the skeleton swinging through the air just above
the bath. The swinging movement of the skeleton was controlled through
a motorized metal rig, as was the trajectory of bathtub itself, with foam and
water added using VFX. As a consequence, the space of the shot was remade,
and areas unusable without digital interventions activated within the hybrid
materiality of the shot. The rig moving the swinging skeleton was removed
and so the space in which the action of the shot occurred was redefined
through the intervention of technologies. What occurs is an animation of
negative space, the space around the subjects of the shot (skeleton, bath and
puppets), with an emphasis on the gravity-defying verticality of the shot.
Two moments show this: Bobo swinging beneath the skeleton (in a side shot)
and the bathtub flying into camera, again swinging beneath the skeleton. In
Figures 15.1 & 15.2 The hybrid materiality of The Pirates!: In an Adventure with

Scientists! (dir. Peter Lord. Aardman Animations/Sony Pictures Animation, 2012)
enables the remaking of space.
both cases, there is a view of space beneath the lower figures, as well as the
wider shot of the open interior balcony (see Figures 15.1 & 15.2).
A similar moment occurs in the aftermath of Polly the Dodo’s rescue
from the clutches of Queen Victoria’s chef on the QV1; Victoria tries to again
abduct Polly via the hot air balloon. To thwart the Queen, the Pirate Captain
climbs the balloon’s anchor rope, which Polly is then forced to peck by the
Queen. Retaliating, the dodo attacks Victoria and in the following ruckus
falls over the side of the balloon’s basket, where she is caught by the Pirate
Captain. Polly’s additional weight causes the anchor rope to finally snap, and
they both plummet downwards towards the propeller of the QV1. They are
saved, we discover, by a human ladder of all seven members of the pirate
crew. The camera movement revealing the seven pirates (together holding
onto the eighth figure of the Pirate Captain) is a single movement, but such
a movement would not be possible without a digital intervention and rig
removal. As described by David Vickery:
One shot featured eight characters dangling off the side of an airship,
strung out hand to foot in a human ladder with every character
requiring its own pose-able rig to hold it in place. The shot starts at one
of the human ladder and tracks past each character to the top. There
was rigging everywhere and the bright sunlight in the frame threw a
perfect crisp shadow of the rigs right across the hull of the boat so all the
shadows had to be repaired too.28
The digital technologies underpinning the camera movement not only

erase the various rigs, but they remake the space. Now a shot with hybrid
materiality, it has an added vertical dimension. Created through the removal
of the rigging, at a micro level this dimension expands the story-world or
diegetic space of the animation.
The clean-up activity of erasing objects also remakes the materiality
of shots, bringing with it the potential for space to do more. This is both
invisible (digitalmade hybrid spaces) and visible in subtle changes to the
array of handmade actions available to animators as they are given scope to
reconfigure and reorientate visual cues. Polly’s escape and the bathtub chase,
though fleeting moments, show a shot’s hybrid materiality contributing
to the story-world. Despite the innovation on display, this opening out
of space remains understated, achieved primarily at micro levels. Even
with its potential for more expansion, the hybrid space is boundaried by
Aardman realism and the physical dimensions set in the overall space of
The Pirates! set.
Conclusion
This chapter has undertaken an exploration of production culture materials
and shown how digital interventions contribute to the creative possibilities
of animators. Production culture materials act in part as publicity for The
Pirates!, the Aardman studio, stop-motion animators, VFX artists and
production companies, as well as individuals such as director Peter Lord.
Since their purpose is to market and attract an audience, I acknowledge they
do not set out to provide complicated explanations about the hybridity of
puppets or space. Even so, as they explain the materiality of stop-motion
and VFX in The Pirate’s production, they give insight into the interplay of
Aardman traditions and the studio’s willingness to innovate with digital
techniques. Through a focus on two particular areas – puppet faces and
configurations of space – I explored two very different dimensions in
the material and discursive entanglements of the imagery. In relation to
the puppet faces, touch remains a corner stone in negotiations between

