Aardman Week – Television
The peerless efforts of Aardman Animation have been the focus of #AardmanWeek here on Skwigly. Whilst some studios take a specialism in adverts, features, shorts or TV series, Aardman have not only managed to have a go at them, but to conquer them all, introducing generations to charming characters and memorable scenarios. The Aardman entertainment empire even extends to online, gaming and new digital innovations as they find themselves engaging with emerging technologies and applying their charm to VR platforms with films like Special Delivery. By the time we reach their 50th celebrations these new platforms will no doubt have generated plenty more content that will gain equal praise and maybe a couple of new categories for our top ten lists.
For many of us, before we entered the industry or started to go to film festivals our dose of animated charm came from the television, after school at Christmas or on a weekly basis. Join us one final time as we extol a handful the studios landmark TV projects.
Angry Kid – Who Do You Think You Are
Darren Walsh’s Angry Kid exploded onto the scene in 1999, presenting an anarchic approach to stop motion, using live actors as puppets. Pixilation was punked with a series of gurning masks and a parka jacket came together to create an unmistakable brat who captivated our attention with his boyhood antics.
Taking the leap from the short format to a special the ginger anarchist is assigned with writing an essay to avoid the temper of his teacher. With the limited help of his father Angry Kid discovers a lot more than his dim witted imagination is ready for. The character and the series seem underwritten these days, but offered a lot to the TV landscape and still do.
Rex the Runt (TV Series)
When the wobbly, bobbly dribbley, squiggly (is that how you’re supposed to spell it?) dog from Richard Goleszowski’s Ident made his TV debut it was clear that this was an animated sitcom made to engage with more than a children’s audience. Armed with the absurdity of Reeves and Mortimer and the comic variety of The Young Ones (Random Pavarotti disease anyone?) the series makes the most of it’s animated surroundings and possibilities with the cast venturing through minds in submarines, destroying television and romancing vacuum cleaners.
Bob, Wendy, Rex and Vince
Directed by Goleszowski (Now Starzak) the series has a palatable honesty to it and looks like the show he and his team wanted to make as opposed to something designed by a committee, making it effortlessly engaging, visually intriguing and presenting a style of humour we hadn’t seen from Aardman before.
Shaun the Sheep – The Farmer’s Llamas
Since his debut in A Close Shave fans worldwide have been crazy for Shaun the Sheep. Appearing in bespoke advertisements as far away as Japan (where he is a cult icon) before his hit TV series made its way to screens to deliver short comedic skits based in and around Mossy Bottom Farm. A feature followed in 2015 which for a normal franchise would have been the highlight of a characters career, but this is Aardman, and that Christmas fans of the fleecy fella were spoiled with The Farmer’s Llamas, a rising crescendo to what was aptly the year of the sheep.
After a hit feature film the new half hour short had a lot to live up to, but through carefully planned storytelling and through the introduction of boisterous and antagonistic Llamas a tale was crafted that tested and explored Shaun’s personality in a way that we have not seen before. Themes of intimidation, peer pressure and escalation were encapsulated in a short that managed to fill’ its runtime with humour, suspense and high quality animation, re affirming Aardman’s rightful place as the heroes of the half hour format.
Creature Comforts (TV Series)
Since Creature Comforts was awarded the Oscar in 1990 talking animals have been a staple of the Aardman brand. Whilst talking animals are nothing new, the juxtaposition of having relatively normal, even boring human conversation modified by having it emit from a carefully chosen animal struck a chord that the studio have been associated with since. Through the heat electric campaign and others, the public were drip fed a steady supply of this idea, but in 2003 the idea was expanded into a full series.
Proving that you can bottle lightning the humour once again came from taking the mundane conversations from the anonymous public and applying it to the perfect animal. Got a loud, hard-man Geordie? Make him a mouse! A bickering couple? Make them a cat and a dog. Get this combination wrong and the sketch falls flat, but for two full series set in the UK and one in America, the studio proved that they can bottle lightning.
Morph
Morph is a simple but dynamic creation, a platform for gags that range from the slapstick variety to the magical and abstract. The terracotta terror and his mate Chas are representative of Aardman themselves, bending and twisting to whatever shape is needed to entertain or amuse. His simplicity works to his advantage, wether it be accompanying Tony Hart, the SMart team or in a solo series. Morph recently proved that he has cross generational appeal as he made a triumphant return to YouTube and then back in his rightful place on the TV. The fact that he has been around for as long as Aardman itself is anything but amazing.
Wallace and Gromit series
Everyones favourite cheese-obsessed Lancastrian and his clever pooch have enjoyed unrivalled success for many years through short films, TV series features and television shorts. They’re a part of the fabric of our culture and as recognised worldwide.
Wallace’s catch phrases and Gromit’s communicative eyebrows make a memorable pairing but it is the vision of film obsessive Nick Park that make these films timeless. Loaded with references to films, the TV shorts are mini movies in their own right not simply recreating scenarios (although that is a staple of the films) but capturing a cinematic mood such as the Hitchcockian vibe of The Wrong Trousers which you can read more about in my previous reflection here.
The welcome success of the Wallace and Gromit TV shorts were not just good for Aardman, but for British TV. The yearly tradition of a half hour Christmas animation created a platform for Daniel Greaves FlatWorld, Barry Purves Hamilton’s Mattress and later Magic Light Picture’s Gruffalo series. Most people would rather see Christmas without the Queens speech than without their yearly dose of animation!
The studio have taken the demand for more of these characters and put it to very good use. World of Invention took garden-shed inventor angle of Wallace’s personality and delivered a series of vignettes that introduced children to real life innovators. Wrong Trousers Day and Gromit Unleashed raised millions of pounds using the star power that the pair command and putting it to a good cause.
As we close our reflections of Aardman’s 40 years it seems that we’ve only just managed to scratch the surface of what Aardman represents. It’s not a sideburned superhero or the work of any particular director, character or film. It’s an amalgamation of the talent of hundreds of people over the years that has created a spririt that’s infectious, inspirational and aspirational – shaping the industry as we know it. These first 40 years are just the start.