During this Artist Talk Peter discusses the beginning of Aardman studios to what it is right now.
All that while creating a replica of their key character Morph. Well played Peter, well played.
(What follows now are in short my notes I made during the talk)
Aardman, what doest it mean? Nothing much really. In the beginning there were Dave and Peter around 17 years old. Dave's father fixed them a job: to create something for deaf children for the BBC. After finishing the short (containing Superman) the BBC was content and some guy whose name they didn't know wanted to write a cheque. They called him the aardman, for they thought aardvarks were funny animals with a fun name and the short had superman in it. Aard + man.
Because they were both bad drawers they went into the third dimension: using plasticine and modelling clay. They started creating stop motion shorts with 3D creations. in 1976 they created the character Morph, filmed blindly on 16mm film. Morph did well, they could stay.
Then they got a suggestion: animate to a soundtrack. From this they started something he liked to call "eavesdropping on conversations" and animate those conversations. The conversations turned out pretty lame and the got fed up so they decided to interview people and animate zoo animals to those interviews. (1989)
Before they started to create feature films in the 00's they made many shorts and made their way until where they are now.
The studio nowadays consists of 5 departments
- Feature films
- TV commercials
- TV series
- Digital team (Apps/website)
- Writing
"Pixar is dull. Just a bunch of guys on computers. Aardman is a playground" © Peter Lord.
I really enjoyed this talk and listening to Peter talking. He had a feeling of trailing off a lot and I thought that made it all feel really genuine. It felt human and personal. There was also a possibility to ask him questions and some really nice ones came forward. I never know what to ask speakers on such a big scale. Hell, I don't even know what to ask them if I meet them face to face. I should start preparing myself better.
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