tradition and innovation, even when in the form of a digital disguise. For
configurations of space, the expansive possibilities of digital interventions
remain boundaried by the physical space of a set.
As an analytic approach, entanglement allows production culture materials
to be taken as more than informative descriptions of techniques. They steer
associations connecting handmade and digital materiality, marketing
strategies and studio history, putting into play interrelations which frame
our ways of thinking. As I have done in this chapter, these framing ideas
can be challenged and explored for what they reveal about the intricate ways
materiality and discourse inform and push up against each other. Touch,
evoked as a boundary deflecting attention away from the digitalmade qualities
of The Pirates!, favours a link with Aardman’s tradition of handmade stop-
motion, with digital innovations qualified and tied back to handmade
traces. The same is true of hybrid spaces, though rescaling at micro levels,
these too remain grounded in the overall physical dimensions of a set. To
find digital possibilities boundaried by physical dimensions is not in itself
surprising, since that is the way of the world we inhabit. More interesting is
how handmade or digitalmade cease to be straightforward words marking the
presence of particular techniques. Even while acting as material descriptors,
they are shaped and contoured through their relations with other sets of ideas.
An entangled analysis draws out what is at stake in relations constraining or
enabling the kinds of which can be said. For The Pirates!, the stakes revolve
around promoting Aardman’s continuity with its tradition in stop-motion
animation alongside its innovations with digital techniques, or doing the
things they love to do, but on a bigger stage. With The Pirates!, the studio
makes digital waves, but claims to only do so in an Aardman-like way.
Notes
1 See Chapter 14 in this volume (Holliday) on Aardman’s two fully CGI films.
The studio also has a sustained track record for using digital animation in
its commercials arm.
2 Michel Callon, ‘What does it mean to say that economics is performative?’,
CSI Working Papers Series 005 (2006). Available at: https://halshs.archives-
ouvertes.fr/halshs-00091596/document (accessed 7 December 2017).
3 The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! was released as The Pirates!
Band of Misfits! in the United States.
4 Bill Desowitz, ‘A Pirates’ Life for Aardman’, Animation World Network,
26 April 2012. Available at: https://www.awn.com/animationworld/pirates-
life-aardman (accessed 5 December 2017).
5 Foundry, ‘It’s a Pirates! Life for NUKE and MARI’, Foundary [company
website] (2012). Available at: https://www.thefoundry.co.uk/case-studies/
pirates/.
6 Lev Manovich, ‘Image Future’, Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal 1,
no. 1 (2006), p. 26.
7 Chris Salter, Entangled: Technology and the Transformation of Performance
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010), p. xxxv.
8 See, for instance, Michel Callon, ‘Actor-Network Theory – The Market Test’,
The Sociological Review 47, S1 (1999), pp. 181–95; Karen Barad, Meeting
the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter
and Meaning (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006); Chris Salter,
Entangled: Technology and the Transformation of Performance (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 2010); Tim Ingold, ‘Toward an Ecology of Materials’,
Annual Review of Anthropology 41 (2012), pp. 427–42; and Ian Hodder,
Entangled: An Archaeology of Relations between Humans and Things
(Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2012).
9 Callon, ‘What does it mean to say that economics is performative?’, p. 12.
10 Karen Barad, ‘Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding
of How Matter Comes to Matter’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and
Society 28, no. 3 (2003) p. 819.
11 Brian Sibley, The Making of The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists
(London: Bloomsbury, 2012).
12 Lee Wilton, quoted in Sibley, p. 109.
13 Loyd Price quoted in Sibley, p. 102.
14 Barry J.C. Purves, Stop-Motion Animation: Frame by Frame Film-Making
with Puppets and Models, Second Edition (London: Bloomsbury, 2014),
p. 100.
15 Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen, Reading Images: The Grammar of
Visual Design, Second Edition (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006), pp. 158–9.
16 Ian Failes, ‘Band of Misfits: DNeg’s Pirate Adventures’, Fxguide, 22 April
2012. Available at: http://www.fxguide.com/featured/band-of-misfits-
dnegs-pirate-adventures/ (accessed 6 December 2017).
17 Stephen Holmes, ‘The Pirates! Aardman Animations and Stop-Motion’,
3D Artist, 27 February 2013. Available at: http://www.3dartistonline.
com/news/2013/02/aardman-animations-interview/ (accessed
6 December 2017).
18 For descriptions of the use of rapid-prototyping on Coraline, Paranorman
and Boxtrolls, see Renee Dunlop, ‘Coraline: One Step at a Time for the
Puppet of a Thousand Faces’, CG Society, 12 February 2009. Available at:
http://www.cgsociety.org/index.php/CGSFeatures/CGSFeatureSpecial/
coraline (accessed 6 December 2017); Caitlin Roper, ‘3-D Printing
Goes Hollywood with Stop-Motion Animated Feature ParaNorman’,
WIRED, 23 July 2012. Available at: https://www.wired.com/2012/07/
paranorman-3d-printing/ (accessed 6 December 2017); and C. Edwards,
‘How Laika Pushed 3D Printing to New Heights with the Boxtrolls’,

