Aardman Animations

Two school friends

Peter Lord and David Sproxton started making animated films as teenagers and founded Aardman in 1972. The name came from a character in one of their early films. They made animation for children's television, and in 1977 their small clay character Morph appeared on the BBC art show Take Hart, beginning a long career.

Nick Park joins

Animator Nick Park joined Aardman in the mid-1980s, bringing his student film about an inventor named Wallace and his clever dog Gromit. A Grand Day Out was finished in 1989. The same year Park's Creature Comforts, which matched real interviews with clay zoo animals, won the Oscar for animated short.

Wallace and Gromit

The Wrong Trousers (1993) and A Close Shave (1995) both won Oscars for animated short, with thrilling chases built from tiny, careful movements. The feature Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, and Vengeance Most Fowl followed in 2024.

How Aardman films are made

Characters are built around metal skeletons, called armatures, and covered in modelling clay or silicone. Animators move them a fraction of a centimetre for each frame, often shooting on twos. A good day might produce only a few seconds of finished film. Mouths are often replaced from a library of pre-made shapes to match the dialogue, and fingerprints in the clay are part of the charm.

Features and the future

Aardman's first feature, Chicken Run (2000), was a hit, and Shaun the Sheep moved from television to the big screen. In 2018 the founders transferred most of the company to an employee ownership trust to keep it independent in Bristol. Read our stop-motion page for the history of the technique.

Visiting and learning

Aardman has run exhibitions and model-making workshops, and its characters appear in public art trails in Bristol, where giant decorated sculptures of Gromit and Shaun have raised money for a children's hospital charity. The studio also shares behind-the-scenes videos that show how puppets and sets are built.

Did you know? Stop-motion animators at Aardman often keep a mirror on set so they can act out an expression themselves before posing the puppet. Small details, such as the way Gromit communicates only with his eyebrows and ears, show how much can be said without words.

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