It's the 50th Anniversary of Aardman Animation this year and there have been lots of events and celebrations.
We are touched about recent concern over the future of our beloved clay creations, but wanted to reassure fans that there is absolutely no need to worry.
We have high levels of existing stocks of modelling clay to service current and future productions and, much like Wallace in his workshop, we have been tinkering away behind the scenes for quite some time with plans in place to ensure a smooth transition to new stocks to continue to make our iconic productions.
Image: Alan Parkinson
I've seen quite a few of their creations this year as I attended their exhibition at the Young V&A, Bristol Museum and the MShed in Bristol.
In 2023 I also attended the world premiere of Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, and the Aardman trio walked right past my seat. My son chatted to the director at this year's London Film Festival.
They recently held a Propstore auction where every item predictably exceeded its estimate. The sets that are created are meticulously detailed - my pictures in the albums linked to above show some of the detail that you may not even notice on the screen.
Aardman films are famous for their attention to detail, and their use of and subversion of all the movie-making conventions relating to the genre they are covering. The new Shaun the Sheep film is now out.
Recent films have moved away from using the modelling clay that they used for the early films such as 'A Grand Day Out'. In fact there was a story a few years back that the clay they normally used was no longer manufactured.
The company shared a social media post saying that wasn't a problem:
We have high levels of existing stocks of modelling clay to service current and future productions and, much like Wallace in his workshop, we have been tinkering away behind the scenes for quite some time with plans in place to ensure a smooth transition to new stocks to continue to make our iconic productions.
The Observer piece includes the word "thumbprintiness".
In the later films, there have been some 3D printed elements and also a touch of CGI. This speeds up production, because otherwise a full week of work might generate just a few seconds of film. People like seeing thump prints in the material as otherwise it looks like it might be made with AI. Apparently other companies are deliberately leaving in small 'errors' to avoid looking too perfect in their various media products.
Aardman is currently working on 20 projects according to the article. I look forward to seeing what emerges next.
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