Cartoon Brew, 13 August 2014. Available at: http://www.cartoonbrew.com/
feature-stories/how-laika-pushed-3d-printing-to-new-heights-with-the-
boxtrolls-101512.html (accessed 6 December 2017).
19 Holmes, ‘The Pirates! Aardman Animations and Stop-Motion’.
20 I use the term ‘mediate’ in the sense meant by Bruno Latour. In the
context of Actor-Network Theory, he has argued that mediation occurs
when something, including a technology, makes a difference to a process,
potentially in positive or negative ways. RP mediates in The Pirates! because
it transforms the options available to an animator, enabling a wider set of
expressive possibilities. See Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2005).
21 Holmes, ‘The Pirates! Aardman Animations and Stop-Motion’.
22 Desowitz, ‘A Pirates’ Life for Aardman’.
23 Phil de Semlyen, ‘Aardman Set Visit: Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists’,
Empire, 1 December 2011. Available at: https://www.empireonline.com/
movies/features/aardman-pirates-set-visit/ (accessed 6 December 2017).
24 Quoted in Holmes, ‘The Pirates! Aardman Animations and Stop-Motion’.
25 Foundry, ‘It’s a Pirates! Life for NUKE and MARI’.
26 Failes, ‘Band of Misfits: DNeg’s Pirate Adventures’.
27 Although I am only talking about the digital manipulation of this brief
section, the chase was extremely labour intensive for the stop-motion
animators too. The scene took over nine months to complete, with three
teams of three stop-motion animators working in parallel on their specific
sections of the chase.
28 Failes, ‘Band of Misfits: DNeg’s Pirate Adventures’.
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Index
Aardboiled 20 n.33 ‘Aardman-ness’ 4–6, 12–13, 224. See

Aardman (company) also Aardman, sensibility
box office returns 2–3, 18 n.13, Aardstore 20 n.38
73–8, 80–1, 85 n.37 acting, animation as 57, 184,
brand identity 4–13, 23–5, 30–4, 186–91, 213–14, 218. See also
56–7, 63, 66, 170–3, 177–8, performance, animation as
211, 229 acting out animation 159, 167 n.18,
brand licensing 2, 4, 9, 23, 171 187, 192 n.32
charity work 20 n.38 Adam (1992) (film) 17 n.6, 60–2, 65,
commercials / advertising work 4, 67, 120
6, 8–9, 12–14, 18 n.15, 20 n.34, advertising. See Aardman,
23–37, 120, 135 n.5, 137 n.25, commercials / advertising work
162, 169–70, 224, 254 n.1 Al Dente (1998) (film) 224
company ethos 1, 10–13, 66, 73, Alice novels (1865 and 1871) 121, 141
106, 122, 176–8 Aliens (1986) (film) 149
‘cosiness’ 2, 6, 8, 15, 106, 142, 146, Allied Films 72
150, 178 Amazing Adventures of Morph (1980–1)
critical reception 6, 30, 33, 73–5, (TV series) 17 n.3, 89, 169
77, 82, 211, 215–20, 224, 236, androcentrism 195, 203, 205, 208. See
238, 241, 244 also anthropomorphism
‘darkside’ 8 Angry Kid (2009–15) (TV series) 8,
employee ownership 2, 13, 18 23, 179 n.17
n.10 Animal Farm (1946) (novel) 63
paratexts 4–5, 9–13, 217–18, Animated Conversations (1978) (film
241–56 (see also behind-the- series) 6, 17 n.4, 59, 89–90, 101
scenes material) n.1, 107, 109
sensibility 4–6, 10–11, 49, 73–8, Confessions of a Foyer Girl 17 n.4,
105–16, 119, 142, 170–3, 175–8 59, 96–8, 101
