In 1972 Peter Lord and David Sproxton founded Aardman Animations, a firm that specialized in stop-action animation (animating at 24 painstaking frames per second). Nick Park joined them 1985. Aardman pioneered a quirkY style of stop-motion animation that is the secret of the success award-winning films including Chicken Run, the highest-grossing stop-animated film of all time. The Wallace & Gromit series produced hits like Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and A Grand Day Out (1989), The Wrong Trousers (1993) and A Close Shave (1995).
In A Grand Success! Lord, Sproxton, and Park provide the highlights (and low-lights) of the 45-year history of Aardman. From their first short films, made on their kitchen table to advertisements and music videos–my favorite is Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer”– A Grand Success! shows how these artists developed their own quirky style. They grew their business by taking smart risks. The maneuvering with DreamWorks and SONY show how treacherous Hollywood can be. Fascinating reading! Do you have a favorite animated movie? GRADE: A
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Foreword by Matt Groening p. ix
Introduction by Nick Park p. xiii
Prologue: Let’s put on a show… p. 1
1 Teenage Kicks p. 17
2 Meta-Morph-Osis p. 38
3 A New Decade p. 61
4 Nick Park p. 84
5 Moving on Up p. 100
6 Oscar Fever p. 120
7 Growing Pains p. 141
8 A Pitch in Time p. 163
9 Lost in New York p. 175
10 Chicken Run p. 181
11 A Fable Too Far p. 206
12 Rabbits and Rats p. 213
13 Such Sweet Sorrow p. 232
14 Up in Smoke p. 239
15 A Statement Building p. 244
16 Shaun the Sheep the Superstar p. 266
17 Bristol p. 289
18 Celebrities on Set p. 305
19 Where Do We Go from Here? p. 320
Acknowledgements p. 340
Index p. 341
UP.
I liked Chicken Run and the Wallace and Gromit stuff.
Jeff, I’m with you on UP. CHICKEN RUN thrilled me when I first saw it. Bill Crider was a huge Wallace and Gromit fan.
Sounds interesting. Is it long?
Rick, A GRAND SUCCESS is 320 pages long. But, it’s a quick read.
Oh, never mind, I see.
I love Aardman’s stop motion work every bit as much as I loathe computer animation of the Pixar variety. However, the two techniques seem to be converging to a look where it’s difficult to tell one from another. Some recent Aardman commercials for Chevron look very like digital animation to me. I see that the company has an Aardman Digital division. Does the book discuss the apparent infection of pure stop motion with digital? Will it eventually kill stop motion entirely?
Art, Hollywood forced AARDMAN to use CGI for some projects. That might be leaking over into their commercials. The founders are committed to stop-motion.
Thanks for the info. I wasn’t imagining that I was seeing CGI!
Art, the Aardman crew were not happy with Hollywood forcing them into using CGI, but they used CGI in FLUSHED AWAY (2006).
They were doing this with Norelco commercials and that Xmas movie with Burl Ives when I was a kid! That said, I liked the Wallace and Grommit’s I saw!
Bob, I’m a big fan of Wallace and Grommit. A new Wallace and Grommit project is in the works.