A Grand Night In: The Story of Aardman
For 45 years, Aardman Animation Studios has produced some of the most stunning stop-motion or plasticine animation films ever made. They introduced their Bristol brand to the world through their beloved characters including Morph, Wallace and Grommit, Shaun the Sheep, Timmy the Lamb and more, with British humor on the upper lip and tongue. Widely popular and consistently a top choice with critics, Aardman’s film has garnered numerous accolades, including nine Academy Award nominations and a record-breaking three Academy Awards.
Her success has translated into box office success, with her films grossing $1.1 billion worldwide.
In the early ’70s, Aardman founders Peter Lord and David Sproxton produced short cutscenes and feature films for the BBC’s series Vision On for deaf children. They then created their first character, Morph, a brown, sculpted Gambit-like character who eventually got his own hit TV series. From the mid-70s to the late 80s, Aardman was busy working on other BBC series, animated commercials and even music videos. Her iconic video for Peter Gabriel’s 1987 hit “Sledgehammer” won a record nine MTV Video Music Awards – still the most for a music video.
In the late ’80s, they met Nick Parker, a young animator who had finished a student film about a thoroughly naive, somewhat awkward, cheese-obsessed English everyman and inventor Wallace and his brilliant Whip Gromit. Lord and Sproxton helped him finish the film, and Park became their new animator.
In 1989, two of Aardman’s animated shorts, Creature Comforts and Wallace and Grommit: A Grand Day Out, directed by her newcomer Parker, were nominated for Academy Awards, and Creature Comforts won. Two other short films by Wallace and Gromit, The Wrong Pants (1993) and Shaved (1995), also won Oscars.
From 1997 to 2007, Aardman worked at DreamWorks Animation. Released in 2000, the film Chicken Run remains the highest-grossing stop-motion animated film of all time. Another Oscar and box-office winner in 2005 followed: Wallace and Gromit’s The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, and then Aardman’s first foray into computer animation, the feature film Flushed Away.
Aardman has directed other films over the past 16 years, including 2011’s Arthur Christmas and 2012’s Pirates! (Oscar-nominated feature film), Early Man (2018) and the TV show The Age of Timmy, a spin-off of the global TV hit Shaun the Sheep. Sean also has two Oscar-nominated feature films, Shaun the Sheep Movie (2015) and Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farm War (2019).
During the pandemic, Aardman and Netflix also produced the Oscar-nominated 2022 animated short Robin Robin — Aardman’s first film to use felt dolls in place of voices.
Each Aardman film is a carefully crafted visual treat. The creativity, passion, dedication and patience of each animator are highlighted and celebrated in every frame as they bring these clay characters to life.
What sets Aardman apart from the larger animation studios is that each project remains focused on story (and humor) rather than marketing and merch.
Directed by: Richard Mears