(see also ‘Aardman-ness’) Down and Out 17 n.4, 59, 90,
technical innovation 10, 16, 25, 92–4, 101 n.1
31–4, 119–20, 156, 177, 241–2, animated documentary 53
244–5, 253–4 Annecy International Animated Film
typical visual style/ aesthetic 5–9, Festival 113, 120, 135 n.3
11–13, 29–34, 41, 55, 63, 66, anthropomorphism 123, 139, 143–7,
75, 108, 120, 134, 142–3, 175, 150, 183, 187, 195, 202–3, 206
177, 196, 198–200, 207, 220, Arcadia 145–6
222 n.36, 223–5, 227, 230–1, Arthur Christmas (2011) (film) 3, 5, 8,
235–6, 246 11–12, 16, 76–8, 223–40, 241
Aardman: Art That Takes Shape Arts Council 90
(exhibition) 18 n.21 auteur animation 218
268 Index
authenticity 140, 211–22, 226–7, 238, Cartoon Network (TV channel) 174,
242 176
Autodesk Maya 231, 247 CBBC 171
awards 1–2, 17 n.6, 25–6, 29, 33, 53, CBeebies 175
105, 111, 113, 135 n.3, 169 cel animation 197, 242
CGI (computer-generated imagery) 8,
Babylon (1986) (short) 8, 101 n.1, 64, 75, 77, 113, 119, 131, 197,
105–13, 116, 117 n.8 200, 208 n.2, 208 n.3, 220, 226.
Barker, Jennifer 216 See also computer animation;
bar sheets 188, 192 n.38 computer graphics
BBC 1, 9, 17 n.2, 17 n.3, 17 n.4, 53, 56, Channel 4 (broadcaster) 1–2, 8, 9, 17
91, 106, 107, 137 n.25, 171–3, 175 n.4, 24, 29, 30–1, 90–1, 106–7,
Beano, The (comic) 141–2, 149 109, 111
Beckett, Samuel 54, 60–1 Chaplin, Charlie 49, 63, 181–2, 185,
Beek, Richard (‘Beeky’) 160–2, 168 187–9, 191
n.27, 197, 203 Chicken Run (2000) (film) 1–3, 5, 23,
behind-the-scenes material 3–4, 62–3, 71–4, 83 n.7, 89, 196–9,
10–13, 139–41, 217–18. See 219, 230–4, 246
also DVD extras; making-ofs Chop Socky Chooks (2008–10) (TV
Bergsonian theory of the comedic 148 series) 175
Bergson’s theory of laughter 49 Clarke, Sean 13
Blatter, Janet 163–5, 168 n.36 class, social 45–8, 62, 65, 102 n.21,
Boddy, Ashley 162, 165, 168 n.25 108, 145, 147–8, 234
Box, Steve 7, 8, 105, 111–12 clay 58, 61, 120, 122, 134, 195, 197–9,
brass bands 39–41, 44–50 203, 206–7, 211, 213, 215,
British animation 3–4, 16, 63, 90, 109, 221, 225–7, 232, 245. See also
142, 219 fingerprints; plasticine; silicone
British cinema 6, 19 n.23, 71, 81–2 animation (claymation) 6–9,
New Wave 91, 99, 102 n.16 14, 24, 26, 31, 33–4, 58–9,
Britishness/ British national identity 92–5, 96–8, 100, 211, 212–13,
5–6, 14–15, 34, 39–40, 45, 50, 216–17, 219–20, 224–5, 227,
75, 77, 79, 107, 139–52, 170, 230–1, 236–8, 241
218–19, 234 puppets / models 93, 97, 106, 108,
British social realism 89–103 198–9, 211, 215, 220, 226, 231,
bucolic 6, 75. See also rural 247 (see also models; puppets)
Bullough, Miles 173 Close Shave, A (1995) (film) 17 n.6,
Burton, Tim 57, 130 33, 43–5, 48–9, 80, 108, 111,
144–6, 148, 171, 214–15
Cambridge Animation Festival 90 Cockle, Jackie 173–4
camera movement 143, 160–2, 250, comedy 40, 42, 44, 65, 95, 139, 147–9,
252–3 176–7, 183, 185–7, 189–91. See
virtual 233–5 also humour
caricature 97, 130–1, 139, 199, 200, physical 174, 181, 185–6, 191
202, 233 silent 15, 42, 60–1, 171, 173, 181–92
Carroll, Lewis 121, 141 situational 42, 60, 65, 93, 171, 198
Index 269
slapstick 60, 111, 171, 173–6, Dahl, Roald 9, 121

