Peter Lord

After a sour turn of events during my first day of Bradford Animation Festival, I just want to thank this hilarious, incredibly humble and down-to-earth man for brightening up my evening during his screen talk.

This man doesn't really need an introduction, but I will do it anyway. Peter Lord is a British film producer, director and co-founder of the renowned Aardman Animations studio alongside David Sproxton, best known for their clay-animated films ad shorts, particularly those featuring plasticine duo Wallace & Gromit. The studio has had ten Oscar nominations and has won four.

Peter was pretty quick to admit that he and David Sproxton started out as amateurs (Though frankly, who doesn't? You would have to be a real arrogant piece of... dickweed to actually think otherwise of yourself) during the start of their animation career, and frankly it all came down to luck, seeing as they didn't have the most competitive prices as compared to other animation companies at the time, but it was as simple as it sounded apparently, and the reason they were able to get their clients was simply because their works were of the utmost quality.

I was pleased that "Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!" was one of the more discussed works during this talk, seeing that it still remains one of my most favourite Aardman works to date. It is no surprise that this film involved the working team thus far out of all the Aardman feature films, especially when so many new things were tried with it, such as combining digital effects with their beloved traditional stop-motion methods. It was also from there that we learnt that the studio is divided into at least 5 important areas that comprises of Feature Films, Commercials, TV Series (Such as "Shaun the Sheep"), Digital Online Groups (Games and Apps) and of course Rights (Basing around the selling of their TV programs to various channels and of course merchandise).

It is no surprise that Aardman should have a zanier and more playful working environment as compared to companies such as Pixar (So says Mister Lord, but I am pretty curious about the working environment of other animation companies now), seeing how stop-motion requires quite a bit of both footwork and handwork (I mean I suppose you can sit down while adjusting those plasticine models frame by frame, but that doesn't sound like a good idea)... and like any proper animation company, acting reference is required before they actually begin animating scenes.

A notable bit of news about Peter Lord is his recent return to 'hands on' animation after 18 years, along with the return of Morph (Created way back in 1977), thanks to a successful Kickstarter. Peter and the other senior members of the studio were at first a little wary about getting funds through a Kickstarter, worrying that folks would be a little more than antagonistic towards the idea, seeing as they are a "successful studio with already more than enough money in their pockets", but thankfully, not only were they able to raise enough money for 12 1 minute shorts, they were also connect a little more personally with their audience through this site than they initially realised.

It's great to see that this studio is still going strong, and I was glad that I was able to attend this insightful and funny talk, it really does make me appreciate stop-motion animations a whole lot more now and the folks that work on them.