SaraLara: Bradford Animation Festival Part 1

Notes

Co-founder of Aardman Animations

History of Aardman

Super hero falling down a hole - first sold animation, pencil drawing, The character was called Aardman.
Peter Lord was 17 at the time.
Aardvark + Superman = Aardman.
They ended up moving into Plasticine.
They came up with a new recipe for Plasticine which worked better than the bought one.
This was inspired by the American Animation 'Evolution'
They then worked with a program called Vision On.
They were the only people using Plasticine in the country.
They then moved onto Take Heart and created 'Morph' in 1976. Shot on a 16mil film, shot blind.
They started to animate to live sound tracks.
They made a series of films using this idea.
1978 Down and Out.
1984 Met Nick Park, they got fed up of finding live sound tracks.
They abandoned the ease dropping and moved into interviewing people.
'Creature Comforts'

Aardman animations have five different areas

Feature Films.
Commercials
TV series
Games and Apps
Rights department

TV Series - Shaun the Sheep

Digital Department - Collected materials from children across the country and created a film from it.

TV Commercials - They do loads of commercials. It is much more rigid, less interesting. Good training ground.

Feature Films - 2 CG, 4 Stop motions.

Nick Park is currently directing a new film.

Best alternative for Plasticine - harpature terracotta Plasticine (Morph). (Strong, Hard) Add chalk to Newplast Plasticine and Vaseline. "Use rigs to hold them up"

John Wright model makers.

Peter Lord has now returned to animating.

Aardman are very old fashioned, probably due to their generation. They used stop motion because they liked materials/ things. "Stop motion is collaborative and physical... but it is also playful"

"The way the puppets are built effects the time it takes to animate"

Peter Lord is completely committed to stop motion animation. "Knowing that it is a doll you can pick up is appealing"

They have to keep to a younger audience due to not getting a wider audience when it is just for adults.