As AV turns 15, let's take a look back at the site we descended from. Below you can explore the database Olivier compiled at Animated Movies during its existence, as it last appeared online in October 2003.
| Animated Movies was launched by Olivier Mouroux in 1999. In addition to a daily news report, he also created a database of information about past, current, and upcoming films. In 2003, he took a job in the industry and had to give up his work on the site. Several fans of Animated Movies decided to take on the task of keeping the news portion of his site going, and founded what is now Animated Views. As AV turns 15, let's take a look back at the site we descended from. Below you can explore the database Olivier compiled at Animated Movies during its existence, as it last appeared online in October 2003. |
Aardman Animations was founded in 1972 by David Sproxton and Peter Lord.
They
met at school and began their animating partnership in their spare time,
using a 16mm camera belonging to David’s father. They were asked to produce
something for the show 'Vision On' and made a short piece using cell animation
featuring a nerdish Superman character, called Aardman.This film was bought
by the BBC and thus in 1972 Aardman Animations was founded. Upon leaving
their respective Northern universities the two set up in Bristol, the home
of 'Vision On'.
The legendary clay character Morph made his first appearance in 1976, in Take Hart, the follow up series to Vision On, and his popularity led to the BBC commissioning a 26 part five minute series, ‘The Amazing Adventures of Morph’ which was screened in 1981.
Peter
and David had always thought there was an adult audience for animated films,
and in 1978 made two short films using real-life soundtracks, for BBC Bristol
under the guidance of Colin Thomas. Although these two films (‘Down and
Out’ and ‘Confessions of a Foyer Girl’) were disregarded by the BBC they
were seen a couple of years later by Jeremy Isaacs who was creating the
shape of the newly formed Channel Four.
This led directly to the commissioning of five similarly constructed films (‘Conversation Pieces’) and later to the ‘Lip Sync’ series featuring the Oscar® winning ‘Creature Comforts’. These films demonstrated how real people could be characterised with insight, humour, and sensitivity.
These
films received a very good audience and led directly to offers to produce
television commercials and later pop-promos, including the seminal video
to Peter Gabriel’s ‘Sledgehammer’. Many awards were won by Aardman during
this period for its commercials, especially for the series inspired by
Nick Park’s ‘Creature Comforts’
for the Electricity Association.
Aardman Animations has received seven Oscar® nominations, most
recently in 2000 for Humdrum, they have won three times (Creature Comforts,
The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave) and is now recognised as the world’s
leading model animation studio. It houses the talents of many young directors
producing animated television series, short films and TV commercials.
In
1998 Aardman made a further expansion and acquired new studio premises
on the outskirts of Bristol. Here the first of a series of feature films
is in the final stages of production and scheduled for release in Summer
2000. The film is called Chicken Run
and is co-directed by Nick Park and Peter Lord.
Alongside its production work Aardman has a busy rights and licensing department responsible for managing the character brands it creates. In addition to the well loved characters created by the studio (Morph, Creature Comforts and Wallace and Gromit) there are many new characters emerging including Rex the Runt and Angry Kid.
Imagination, innovation and integrity are at the heart of Aardman’s
work, permeating all aspects of the company’s operation, not just film-making.