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Stop motion is an animated filmmaking technique in which objects are physically manipulated in small increments between individually photographed frames so that they will appear to exhibit independent motion or change when the series of frames is played back. Any kind of object can thus be animated, but puppets with movable joints or plasticine figures are most commonly used. Puppets, models or clay figures built around an armature are used in model animation. Stop motion with live actors is often referred to as pixilation. Stop motion of flat materials such as paper, fabrics or photographs is usually called cutout animation.
Aardman Animations Limited, stylized as AARDMAN since 2022, is a British animation studio based in Bristol. It is known for films and television series made using stop motion and clay animation techniques, particularly those featuring its plasticine characters from Wallace & Gromit, Chicken Run, Shaun the Sheep, and Morph. After some experimental computer-animated short films during the late 1990s, beginning with Owzat (1997), Aardman entered the computer animation market with Flushed Away (2006). As of February 2020, it had earned $1.1 billion worldwide, with an average $135.6 million per film. Between 2000 and 2006, Aardman partnered ways with DreamWorks Animation.
Nicholas Wulstan Park is an English filmmaker and animator who created Wallace & Gromit, Creature Comforts, Chicken Run, Shaun the Sheep, and Early Man. Park has been nominated for an Academy Award a total of six times and won four with Creature Comforts (1989), The Wrong Trousers (1993), A Close Shave (1995) and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005).
Rex the Runt is a stop-motion adult animated claymation pixilation comedy series, primarily consisting of a television show and two short films produced by Aardman Animations and Egmont Imagination for BBC Bristol, with EVA Entertainment co-producing the first series. Its main characters are four plasticine dogs: Rex, Wendy, Bad Bob and Vince.
Richard Edmund Williams was a Canadian-British animator, voice actor, and painter. A three-time Academy Award winner, he is best known as the animation director on Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) -- for which he won two Academy Awards—and as the director of his unfinished feature film The Thief and the Cobbler (1993). His work on the short film A Christmas Carol (1971) earned him his first Academy Award. He was also a film title sequence designer and animator. Other works in this field include the title sequences for What's New Pussycat? (1965) and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966), title and linking sequences in The Charge of the Light Brigade, and the intros of the eponymous cartoon feline for two of the later Pink Panther films. In 2002 he published The Animator's Survival Kit, an authoritative manual of animation methods and techniques, which has since been turned into a 16-DVD box set as well as an iOS app. From 2008 he worked as artist in residence at Aardman Animations in Bristol, and in 2015 he received both Oscar and BAFTA nominations in the best animated short category for his short film Prologue.
Creature Comforts is a British adult stop-motion comedy mockumentary franchise originating in a 1989 British humorous animated short film of the same name. The film matched animated zoo animals with a soundtrack of people talking about their homes, making it appear as if the animals were being interviewed about their living conditions. It was created by Nick Park and Aardman Animations. The film later became the basis of a series of television advertisements for the electricity boards in the United Kingdom. In 2003, a television series in the same style was released. An American version of the series was also made. A sequel series, Things We Love, first aired on BBC One in 2024.
Chicken Run is a 2000 animated adventure comedy film produced by Pathé and Aardman Animations in partnership with DreamWorks Animation. Aardman's first feature-length film, it was directed by Peter Lord and Nick Park from a screenplay by Karey Kirkpatrick and based on an original story by Lord and Park. The film stars the voices of Julia Sawalha, Mel Gibson, Tony Haygarth, Miranda Richardson, Phil Daniels, Lynn Ferguson, Timothy Spall, Imelda Staunton, and Benjamin Whitrow. Set in the countryside of Yorkshire, the plot centres on a group of British anthropomorphic chickens who see an American rooster named Rocky Rhodes as their only hope to escape the farm when their owners want to turn them into chicken pies.
Claymation, sometimes called clay animation or plasticine animation, is one of many forms of stop-motion animation. Each animated piece, either character or background, is "deformable"—made of a malleable substance, usually plasticine clay.
The Wrong Trousers is a 1993 British stop-motion animated short film co-written and directed by Nick Park, featuring his characters Wallace & Gromit, and was produced by Aardman Animations in association with Wallace and Gromit Ltd., BBC Bristol, Lionheart Television and BBC Children's International. It is the second film featuring the eccentric inventor Wallace and his dog Gromit, following A Grand Day Out (1989). In the film, a villainous penguin, Feathers McGraw, posing as a lodger, recruits Wallace by using his techno-trousers to steal a diamond from the city museum.
Brian Bedford was an English actor. He appeared in film and on stage, and was an actor-director of Shakespeare productions. Bedford was nominated for seven Tony Awards for his theatrical work, winning once.
David Rintoul is a Scottish stage and television actor. Rintoul was born in Aberdeen, Scotland. He studied at the University of Edinburgh, and won a scholarship to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.
Barry J.C. Purves is an English animator, director and screenwriter of puppet animation television and cinema. He is also a theatre designer and director, primarily for the Altrincham Garrick Playhouse in Manchester.
David Bowers is an English animator, storyboard artist, film director, screenwriter and voice actor.
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a 1959 Czechoslovak animated puppet film directed by Jiří Trnka, his last feature length film before his death 10 years later in 1969. It is based on the Shakespeare play of the same name.
Barry Cook is an American film director who has worked in the animated film industry since the 1980s. Cook and Tony Bancroft directed Mulan (1998), for which they won the 1998 Annie Award for Best Animated Feature. Cook was also the co-director for Arthur Christmas (2011), directed by Sarah Smith. Cook also directed Walking with Dinosaurs (2013) with Neil Nightingale.
Sweet Disaster is a 1986 series of short films, made for Channel 4. It consists of "animated visions of the apocalypse", and includes films such as Babylon and Sweet Disaster. The series was conceived by producer David Hopkins. TheLostContinent explains "Hopkins scripted each of these films aside from the dialogue-free Dreamless Sleep". The films are fairly obscure; Nick Park noted that Babylon "hasn't really seen the light of day for a long time."
Going Equipped is an animated short film created by Aardman Animations. It was directed by Peter Lord.
Lip Synch is a series of five 1989-1990 short films made by Aardman Animations which used vox pops as inspiration for their subject matter. They were commissioned by Channel 4. Nick Park's contribution to the series was the film Creature Comforts, which later won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short of 1990. Channel 4 screened the films as part of their Four-Mations UK season in November 1990.
War Story is a 1989 animated short film created by Aardman Animations. It was directed by Peter Lord.
Aardman Animations is an animation studio in Bristol, England that produces stop motion and computer-animated features, shorts, TV series and adverts.
References
- ↑ BFI
- 1 2 "Next (1990)". IMDb. Archived from the original on Jan 15, 2015. Retrieved 2014-01-11.
- ↑ Stewart, Jez (2017-08-11). "Puppet thespian: Barry Purves, keeper of the flame | Sight & Sound". British Film Institute. Archived from the original on Oct 5, 2023.
- 1 2 BFI Screenonline: "Next (1989)".
- ↑ "Next". Barry JC Purves. Archived from the original on Aug 8, 2022.
- ↑ "The Animated Century" - Rembrandt Films.
