Aardman Animations (Present)

Aardman Animations is an animation company founded by Peter Lord in 1972. The company created a short film called Morph, produced for BBC as a children's program which became highly popular. This later led to their big success. They have had many successful films such as Chicken Run, Flushed Away and Morph.

Aardman specialize in claymation and CGI(computer generated imagery) animation. Claymation includes creating clay models around armature to make it easier to create movement for the characters. A picture is taken each time the model is moved and later put together to create a short animation sequence. The pictures are at 24 frames per second which gives so that the animation sequence runs smoothly and look realistic. This technique relies on persistence of vision to create the illusion of movement in an animation.

For the film Chicken Run, it took a week in the studio to create just one minute of film as it takes a long time to get pictures of the models after every movement. The film has a 24fps frame rate and was created using clay for the models and armature to make it easier for the models to move.