181–2, 189, 191 dance, animation as 185
compositing 119, 196, 244, 246, 248 Dandy, The (comic) 54, 141
computer animation 11–12, 16, 176, Danger Mouse (1981–92) (TV series)
195, 198, 200, 219–20, 223–38. 219
See also CGI (computer- Defoe, Gideon 64
generated imagery) diegetic sound 43–4, 49, 148
computer graphics 224, 226–7, digital effects. See visual effects
230, 238, 243. See also CGI (digital) (VFX)
(computer-generated imagery) Disney Channel 171
computer animation Disney Junior (TV channel) 175
Confessions of a Foyer Girl (1978) (film). Disney Pixar. See Pixar (studio)
See Animated Conversations Disney studio 57, 62, 156, 170, 187,
(1978) (film series) 192 n.32, 213
contraptions 5, 63, 215. See also Disney, Walt (person) 157–8, 182
inventions; Wallace and diversity 90, 174
Gromit, Wallace as inventor lack of 19 n.22, 149–50
Conversation Pieces (1983) (film documentary 23, 57–61, 89–101, 204.
series) 17 n.4, 24–5, 30–1, 59, see also animated documentary;
89–91, 95–6, 106–7, 109, 111 British social realism; realism
Early Bird 17 n.4, 59, 92, 94–5 sound 6–7, 14, 60, 89, 92–6, 110
Late Edition 17 n.4, 59, 92–4 Dot (2010) (film) 12
On Probation 17 n.4, 59, 90, 92–4 Dowling, Patrick 1
Palmy Days 17 n.4, 59, 92, 95 Down and Out (1978) (film). See
Sales Pitch 17 n.4, 24, 59, 92–3 Animated Conversations (1978)
Cook, Luis 15, 105, 113, 115, 119–39, (film series)
159, 161 drawn animation 7, 120, 128–32, 167
Coraline (2009) (film)17 n.7, 237, 247, n.23, 184, 195, 208 n.2, 212,
255 n.18 243
Corpse Bride (2005) (film) 17 n.7, 106, DreamWorks (studio) 8, 11–12, 63,
130, 237 71–5, 82 n.1, 223–4, 231, 241
Cosgrove Hall (studio) 7, 142, 187 DVD extras 5, 11–12. See also:
Cox, Sarah 177–8 behind-the-scenes material;
Cracking Animation (book) 3, 9–10, making-ofs
23, 34 n.2, 42, 158
Crafton, Donald 181–2, 185, 187, 191, Early Bird (1983) (film). See
202, 212, 225 Conversation Pieces (1983)
Creature Comforts (film series)
commercials 29–30, 53 (see also Early Man (2018) (film) 5, 18 n.13, 18
Heat Electric adverts) n.14, 80–1, 165, 238
short film (1989) (see Lip Synch) effects. See: special effects animation;
TV series (2003–7) 30, 225 visual effects (digital) (VFX)
Croods, The (2013) (film) 73 Eisenstein, Sergei 207
Cubitt, Sean 197, 200, 208 11–11 Memories Retold (2018) (video
cut-out animation 120 game) 9
270 Index
embodied animation 182, 186–7, 202 haptic viewing 196, 201, 204–5, 208,
embodied character 187, 191 211, 216
Harryhausen, Ray 141, 149
fantastical 95–6, 121, 123, 131, 138 Hartbeat (1984–93) (TV series) 17 n.2
n.27, 139–51, 198–9, 201, 204 Hart, Tony 1, 17 n.2
fantasy 15, 64, 106, 134, 139–51 Haynes, Richard 15, 204
Farmer’s Llamas (2015) (TV special) Heat Electric adverts 6, 8, 29–30.
173 See also Creature Comforts,
Feathers McGraw 44, 111, 146, 215 commercials
Felix the Cat 182, 185, 226 Higson, Andrew 99–100
figurative animation 191 Hollywood 11–12, 14, 39, 53, 71–82,
figurative character 15, 182, 184–7, 91, 99, 181, 208 n.6
191, 202 Aardman as ‘anti-Hollywood’ 10,
fingerprints 10, 16, 106, 122, 211–21, 72, 75, 77, 217–19
225–8, 245–9 creative approach 5, 11, 59–60,
Fleischer Studio 211, 242 62–3, 66, 219
Flushed Away (2006) (film) 8, 11–12, music 14, 41–2, 50
16, 73–5, 223, 226–38, 241 horror 111, 114, 141, 147–9
forced perspective 231–3 Humdrum (1999) (film) 17 n.6
humour 5, 34, 40, 49, 53–4, 65, 68, 75,
gags 48, 55, 63, 157–60, 165, 183, 77, 147, 172–3, 176–8, 182, 185–
186–90, 232. See also: comedy; 7, 191. See also: comedy; gags
humour Husserl, Edmund 196, 203, 206
gender, representation of 65, 113–14, hybrid, digital and analogue
125–7 animation 131, 196, 230, 236,
gesture 58, 96, 182, 184, 212, 214, 234 241–54
Going Equipped (1989) (film). See Lip
Synch Ident (1989) (film). See Lip Synch
Grand Day Out, A (1989) (film) 1, 17 industrial revolution /
n.6, 40, 43–5, 48, 143, 147, 199, industrialization 41, 44, 46–50,
211, 213–15 99, 145–7
Grand Night In: The Story of Aardman, inventions 41, 48–9. See also
A (2015) 23 contraptions; Wallace and
Gulliver’s Travels (1726) (novel) 124, 141 Gromit, Wallace as inventor
Gulp (2011) (film) 12 Isaacs, Jeremy 90
hand-drawn animation. See drawn Jackson, Mick 121–6, 128–9, 131, 138
animation n.27
handmade 7, 10, 14, 16, 24, 31, 64, Jones, Chuck 42, 182, 187
198–200, 207, 211, 213, 215,
220–1, 223–4, 227–8, 230, Katzenberg, Jeffrey 72, 75, 83 n.7
235–6, 241–9, 253–4 Keaton, Buster 15, 60, 171, 181–91
‘Handsomest Drowned Man in the Kitson, Clare 30, 90, 106–7, 109
World, The’ (1999) (short Kung Fu Panda series (2008–16) (film
story) 127–8, 130 series) 76
Index 271
Laika Studio 57, 247 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 196, 203, 206

