STUDIOS // AARDMAN DIGITAL | BETA HISTORY IN THE MAKING
Aardman creation Morph, getting ready for an episode of TV show Take Hart
AARDMAN CO-FOUNDERS Peter Lord and David Sproxton discovered their shared love for animation at school, and went on to establish the company name way back in 1972, when video games were a distant and fledgling industry. Four years later they set up shop in the UK’s West-country city Bristol, which to this day is a hub for music, film, games, graffiti and much else besides. It was there that they first created Morph, a beloved character for children’s TV art show Take Hart. By 1982, terrestrial broadcaster Channel 4 commissioned Aardman to create Conversation Pieces for an adult audience, which would see the team find their knack for animating puppets to real life conversations. By 1985, Wallace and Gromit creator Nick Park had joined the team, and they would go
CLOSE TO HOME And the Aardman Digital staff’s luck doesn’t end with the fact that their reputation for characterful work attracts rewarding client work, for they also have an enviable resource so close to home they barely need to leave their desks (see panel ‘Inside Aardman’). “I feel very lucky that we have all that stuff on our doorstep, because we do use it,” says Burvill of the huge resource provided by other Aardman departments. “And sometimes we use it a lot,” he adds.
“For example, we use the sound guys here to do the sound of our games, and we’re increasingly doing more with the CG teams because the technology available for the games we’re making means we can. “We’re reaching the point with stuff like
Unity where we can actually use the models those guys are creating in our web games, so we’re starting to see that quite a bit now. It’s a really blessed position to be in, because we are up against small studios about the size of Aardman Digital, but they don’t have what we do in the same building.” Getting to that point, however, has taken
several years. When Aardman Digital was founded it was the wider company’s young upstart, competing for the attention of the vast, established teams toiling on films and adverts.
DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET “We’ve spent a lot of time educating and
exciting people internally about the potential of Digital, and I think we really are now entrenched in everybody’s thinking, and are part of what Aardman is as one company,” confirms Probert.
More than anywhere I’ve ever
worked, creativity is the priority here. Obviously we need to make money, but that seems to come further down the priority list.
Lorna Probert, Aardman Digital “We do work with lots of the other
Aardman departments and today we don’t feel in anyway like an isolated team.” But at the same time, insist the Digital staff,
they remain autonomous if they feel so inclined, and can operate as a free agent, making the games they do in the way they want. It just so happens that, for example, if
on to make feature films, music videos and adverts that to this day strike a chord with a global audience. Over Aardman’s long history the awards have come rolling in, and the client base has spread across the world. By 2006, Aardamn’s
animation included not just stop-frame animation, but CG, and a year later Aardman Digital was founded, adding games and web development to the company’s rostrum of success stories. From the founders to the first cleaners hired at the company, many of Aardman’s earliest staff can still be found walking the halls of the studio’s captivating facility (see panel ‘Inside Aardman’), joined by an army of employees and talents that have earned their place at a creative center 40 years in the making.
they are working on a game for one of Aardman’s own brands, or handling the digital element of an IP that the commercial team is also supporting, they have unrivalled access to assets, talent and specialist staff involved in said project. Quite simply, they’ve balanced integration and autonomy with grace, and look set to reap the benefits for years to come. “We can be very independent if we want,”
concludes Burvill. “If we’re working for an external client, we can do that completely autonomously. But equally we can be as integrated as we need to be.” It’s a situation that all of Aardman Digital’s
staff say they feel lucky to be in, and it’s a hugely attractive idea to developers looking for work. Fortunately, as the team continues to grow, it appears opportunities to work with the cultural giant that is Aardman will increasingly be available to games talent, both freelance and permanent. For now, the Digital staff must return to their desks, to create more of the games that have made them one of the UK’s most distinct developers, and so it is that they leave Develop, walk past those towering set-pieces from Aardman’s past, and return to the daily grind of building fun.
www.aardman.com/digital
OCTOBER 2013 | 27
Some of Aardman’s earliest staff (above left), including founders Peter Lord and David Sproxton, gather during a break from founding their creative powerhouse
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