Abstract
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.