Late Edition (1983) (film). See metamorphosis 96–7, 159, 203, 206, 207
Conversation Pieces (1983) Minotaur and Little Nerkin (1999)
(film series) (film) 224
Laurel and Hardy 181, 183, 191 mise-en-scène 128–9, 143
LAV (live-action video) 159, 167 n.18 models 7, 10, 12, 13, 16, 58, 97, 131–3,
Lear, Edward 121, 130, 147 172, 192 n.36, 203, 224, 225–6,
Lewis, C.S. 140, 142, 146, 151 n.10 230, 234, 238, 247, 249. See also:
Lionsgate 80, 84 n.34 clay; puppets
Lip Synch (1989) (film series) 7, 17 model sheets 184
n.4, 29, 33, 53, 89, 101 n.1, 109, Modern Times (1936) (film) 49, 63
111 Morph (character) 1, 4, 17 n.2, 17 n.3,
Creature Comforts 1–2, 7, 17 n.4, 23, 26, 58, 61, 65, 67, 170, 224.
17 n.6, 29, 30, 33, 89, 92–3, See also Amazing Adventures of
95–6, 101 n.1, 105, 115, 120, Morph (1980–1) (TV series)
142, 170, 188, 225, 234 (see also YouTube channel 9, 17 n.3
Creature Comforts) mouths, replacement 7, 188, 231, 242,
Going Equipped 7, 15, 17 n.4, 247–8
60, 62, 96, 98–101, 102, 105, MTV 24–5
109–12, 116, 120 music videos 4, 8, 23–5, 30–2, 34 n.1,
Ident 7, 101 n.1, 120 120, 135 n.5, 176
Next 7, 101 n.1
War Story 7, 60, 92–3, 96–8, 101, Nathan Love 34
101 n.1, 120 Next (1989) (film). See Lip Synch
live-action 6, 8, 29, 42, 57, 73, 84 n.29, Nickelodeon (TV channel) 175
90–2, 94, 96–8, 100–1, 113, 168 Northernness 5, 14, 39–50, 57, 140,
n.25, 168 n.27, 197, 199, 212, 145. See also: Britishness;
233, 243, 250 regional (British) identity
Looney Tunes 51 n.17, 188, 232 nostalgia 5–6, 39, 41, 43, 47–50, 54,
Lord, Peter 1–3, 6–8, 12–14, 17 n.3, 67, 93, 101, 105, 109, 111,
18 n.10, 25, 49, 53–68, 72–3, 145–6, 149–50, 238, 248
89–90, 101, 102 n.18, 105–6, Nott, Julian 41–2
110, 113, 115, 120–1, 130, 135
n.5, 213–14, 224–5, 248–9, 253 O’Brien, Willis 201
Ogilvy, David 26–7
Madden, Paul 107, 109 On Probation (1983) (film). See
making-ofs 3–4, 11–13, 18 n.11, 53, Conversation Pieces (1983)
166 n.5, 244, 245. See also: (film series)
behind-the-scenes material; optic visuality 204–5, 208, 215–16. See
DVD extras also haptic viewing
marketing 4, 24, 29, 39, 74–7, 79, 81, orthodox animation 196, 218, 222 n.36
217, 220, 242, 244, 248, 254 Orwell, George 44, 54, 63
Matter of Loaf and Death, A (2008) Out of the Inkwell (1918–29) (film
(film) 17 n.6, 18 n.18, 40, 43, series) 211, 242
45, 48–9, 53, 144, 149 Owzat (1997) (film) 8, 224
272 Index
Palmy Days (1983) (film). See profilmic space 196, 200–1, 226–7
Conversation Pieces (1983) puppets 6–8, 57–8, 64, 92–3, 160–2,
(film series) 167 n.23, 185–7, 195–9, 203,
Park, Nick 1, 6–8, 29, 32–3, 39–41, 43, 206, 211–12, 215, 218, 220, 227,
45, 49, 52 n.31, 53–5, 57, 59, 230–2, 234, 241–54. See also:
63–4, 66, 68 n.4, 72–4, 80–1, clay; models
83 n.7, 89, 95, 108, 111, 139, Purple and Brown (2005–8) (TV
141–2, 149, 159, 188, 198–9, series) 175
211, 213–16, 219 Purves, Barry 7, 53, 158, 201–2, 234
parody 48, 56, 65, 111, 148
Pathé (studio) 72, 78 Quay, The Brothers 112, 116
Pearce Sisters, The (2007) (film) 8, 16, Quigley, Marion 40, 47, 50, 218–19
105, 113–16, 119–35
performance 55, 61, 63, 185, 191, rapid prototyping 238, 242, 247–8,
212–13. See also acting 255 n.18
out animation; embodied realism 50, 91–2, 94, 97, 99–101, 130,
animation; figurative animation 141, 144, 199, 226, 232, 235. See
animation as 15–16, 65, 101, also British social realism
181–91, 195–208, 211–21, 225, ‘Aardman realism’ 243, 246, 253
230–1, 241, 245–6, 248 documentary 99–100
vocal 42 poetic 15, 99–101
Phelan, Richard 160–1 psychological 202–3
phenomenology 16, 58, 196, 203–4, regional (British) identity 5,
206 39. See also Britishness/
photographic images 42, 122, 129, British national identity;
133, 138 n.28, 243 northernness
Pirates! In an Adventure with replacement animation 12, 247
Scientists, The 5–6, 10–11, 16, Rex the Runt (character) 19 n.31, 23
17 n.6, 17 n.7, 56, 64–5, 76–7, Rex the Runt (1998–2001) (TV series)
80, 84 n.24, 196, 204–5, 237–8, 8, 179 n.17
