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📂 Category: Aardman,Wallace & Gromit,Animation in film,Animation on TV,Film,London,Museums,Culture,Television & radio
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Aardman Studios is known around the world for its smooth stop-motion train chases, hacking “smart statues,” tea-drinking heroes, and evil penguins.
Now fans will get a behind-the-scenes look at the studio’s most famous projects and see how they went from initial ideas sketched on the kitchen table to Oscar-winning films in a major exhibition at the Young V&A in east London.
Opening in February, Inside Aardman: Wallace & Gromit and Friends promises a unique opportunity to see the creative process at the studio that brought the world Morph, Shaun the Sheep and Norbot.
Alex Newson, chief curator at the Young Victoria and Albert Museum, says he wants the exhibition to “demystify” the animation process and show a new generation of children how their favorite films are made.
“There’s a tremendous amount of skill and technique involved in making animation the way Aardman does,” he said. “But, on the other hand, it’s an incredibly accessible art form. In fact, anyone can create stop-motion animation in their own home with minimal equipment.”“.
The exhibit will feature 150 items, including sets and storyboards such as the train chase scene from Wallace & Gromit: The Wrong Trousers.
“I don’t think a stop-motion sequence like this has ever been shot before,” he said. “Just to see how they planned it at the storyboard stage before doing any modern filming or production is really cool.”
There will also be the interior and exterior of the submarine used by Wallace and Gromit’s arch-nemesis, Feathers McGraw, in Vengeance Most Fowl. The studio’s latest entry in the Wallace and Gromit film series, and it was a huge hit and a hit.
The Young V&A has been trying to secure the Aardman exhibition since before the Covid-19 pandemic. It had considered trying to host the Art of Aardman, which toured in 2023, but the institution, which underwent a major renovation and was named Museum of the Year in 2024, decided to work on something more suitable for its younger audience.
The exhibition will be a key part of Aardmann’s 50th anniversary celebrations, which will take place throughout 2026.
Peter Lord and David Sproxton founded the UK’s largest animation production company while still at school, producing early projects at their kitchen tables. Aardman has become one of the most recognizable names in the British film industry.
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One of the duo’s first creations was Morph, a stop-motion creation featured on the popular children’s show Take Hart. Aardman also created elements of Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer video and produced several advertisements in the 1990s following the success of Creature Comforts, his first Academy Award winner.
In 1989, Nick Park directed A Grand Day Out, the film that brought cheese-obsessed Lancastrian inventor Wallace and his loyal dog, Gromit, to mainstream audiences. The duo has since appeared in four short films and two feature films, becoming the studio’s finest creations in the process. The animation studio won four Oscars and ventured into video games.
In a 2009 interview, Park said he believed Wallace and Gromit remained so popular because they were so distinctly British. “The fact that they are made of plasticine means that their faces can convey emotions very subtly,” he said. Gromit says as much just by raising a sarcastic eyebrow.
In 2018, Lord and Sproxton handed over 75% of the company’s shares to their 140 employees in order to “protect the independence” of the studio. Employees hold the majority of their shares in the company through a trust, similar to the way the John Lewis partnership is structured.
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