Peter Lord

Episode Overview

Peter Lord, co-founder of Aardman Animations, discusses how Plasticine became the foundation of the studio’s distinctive stop-motion animation style. 

He reflects on the creation of Morph, the development of Wallace & Gromit with Nick Park, and Aardman’s collaboration with DreamWorks on films such as Chicken Run. The conversation explores British animation, the balance between handmade craft and digital technology, and why Aardman became an employee-owned studio.

In This Conversation

• Building Aardman in Bristol and why place mattered
• Collaboration, craft and the growth of the studio
• Plasticine and the breakthrough of transformation in animation
• Morph, Tony Hart and children’s television
• From Down and Out to Creature Comforts
• Advertising and the rise of Aardman in the 1980s
• Nick Park, Wallace & Gromit and scaling stop-motion
• Working with DreamWorks and Hollywood
• Britishness, CGI and protecting craft
• Employee ownership and what comes next

This transcript has been edited for clarity and readability.

Grant Gibson: Hello and welcome to another episode of Material Matters with Grant Gibson. For anyone new to the show: I speak to a designer, maker, artist or architect about a material or technique they’re intrinsically linked to — and how it changed their life and career.

Before we get into it, a quick bit of news. We’re turning Material Matters into an exhibition this September as part of London Design Festival. We’ll be taking over Bargehouse at Oxo Tower Wharf on the South Bank and asking a handful of companies and agencies to show visitors how their material will shape our future. More details soon.

Right — on with the show. Today my guest is Peter Lord, co-founder of Aardman Animations, the Bristol studio behind Morph, Wallace & Gromit, and Shaun the Sheep. The company has won Oscars for films including Creature Comforts, The Wrong Trousers and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Peter was awarded a CBE in 2006, and even received a Blue Peter Gold Badge in 2015.

Peter, thank you so much for doing this. Was that all reasonably accurate?

Peter Lord: That’s pretty good. Yes — I recognise that.

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From a Bristol basement to a global studio

Grant: We always try to place where our guest is. Often it’s a light-industrial unit off the North Circular. Your situation is a little different, you have a bespoke office building. Tell me about it.

Peter: We started as two people — me and Dave Sproxton — moving around Bristol in tiny studios. In the early 1990s we moved to this site near the docks, close to Brunel’s SS Great Britain.

Our first building here was an old banana-ripening plant. Bananas came in by boat, got ripened in this warehouse to that perfect green-yellow, then shipped out. That became our studio; and we had a big car park. Many years later we built our current building on that car park.

It’s lovely. I can look out and see sky, trees, the docks, which is completely useless for an animation studio, because studios have to be blacked out and light-controlled. But I’m in the office part.

And yes, the office was designed as an expression of the company’s philosophy: inclusive, sociable, and intended to make people bump into each other.

Grant: Mildly non-hierarchical… although you are on the top floor.

Peter: Mildly hierarchical! That’s mostly because I didn’t have a window for about 35 years. I decided I deserved a view.

There’s a staircase I love — a great sweep of ply and laminate with a gentle bounce. If you jog down it with enough energy, it keeps bouncing when you stop. COVID rather ruined it, mind you: two years of constant washing has stripped the surface.

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Why Bristol — and why it worked

Grant: Bristol seems important to you. You were born there, but you and Dave grew up in Surrey. Why Bristol?

Peter: We met at school in 1966 — we were 12. We got into animation as a hobby, then went to university. I did English literature in York; Dave did geography in Durham. We didn’t come out with ‘degrees in animation’, we just expected something would turn up.

Nothing did. So we looked at what we already had: animation.

Why Bristol? Three reasons. I was born here and loved it. Our single connection to the business was through a TV programme called Vision On, recorded in Bristol. And Dave’s girlfriend Sue had settled here with a museum career.

There was no animation industry here. People told us we were mad, ‘you should be in London, that’s where the work is.’ But we chose Bristol. A couple of lean years, then it started to work. And once it worked, Bristol became a strength: we were different, our work was different, and people liked coming down from London.

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Collaboration, COVID, and the value of bumping into people

Grant: Collaboration is vital to what you do. How did you manage during COVID?

Peter: Aardman is huge now, astonishing to me. Broadly, we do stop-motion and everything else. Stop-motion has to be hands-on: puppets, sets, lighting, a miniature film studio — people together in a space.

