The legendary British studio Aardman Animations, famous worldwide for the characters Wallace, Gromit and Shaun the Sheep, is solving a curious problem. And just at the time when they are preparing their latest feature film for cinemas here.
The film company based in Bristol, southern England, whose stop-motion animated films have won several Oscars, is running out of basic building materials.
In other words, animation clay, that is, the famous plasticine that has characterized the work of «Aardman» for over four decades. The material that the team led by director and artist Nick Park made famous worldwide.
The reason for the sudden lack of plasticine is simple – the end of the British factory Newclay Products, which supplied the key material for this type of stop-motion animation, Lewis Newplast, to the market.
The Newclay factory has already gradually reduced production over the past twenty months, its problems dating back to the time of Brexit. It was affected by high energy prices, but also by the fact that the current owners, who had already reached retirement age, could not find an investor or successor for their business in the field of art supplies, as reported by The Guardian.
Her plasticine, or rather modeling material, is completely specific, and the creators from the Aardman studio have been using it for forty years, during which they have almost perfected the possibilities of its use.
Compared to common types of plasticine for children, this material is exceptional in that it does not dry out, but also does not melt under the effects of light and heat, which is crucial when working for many hours with cameras and lights on the set.
Lewis Newplast plasticine can be used repeatedly, it is pliable enough to be molded into the desired shape, but at the same time strong enough to keep its shape. Animators also draw attention to the fact that fingerprints do not remain on it, it maintains color stability and has a number of other advantages for creators.
But its disadvantage is that it has now definitively reached its end. And the legendary filmmakers from Bristol decide what to do with it.
The Aardman studio was founded in 1976 by a pair of high school classmates, namely Peter Lord and David Sproxton, who were joined in 1985 by Nick Park, the current star and key figure in local filmmaking.
It was they who were behind the first hits of the Aardman studio, which gained global popularity. In particular, it was a short film Comfort, from which the internationally successful series Between us animals was created, in which snippets of comments from ordinary British news were inserted into the mouths of funny characters from zoos or farms.
Then there were the films The Wrong Pants and About Hair, which introduced the inventor Wallace and his canine friend Gromit.
These three films earned Aardman their first three Oscars in the short film category. At the same time, they became a British Christmas classic, regularly repeated on the television program on 26 December.
Not only the Oscar, but also the success of the plasticine heroes from the Aardman studio attracted the attention of Hollywood giants in the nineties. Nick Park’s team was approached directly by Steven Spielberg, who is said to be a big fan of this type of animation.
Subsequently, his studio Dreamworks SKG participated in the global distribution of Aardman films. This connection, of course, has already earned the Bristol filmmakers a worldwide reputation.
Other films followed, now full-length and intended for the whole family — the ninety-minute Chicken Run from 2000 became a global hit with worldwide sales of 225 million dollars.
A feature film with Wallace and Gromit from 2006 called Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (in the original The Curse of the Were-Rabbit) celebrated a similar success, which revolves around a mysterious monster that threatens to destroy the popular garden vegetable festival in the town.
The film, in which the main characters were voiced by stars such as Ralph Fiennes and Helena Bonham Carter, earned 200 million dollars in cinemas around the world and brought the creators, led by Nick Park, the Oscar for the best animated film of the year.
At the same time, the public BBC children’s channel also aired a series of stories with the plasticine character Shaun the Sheep, i.e. Shaun the Sheep, who first appeared in the short film About a Hair. The seven-minute skits following the antics of a down-on-his-luck farmer looking after a vastly underdeveloped herd of farm animals became a global triumph.
Silent grotesques in the format of the Czech Večerníček, which do not require complex translation or dubbing, and the universally understandable theme ensured the popularity of the Ovečka Shaun series not only in Europe and America, but in fact in most of the world, including Arab, Asian and African countries. And in addition to the children, the screens often had fun with the adult audience as well.
To date, 170 episodes have been created in six series, followed by the spin-off Friends of Timmy — the story of Shaun the sheep’s tiny cousin, intended for the smallest children, understandable even for toddlers. So far, three series and 68 episodes have been created.
Shaun the Sheep has received a feature film sequel twice – in 2015 it was Shaun the Sheep in the movie and in 2019 Shaun the Sheep in the movie 2: Farmageddon.
Even Aardman studio has flirted with digital animation in the past – let’s recall the feature film Flushed Away following the adventures of the rat hero in the London sewers after being flushed down the toilet.
The 2006 film, where the characters were voiced by Jean Reno, Kate Winslet, Hugh Jackman or Ian McKellen, grossed $178 million in theaters. Nevertheless, the basic building block of this study is a lump of plasticine. The plasticine that is not available at the moment. According to available information, the creators from Aardman Animations bought all the remaining stock that the Newclay factory had. It should be about forty boxes of material weighing approximately 400 kilograms.They should last Nick Park and his team for about two years. So, apparently, the production and completion of the current new feature film with Wallace and Gromit, which should appear in theaters later this year, should not be jeopardized. What will happen next is not known exactly. Filmmakers have already undoubtedly started experimenting with other materials available on the market, and their social networks were flooded with offers from various countries around the world after the announcement of the end of the Newclay factory.Switching to a different clay after forty years, however, is not just like that. Plasticine is not like plasticine.