241–54 rural 43, 46–8, 58, 75. See also bucolic
bathtub sequence 11, 204–5, 250–3
Pixar (studio) 3, 34, 53, 57, 63 Sales Pitch (1983) (film). See
pixilation 12, 32, 120 Conversation Pieces (1983)
Planet Sketch (2005–8) (TV series) (film series)
175 satire 48–9, 141–2, 147–8
plasmatic (nature of animation) 199, Shaun the Sheep (character) 4, 6, 23,
206–7 33, 89, 108, 145, 171–4, 181–91
plasticine 7, 31–2, 40, 57, 89–90, Shaun the Sheep Movie (2015) 5, 17
119–20, 122, 134, 171, 175, n.6, 78, 80–2, 89, 181, 204, 238
192 n.36, 198, 223–4, 226–7, Shaun the Sheep (2006–16) (TV
229–32, 238, 244–9. See also: series) 5–6, 15, 79, 161–2,
clay; silicone 169–71, 173–6, 178, 181–91
post-production 42, 162–3, 196–7, Shaun the Sheep–VR Movie Barn 9
199–201, 207, 208 n.3, 220, Shrek (2001–10) (film series) 64, 73,
243–4, 247–8, 250 76
Index 273
silent film 42, 51 n.13, 111, 134, 171, technology, representation of 146–7,
181–2, 191. See also comedy, 150, 219, 228–30, 233
silent technophilia 223, 228
silicone 7, 10, 198–9, 207, 223–4, technophobia 223
230, 238, 244, 246–7. See also: Telotte, J.P. 139, 233, 235
plasticine; clay Ten Sorry Tales (2005) (short stories)
‘Sledgehammer’ (1986) (music video) 121–4, 129–30, 134
8, 24–5, 30–2, 135 n.5 Thatcher era 89–90, 109–10, 145
SMart (1994–2009) (TV series) 17 Thomas, Frank and Ollie Johnston
n.2 157–8
Smith, Sarah 76 Timmy Time (2009–12) (TV series)
Sony (studio) 8, 10–11, 63, 71, 76–80, 15, 169–78
223–4, 237, 241 Tolkien, J.R.R. 140, 142, 146, 151
sound effects 42–4, 181 n.10
special effects 16, 195–208, 227, 230, Tortoise and the Hare, The (unmade
232–3 film) 73–4
Sproxton, David 1–3, 7–8, 10, 13, 18 Twit or Miss (2015) (app) 9
n.10, 31, 33, 49, 53, 56, 58–9, 2D animation 7, 113, 119, 131,
64, 74, 76–8, 80, 89–90, 101, 138 n.27, 160, 167 n.23, 168
106, 120–1, 130, 213, 225, 232 n.36
Stage Fright (1997) (film) 7, 15, 105, Two Sisters (1990) (short) 136 n.12
111–13, 116
Stahl, Matt 157–8, 164 uncanny 105–6, 108–11, 113, 115–16,
Starzak (Goleszowski), Richard 122, 133, 146
(‘Golly’) 7–8, 53, 171–3, 179 Under the Oak Tree commercial
n.2, 181 (2011) 12
Sterne, Laurence 54–6
stop-motion. See also clay, animation verisimilitude 131, 208. See also
(claymation) realism
as labour intensive 10, 12–13, 71, Vision On (1964–76) (TV series) 1,
155–6, 162, 165, 166 n.6, 213, 53, 58, 135 n.5
220, 223, 225–7, 231, 249, 256 visual effects (digital) (VFX) 99, 196,
n.27 199–200, 207, 208 n.3, 226,
process 10, 90, 138 n.28, 160, 165, 230, 238, 241–54
201, 223, 227, 228, 231, 234–7, voice casting 75, 77, 79, 214, 241. See
241–2 also performance, vocal
storyboards / storyboarding 15, 62,
155–65, 187–8, 197 Wallace and Gromit 1–2, 4, 6–7,
Studiocanal 14, 71, 78–82 10, 13, 23, 33, 39–50, 57, 80,
Švankmajer, Jan 57, 108, 112, 116 89, 105–6, 108, 115, 139–51,
Sweet Disaster series (1986) 106–7, 169–71, 199, 205, 211–21, 231,
117 n.8 235, 242, 246
Swift, Jonathan 124, 141, 147 short films 5–6, 12, 39–50, 74,
89, 139–51, 169–71, 198, 211,
Take Hart 1, 17 n.2, 58 213–16, 219–20, 225 (see also
Tati, Jacques 54, 60 Close Shave, A (1995) (film);
274 Index
Grand Day Out, A (1989) War Story (1983) (film). See Lip Synch
(film); Matter of Loaf and Watership Down (1972) (novel) 143,
Death, A (2008) (film); Wrong 145, 152 n.14
Trousers, The (1993) (film)) Wat’s Pig (1996) (film) 17 n.6, 62
theme tune 39–41, 44–7, 52 n.31, Wells, Paul 14, 48, 98, 142, 149, 159,
143, 148 163
Wallace as inventor 41, 44, Wind in the Willows (1983) (TV
47–50, 146–7, 215 (see also: series) 7
contraptions; inventions) Wiseman, Alix 176
Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Wrong Trousers, The (1993) (film) 17
Were-Rabbit (2005) (film) 5, n.6, 30, 33, 41–4, 48–9, 105,
17 n.6, 17 n.7, 43, 45, 48, 73–4, 111, 143–4, 146, 147–8, 215
80, 106, 108, 111, 140, 144,
146–8, 172, 195–6, 199, 202, Zagreb Animation Festival 68 n.5,
205, 207, 215, 220, 230, 237 113, 135 n.3