But a lot of our CG and 2D work can be remote. We started a CG kids’ series entirely during COVID. We had a tiny team on-site — sometimes three or four people — while the rest worked remotely around the country.

Still: being in the building matters. You bump into people. You have conversations you didn’t plan. And some of the things you learn that way are genuinely important.

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Oscar night: ‘enjoy it before the winner is announced’

Grant: What’s Oscar night actually like?

Peter: I love it. I’m a sucker for it. The first time we went, we knew nothing. My dinner jacket was literally Oxfam’s finest.

There’s a glorious period beforehand, a week or two where you’re suddenly interesting. People want to interview you, you visit studios, you feel like a big deal. Then you get to the night itself: limo jams, champagne, the red carpet, walls of photographers.

And you realise: the screaming fans aren’t screaming for you. But you enjoy it anyway.

Then comes the moment where someone says: ‘And the winner is…’ If you win, you remain a big deal. If you don’t… the fun leaches out rather quickly. Which is why you should enjoy the build-up while it lasts.

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Tony Hart, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and learning to tell stories at scale

Grant: Two names jumped out in your story: Tony Hart, and Jeffrey Katzenberg. What was it like working with Tony Hart?

Peter: I liked him very much. He was everything he appeared to be: kind, modest, genuine, and a really talented artist. The producers told me he practised his live demonstrations relentlessly to get them right.

And in the early days there were annual gatherings for all the contributors: Tony, a signer for deaf children, mime artists, film montage people, animators — and we were teenagers. It was thrilling to feel part of something.

Grant: Katzenberg feels like the opposite end of the spectrum.

Peter: It’s hilarious to mention him in the same breath as Tony Hart. But I remember Katzenberg fondly. He took a gamble on us. We made three films with DreamWorks over about ten years. We had moments where we didn’t deliver what he wanted. One project failed. But he stuck with us.

We learned a massive amount about feature filmmaking: storyboarding, voice performance, recording, the whole machinery that makes something look natural and spontaneous.

Ultimately, it ended for a simple reason: we weren’t American enough. There’s a style of big family box-office animation — Toy Story, Minions, that sort of thing — and we just aren’t that. We could have said: ‘Tell us what to do and we’ll do it your way.’ But we didn’t want to fake it.

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The material breakthrough: Plasticine

Grant: This is a materials podcast. The material you’re most associated with is Plasticine. Do you remember your first lump?

Peter: I must have been three or four. Our kitchen in Bristol was in the basement. I can picture myself at that table making things with plasticine.

The clearest memory is oddly domestic: a plasticine loaf — a couple of centimetres square — with a raised crust, and my mum slicing it like a real loaf. I can still picture the plasticine falling away from the blade. I remember thinking how brilliant that was.

Later, at school, you’d get multicoloured strips, make something, and very quickly it became that lovely dreary grey mud.

I even remember making a caricature of Richard Nixon — long nose, drooping jowls — then, for reasons I can’t explain, turning him into a tailor with a tape measure around his neck. Nixon became a tailor. Life is strange.

Grant: Transformation was there early, then.

Peter: Completely. When Dave and I started, we experimented with everything: drawn animation, cut-out, pixilation, plasticine. I made an early piece — plasticine laid flat like a relief — a little cottage on a tabletop. Under the camera it gradually transformed until the house became an elephant.

That idea of metamorphosis was the breakthrough.

We tried drawn animation first because it was the mainstream, like computer animation is now. But we were at the bottom of the ladder: not very good, very slow. With plasticine we found our own ladder. No-one else was on it.

And plasticine did something else that seems basic now, but was radical then: you could change facial expressions. With other stop-motion, faces often didn’t move — think The Magic Roundabout. But with plasticine, you could resculpt a frown, a puzzled look, a reaction. That changed everything.

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Morph: the character that made Aardman viable

Grant: Morph is iconic. How did he come about?

Peter: Toward the end of Vision On we made these little creatures — five or six of them, in different colours — pointy noses, arms and legs. The BBC called them “the Glebies”, though no viewer would know that. We did nonsense with them; popping in and out of holes, causing trouble on an artist’s tabletop, knocking over paint.

That tabletop idea became the seed for Morph.

