 These films received a very good audience and led directly to offers to produce television commercials and later pop-promos, including the seminal video to Peter Gabriel’s ‘Sledgehammer’. Many awards were won by Aardman during this period for its commercials, especially for the series inspired by Nick Park’s ‘Creature Comforts’ for the Electricity Association.
Aardman Animations has received six Oscar® nominations and have won three times (Creature Comforts, The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave) and is now recognised as the world’s leading model animation studio. It houses the talents of many young directors producing animated television series, short films and tv commercials.
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In 1998 Aardman made a further expansion and acquired new studio premises on the outskirts of Bristol. Here the first of a series of feature films is in the final stages of production and scheduled for release in Summer 2000. The film is called Chicken Run and is co-directed by Nick Park and Peter Lord.
 Alongside its production work Aardman has a busy rights and licensing department responsible for managing the character brands it creates. In addition to the well loved characters created by the studio (Morph, Creature Comforts and Wallace and Gromit) there are many new characters emerging including Rex the Runt and Angry Kid.
Imagination, innovation and integrity are at the heart of Aardman’s work, permeating all aspects of the company’s operation, not just film-making. |