Aardman Animations Beyond Stop-Motion (Annabelle Honess Roe)

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Aardman Animations

Annabelle Honess Roe

BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo

First published in Great Britain 2020

Copyright © Annabelle Honess Roe, 2020

For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on p. xiv constitute

Cover design: Charlotte Daniels

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted

ISBN: HB: 978-1-3501-1455-5

Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd.

Introduction: Understanding Aardman Annabelle Honess Roe 1

Section One Identity and Brand 21

1 ‘All you do is call me, I’ll be anything you need’: Aardman

Section Two Cultural Contexts 87

5 Aardman’s Early Shorts and the British Social Realist

Section Three Process and Production 153

9 Animation Storyboarding as Part of the Pre-Production Process:

10 Life’s a Treat: Shaun, Timmy, Aardman and Children’s

Section Four Surface and Performance 193

12 Aardman’s Neo-Baroque: The Dual Nature of Special Effects

Select Bibliography 257

I.1 Aardman’s Annual Turnover, 2000–2017. 2

Jane Batkin is Programme Leader of the BA (Hons) Animation course in

Joseph Darlington is Programme Leader for BA (Hons) Digital Animation

Malcolm Cook is Lecturer in Film at the University of Southampton. He

Richard Haynes is Senior Lecturer in Animation Production at the Arts

University Press, 2018), and co-editor of Fantasy/Animation: Connections

Annabelle Honess Roe is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University

Fatemeh Hosseini-Shakib is a researcher and Assistant Professor in

Christopher Meir is a UC3M CONEX-Marie Curie Fellow at the University

Nicholas Andrew Miller is Associate Professor of English and Director

Alexander Sergeant is Lecturer in Film and Media Theory at Bournemouth

Paul Ward is Professor of Animation Studies at the Arts University

Thomas Walsh graduated from the European School of Classical Animation

Paul Wells is Director of the Animation Academy at the Loughborough

Aylish Wood is Professor of Animation and Film Studies at the University

I owe a debt of gratitude to the contributors whose chapters make up this

Figure I.1 Aardman’s Annual Turnover, 2000–2017.

is a surprising lack of academic writing on Aardman. Publications are for the

work. This is compounded by the historical looseness of the films’ narratives

Diversity and cohesion

For example, in ‘Making of the Were-Rabbit’ viewers are told of the

create Aardman’s stop-motion, a process that is characterized as a labour

reverted to older methods of matte painting and model making in order

Beyond stop-motion film

recordings of overheard conversations and interviews the studio made in

a phenomenological reading of the animation of stop-motion effects in

Creating Creature Comforts (London: Boxtree, 2003), pp. 46–57; Aardman,

number: 02672880. Available at: ­https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/

of the exhibition to ‘Nature’ – ‘a common theme’ in their work. See Art

33 The Aardboiled YouTube channel, which launched in 2017, provides a

Identity and Brand

‘All you do is call me, I’ll be anything you

Commercials, including music videos, have been vital to the formation

successes with television programmes and music videos. Furthermore, the

‘Spread a Little Happiness’: Aardman’s early advertising

central to Aardman’s later advertising. As a music video ‘Sledgehammer’ may

Consumer psychology and advertising in the 1980s

advertising.19 Ironically, the growth of academic research into advertising

the significance of non-functional qualities to the appeal and effectiveness

[F]unctional needs, such as what the product actually does or where

This increasing incorporation of psychological models into advertising

‘Creature Comforts’: The emotional appeal

Introduction: Understanding Aardman Annabelle Honess Roe 1

Section One Identity and Brand 21

Section Two Cultural Contexts 87

Section Three Process and Production 153

Section Four Surface and Performance 193

Select Bibliography 257

I.1 Aardman’s Annual Turnover, 2000–2017. 2

number: 02672880. Available at: https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/

and Altaf Merchant, ‘A Ten-Year Retrospective of Advertising Research

a poor working-class background and a neglected childhood who are