4.aardman

History: 

Aardman was founded in 1976 as a low-budget project byPeter Lord and David Sproxton, who wanted to realise their dream of producing an animated motion picture. The partnership provided animated sequences for the BBC series for deaf children Vision On creating Morph, a simple clay character. Around the same time Lord and Sproxton made their first foray into adult animation with the shorts Down and Out and Confessions of a Foyer Girl, entries in the BBC'sAnimated Conversations series using real-life conversations as soundtracks. However, these two shorts were not actual Aardman productions. Aardman also created the title sequence for The Great Egg Race.

Later Aardman produced a number of shorts for Channel 4 including the Conversation Pieces series. These five shorts worked in the same area as the Animated Conversationspieces, but were more sophisticated. Lord and Sproxton began hiring more animators at this point; three of the newcomers made their directorial debut at Aardman with the Lip Synchseries. Of the five Lip Synch shorts two were directed by Peter Lord, one by Barry Purves, one by Richard Goleszowski and one by Nick Park.

Aardman Animations, Ltd., also known as Aardman Studios, or simply as Aardman, is an Academy Award-winning British animation studio based in Bristol, United Kingdom. The studio is known for films made using stop-motion clay animation techniques, particularly those featuring Plasticine characters Wallace and Gromit. However, it successfully entered the computer animation market with Flushed Away

Job Roles:

Animator:
An animator has many keys roles they have to set a strong stable set that looks the best it can, they use different materials and equipment to animate, they have to be very skilled and have experience. this is a very skilled job the animators have to be very skilled to be able to set the character up and move them in the most realistic way possible. Clothes are also a major part of characters in an animation, this is when experience helps and makes it as good as possible.  




Story Board Artists:
A story board artists has to be very skilled their main aim is to effectively communicate emotions and feeling through staging, character design, posing and enthusiastic storytelling.  They would need previous experience to help their work be at the highest quality for Aardman. a storyboard artists also can come up with some of the main characters throughout their animations, there drawings will show what they have come up with and what sort of 'personality they are. they need Strong traditional skills such as life drawing, sculpture, painting and photography are also desirable.

A storyboard is one of the main factors within an Istop animation. On a storyboard the artist will draw step by step the animation. each scene will be drawn out on various different story boards unit the whole animation is drawn out. Once they are finished, looking through them will give us a brief ideas of what the story line is and what the main details about the animation.   


CGI Animators:

CGI Animators utilise 2D and 3D digital tools to bring characters and scenes to life. They are artistic in the areas of modelling, lighting and animation. They have traditional animation experience and overlap and follow through, squash and stretch staging and composition and primary and secondary action are also used within Aardman.





The CGI animators use special computers to create special characters that maybe cannot be acted or even be created with make-up. To make a full CGI character takes many different steps. The first is to to get a person in a green suit with sensors on the main joints of the body. Taken the information of the moving person the main joint areas help the CGI animator  create the character, then using the outline you can create the the shape and design of the character that is being created. Once the basic outline and shape has been designed then the more detailed features can come into place giving the character more definition. 





Characters/Props/ Sets
Throughout the Aardman productions they have made many animations, there most famous movies are Wallace and Gromit and Chicken run. They have produced other more than one movies and have had to overcome many animations problems throughout the making of the characters. for the making of the cure of the wear rabbit, they was inspired by other film genres but the wear rabbit was chosen as they wanted it to be 'funny' make the audience laugh but also be dramatic and that's why they made it a wear rabbit that can be intimidating and scary. however having a loving side and be friendly and not as scary as everyone thinks. the characters are well thought out and each individual character has its own personality and a lot off meaning behind it. 

At the Aardman studio there is a room called the rigging room, this is where they fix the puppet, props, scenery and set, there job is to make these good as new and not see where the the set is when it moves during the filming. Also there is a set dressing workshop, this is where vegetables in the film are made.many of the workers have only made vegetables they are professional and have a lot of experience creating the best and most realistic vegetables. Every last little bit of detail goes into thee scenery of the making, the photos that are on the wall in wallace and gromits house are expertly designed and are very detailed. in the art department in the Aardman studies the people that work their job is to design the overall look, everything from landscape to colours, interiors and exteriors, the designs they come up with are very professional and stunning. one artist called paul is responsible for all the painted background you see withing the film in the production floor, this is where the film is produced, its a very challenging room but many experienced workers. in the animator room there are 2 animator assistant animator, they are assigned to  a key animator, the assistant animator are responsible for prepping the key animators puppet ready for the next shot. the whole film is put together in the editing room. voices sound effect and the music. They use new technology and also old. all the background characters have been made numerous off times and are all stored in one room to keep fresh and tidy. there are up to 60 people working on characters, responsible for certain things such as painting, sculpting, foams and latex and various other things.  


Filming and camera techniques: 
Shoot everything on film at the moment. The 35mm film cameras they mainly use "Mitchells" and have, in most cases, been considerably adapted to our purposes. For example, they have video assist cameras which look through the lenses on our film cameras so the animators can see the picture that will be recorded on each frame of film.

The other camera that they still sometimes use which is more affordable is the 16mm Bolex. Failing that, you’d have to be thinking about super 8mm. Peter Lord’s book ‘Cracking Animation’ goes into these issues more thoroughly.



Bibliography: 
http://www.telepathy.co.uk/aardman/culture/faqs.html
http://www.edenproject.com/blog/index.php/2013/02/how-to-animate-stop-motion-tips-from-aardman/
http://www.aardman.com