Aardman animations : beyond stop motion / edited by Annabelle Honess Roe.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Honess Roe, Annabelle, editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Aardman Animations (Firm).

Animated films--Great Britain--History and criticism.

Animated films.

Animated television programs--Great Britain--History and criticism.

Animated television programs.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (289 pages).

Distribution:

[London, England] : Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020

Place of Publication:

London [England] : Bloomsbury Academic, 2020.

Summary:

The Bristol-based animation company Aardman is best known for its most famous creations Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep. But despite the quintessentially British aesthetic and tone of its movies, this very British studio continues to enjoy international box office success with movies such as Shaun the Sheep Movie, Flushed Away and Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Aardman has always been closely linked with one of its key animators, Nick Park, and its stop motion, Plasticine-modelled family films, but it 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 film and animation scholars with children's media/animation professionals to explore the production practices behind Aardman's creativity, its history from its early shorts to contemporary hits, how its films fit within traditions of British animation, social realism and fantasy cinema, 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.

Contents:

Introduction: Understanding Aardman Annabelle Honess Roe

Identity and Brand

1. 'All you do is call me, I'll be anything you need' Aardman Animations, Music Videos and Commercials Malcolm Cook

2. Music, Sound and Northernness in the Wallace and Gromit Films Joseph Darlington

3. Lord and Master: Eccentricity, Nostalgia and Authority in the Work of Peter Lord Paul Wells

4. From Europe to Hollywood and Back Again: Aardman and its Studio Partners

Christopher Meir

Cultural Contexts

5. Aardman's Early Shorts and the British Social Realist Tradition Fatemeh Hosseini-Shakib

6. A Darker Heartland: Otherness, Dysfunction and the Uncanny in Aardman's Short films Jane Batkin

7. Washed Up: Animating Literary Corpses in The Pearce Sisters Nicholas Andrew Miller

8. Wallace and Gromit and the British Fantasy Tradition

Alexander Sergeant

Process and Production

9. Animation Storyboarding as Part of the Pre-Production Process: An Aardman Case Study Paul Ward

10. Life's a Treat: Shaun, Timmy, Aardman and Children's Television

Linda Simensky

11. Shaun the Sheep - Buster Keaton Reborn? Richard Haynes

Surface and Performance

12. Aardman's Neo-Baroque: The Dual Nature of Special Effects in Aardman's Feature Film Production Thomas Walsh

13. Performing Authenticity through Clay in the Wallace and Gromit Films Laura Ivins

14. Between Plasticine and Pixel: Aardman's Digital Handprint Christopher Holliday

15. Aardman! In an Entanglement with CGI! Aylish Wood.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781350130296

135013029X

9781350130319

1350130311

9781350130302

1350130303

OCLC:

1139154579