Aardman Animations: Craft, Technology and Identity Beyond Stop-Motion

"The Bristol-based animation company Aardman is best known for its most famous creations Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep. But despite the quintessentially British aesthetic and tone of its movies, this very British studio continues to enjoy international box office success with movies such as Shaun the Sheep Movie, Flushed Away and Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Aardman has always been closely linked with one of its key animators, Nick Park, and its stop motion, Plasticine-modelled family films, but it has more recently begun to experiment with modern digital filmmaking effects that either emulate 'Claymation' methods or form a hybrid animation style. This unique volume brings together leading film and animation scholars with children's media/animation professionals to explore the production practices behind Aardman's creativity, its history from its early shorts to contemporary hits, how its films fit within traditions of British animation, social realism and fantasy cinema, the key personalities who have formed its ethos, its representations of 'British-ness' on screen and the implications of traditional animation methods in a digital era"-- Provided by publisher Cover 1 Contents 8 List of Figures 10 List of Contributors 11 Acknowledgements 15 Introduction: Understanding Aardman Annabelle Honess Roe 16 Section One Identity and Brand 36 1 ‘All you do is call me, I’ll be anything you need’: Aardman Animations, Music Videos and Commercials Malcolm Cook 38 2 Music, Sound and Northernness in the Wallace and Gromit Films Joseph Darlington 54 3 ‘Yahoo! My last moment has come’: Peter Lord and the Literacy of Wit and Nostalgia Paul Wells 68 4 From Europe to Hollywood and Back Again: Aardman and Its Studio Partners Christopher Meir 86 Section Two Cultural Contexts 102 5 Aardman’s Early Shorts and the British Social Realist Tradition Fatemeh Hosseini-Shakib 104 6 A Darker Heartland: Otherness, Dysfunction and the Uncanny in Aardman’s Short Films Jane Batkin 120 7 Washed Up: Animating Literary Corpses in The Pearce Sisters Nicholas Andrew Miller 134 8 Wallace and Gromit and the British Fantasy Tradition Alexander Sergeant 154 Section Three Process and Production 168 9 Animation Storyboarding as Part of the Pre-Production Process: An Aardman Case Study Paul Ward 170 10 Life’s a Treat: Shaun, Timmy, Aardman and Children’s Television Linda Simensky 184 11 Shaun the Sheep – Buster Keaton Reborn? Richard Haynes 196 Section Four Surface and Performance 208 12 Aardman’s Neo-Baroque: The Dual Nature of Special Effects in Aardman’s Feature Film Production Thomas Walsh 210 13 Performing Authenticity through Clay in the Wallace and Gromit Films Laura Ivins 226 14 Between Plasticine and Pixel: Aardman’s Digital Thumbprint Christopher Holliday 238 15 Aardman! In an Entanglement with CGI! Aylish Wood 256 Select Bibliography 272 Index 282 Aardman is a Bristol-based animation company known for its quintessentially British aesthetic and tone. Yet it continues to thrive internationally, its recent feature Shaun the Sheep Movie made $19 million at the US box office, Flushed Away made $64 million and the latest Wallace and Gromit film Curse of the Were-Rabbit made $56 million stateside. To some extent inextricable from one of its key animators, Nick Park, it made its mark in stop-motion, Plasticine-modelled family films and has more recently begun to experiment with modern digital filmmaking effects that either emulate ‘Claymation’ methods or form a hybrid animation style. This unique volume brings together leading scholars from film studies and animation studies and children’s media/animation professionals to explore the production practices behind Aardman's creativity, the key personalities who have formed its ethos, its representations of ‘British-ness’ on screen and the implications of traditional animation methods in a digital era "Wonder Woman was created in the early 1940s as a paragon of female empowerment and beauty and her near eighty-year history has included seismic socio-cultural changes. In this book, Joan Ormrod analyses key moments in the superheroine's career and views them through the prism of the female body. This book explores how Wonder Woman's body has changed over the years as her mission has shifted from being an ambassador for peace and love to the greatest warrior in the DC transmedia universe, as she's reflected increasing technological sophistication, globalisation and women's changing roles and ambitions. Wonder Woman's physical form, Ormrod argues, is both an articulation of female potential and attempts to constrain it. Her body has always been an amalgamation of the feminine ideal in popular culture and wider socio-cultural debate, from Betty Grable to the 1960s 'mod' girl, to the Iron Maiden of the 1980s."-- Provided by publisher