Aardman Animations, Ltd., also known as Aardman Studios, or simply as Aardman, is a British animation studio based in Bristol, United Kingdom. The studio is known for films made using stop-motion clay animation techniques, particularly those featuring Plasticine characters Wallace and Gromit. However, it successfully entered the computer animation market with Flushed Away (2006).
Aardman was founded in 1972 as a low-budget project by Peter Lord and David Sproxton, who wanted to realise their dream of producing an animated motion picture. The partnership provided animated sequences for the BBC series for deaf children Vision On. After creating a segment called "Greeblies" (1975) using clay animation, became what was the inspiration for creating Morph, a simple clay character. Around the same time Lord and Sproxton made their first foray into adult animation with the shorts Down and Out and Confessions of a Foyer Girl, entries in the BBC's Animated Conversations series using real-life conversations as soundtracks. However, these two shorts were not actual Aardman productions. Aardman also created the title sequence for The Great Egg Race and supplied animation for the multiple award winning music video of Peter Gabriel's song "Sledgehammer".
The Sheep is a character, created by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll. It appeared in Dodgson's book, Through the Looking-Glass, the sequel to his book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
The Sheep is first mentioned in the fifth chapter of Through the Looking-Glass, "Wool and Water". The White Queen is talking to Alice, when she suddenly starts "baa-ing" and then seems to 'wrap herself in wool'. Alice figures out she is in a shop, and that The White Queen has turned into a sheep. The Sheep sits in her chair knitting as Alice looks around the shop. She gives Alice a pair of her knitting needles, and asks her if she can row. As Alice begins to answer, she realizes that they are in a little boat, and that the needles have turned into oars. As they glide along the water, the Sheep repeatedly shouts out "Feather," and tells Alice that they will be catching crabs. Alice's attention is then put onto some scented rushes growing in the water. She tries picking them, but they are only 'dream rushes' and melt away. She then quickly catches a crab, which she actually didn't see, and they are all suddenly in the shop again. Alice buys an egg from the Sheep (that ends up turning into Humpty Dumpty) and the two part ways.
Peter Lord CBE (born 1953 in Bristol, United Kingdom) is a British film producer, director and co-founder of the Academy award-winning Aardman Animations studio, an animation firm best known for its clay animated films and shorts, particularly those featuring plasticine duo Wallace & Gromit.
In cooperation with David Sproxton, a friend of his youth, he realised his dream of "making and taking an animated movie". He graduated in English from the University of York in 1976. He and Sproxton founded Aardman as a low-budget backyard studio, producing shorts and trailers for publicity. Later on, in the early eighties Nick Park joined the group. Lord, Park and Sproxton developed and finalised their style of detailed and lovingly designed clay animation characters from stop motion techniques (though directed by Stephen Johnson their claymation is shown in the music video Sledgehammer (1986) by Peter Gabriel). In 1991 Lord animated Adam, a 6 minute clay animation that was nominated for an Academy Award. Park created the "odd-couple" Wallace and Gromit-shorts in cooperation with Lord and Sproxton. All three together worked as producers, editors and directors. Other awarded productions by Peter Lord are Chicken Run (2000), the first feature film from Aardman and the Academy Award-winning Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005).