BETA | STUDIOS // AARDMAN DIGITAL
Games in the frame
Aardman Animation is famous the world over for its films, characters and Plasticine worlds. But as Will Freeman discovers, the Bristol studio is also home to a furiously productive and wildly creative games development team
Aardman Digital’s Mark Burvill (left) and Jake Manion (right), pose with icon and colleague, Shaun the Sheep.
THINK OF AARDMAN, and it’s likely you’ll imagine stop-frame animated characters. Be it Wallace and Gromit, the Creature Comforts commercials or even the influential music video for Peter Gabriel’s single ‘Sledgehammer’, the projects that have made Aardman an icon of the creative industries are wonderlands built in Plasticine. Or, for the youth of today, Aardman has
become a master of computer-generated realms, with its CG films enjoying vast success and many awards. But Aardman is also a game developer, by
way of its Digital team, which today enjoys a generous share of the company’s sprawling Bristol facility. Founded in 2007, Aardman Digital has added a string to the bow of an outfit that today also produces some 75 commercials year. A prolific producer of games for mobile
24 | OCTOBER 2013
and web, as well as a creator of numerous websites, Aardman Digital is positioned at the very forefront of what the wider organisation
Because of our name, we started
attracting better and better people quite quickly. We’re lucky to be able to do that.
Jake Manion, Aardman Digital
has now been doing for over forty years; namely entertaining. The Digital team itself is relatively small, with around 15 internal staff, but they are
supported by an ample quantity of freelance talent. But just who are the people behind Aardman Digital, and what defines the work they do?
FROM CLAY ACORNS Initially conceived to create websites – and before that newsletters – for Aardman IPs and its legion of fans, the Digital team’s early history saw it occupy just a few desks, surrounded by the giant departments working in clay and pixels. “From that seed of a department, Aardman
Digital grew,” explains the team’s assistant creative director Jake Manion. “I think, because of our name, we started attracting better and better people quite quickly. We’re lucky to be able to do that. We felt that, because we had all these people, we really were punching above our weight as what was
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68