Aardman Animations
Aardman Animations, Ltd., also known as Aardman Studios, or simply as Aardman, is a British animation studio based in Bristol. Aardman is known for films made using stop-motion clay animation techniques, particularly those featuring Plasticine characters Wallace and Gromit. After some experimental computer animated short films during the late 1990s, beginning with Owzat (1997), it entered the computer animation market with Flushed Away (2006). Aardman films have made $971.8 million worldwide and average $162 million per film. All of their stop motion films are among the highest-grossing stop-motion films, with their debut, Chicken Run, being their top-grossing film as well as the highest-grossing stop-motion film of all time.
History
1972–1996
Aardman was founded in 1972 as a low-budget project by Peter Lord and David Sproxton, who wanted to realise their dream of producing an animated motion picture. The partnership provided animated sequences for the BBC series for deaf children Vision On. After creating a segment called "Greeblies" (1975) using clay animation, became what was the inspiration for creating Morph, a simple clay character. Around the same time Lord and Sproxton made their first foray into adult animation with the shorts Down and Out and Confessions of a Foyer Girl, entries in the BBC's Animated Conversations series using real-life conversations as soundtracks. However, these two shorts were not actual Aardman productions. Aardman also created the title sequence for The Great Egg Race and supplied animation for the multiple award winning music video of Peter Gabriel's song "Sledgehammer". They produced the music video for the song "My Baby Just Cares For Me" by Nina Simone in 1987.