When Vision On ended and Take Hart began, we thought our career might be finished. But the producer wanted something similar, and Morph evolved as this small plasticine being who seemed to live on Tony Hart’s desk: rolling in as a ball, popping into a little man, causing havoc.

Grant: What did Morph do for Aardman as a company?

Peter: Economically, it got us going. We made dozens of short films, then a 26-episode series — The Amazing Adventures of Morph. That meant continuous income for two years, which gave us breathing room and freedom.

It also gave us something priceless: we realised we’d created a character people genuinely loved.

But it didn’t impress the ‘influential’ world at the time. It was children’s TV — parties weren’t exactly full of people saying, ‘Oh! Morph!’ That came later.

Interestingly, Morph became our route into advertising. Young creatives in agencies remembered Morph from childhood, and that opened doors.

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‘Down and Out’ and the roots of Creature Comforts

Grant: You also had this strand of adult work — Down and Out.

Peter: A BBC producer in Bristol commissioned us. The seed came from American filmmakers John and Faith Hubley, who recorded their children’s voices and animated their imaginative play.

Our version was darker. A sound recordist hid a mic at a Salvation Army hostel desk and recorded conversations from people asking for a bed. Most of it was inconsequential — but there was one extraordinary seven or eight minutes with an elderly man that had shape and drama.

We animated it with plasticine figures, very contrived images paired with extremely natural conversation.

And we had to make the figures seem to talk. Nobody had done lip-sync with plasticine like that, as far as we knew. The first test was horrific: glassy eyes like a corpse, and this ugly squirming mouth. Then we learned: simpler face, separate jaw, and crucially moving the eyes — glancing, focusing. Suddenly it came alive.

That discovery leads directly to Creature Comforts. Seeds you plant can grow in all sorts of directions.

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Advertising’s golden era: playfulness, money, and persuasion

Grant: You did Lurpak, Scotch videotape… you seemed to enjoy advertising.

Peter: I enjoyed it very much. It was a golden era — playful, maverick. Yes, we were selling butter and bleach and beer, but in an inventive way.

And I discovered something surprising: I liked selling ideas. Going to London, pitching to agencies — I enjoyed that.

And yes, we made a lot of money. That helped.

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Nick Park, Wallace & Gromit, and scaling craft

Grant: Nick Park joined in 1985. What did his arrival change?

Peter: We met Nick at the National Film and Television School. He was making A Grand Day Out and was clearly brilliant.

I remember him inventing Wallace’s exaggerated mouth. There are shots early on where Wallace doesn’t have it yet — and you can literally see the character evolve. He animated a line — ‘We’ve forgotten the crackers’ — first in the old style, then with this big dramatic mouth. The line itself isn’t funny, but in performance it becomes funny. Nick’s animation is fundamentally comedic. He’s a comedy genius.

We offered him a deal: finish his student film with us, and work on our projects when we were busy.

Grant: Were the skills available back then?

Peter: Surprisingly, yes. We quickly built a core team — people we learned with, and a culture we grew together.

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Britishness and the things Aardman won’t pretend to be

Grant: Aardman is often described as very British. What does that mean to you?

Peter: I end up with a simple answer: we’re British because we are. We follow what amuses us. And most of the time that’s British.

Working with Hollywood makes the difference stark. I sometimes watch American animation — that quickfire wisecrack rhythm — and think, ‘God, I wish I was American.’ Because the best American films do that brilliantly. But we can’t do it genuinely. If we tried, it would feel fake.

So we don’t.

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Technology, CGI, and protecting craft

Grant: You made Flushed Away in CGI. Was it important not to be pigeonholed?

Peter: Yes. There’s always the question: do we keep doing what the public loves, or do we give them something different?

In commercials, in the 80s and 90s, if you saw anything 3D animated, Aardman was your man — butter, wood, metal, glass, Lego. Then CGI crept in and gradually did those things better than we could.

So getting into CGI was partly insurance. But we’re also smart enough to know: the public loves Wallace & Gromit, and Nick loves Wallace & Gromit, so of course we should make more.

Grant: How has technology changed stop-motion itself?

Peter: Capture is digital now, not film. From a director’s perspective it’s a safety net: you can fix problems in post, add palm trees, change skies, correct mistakes.

But someone said to me recently: there’s a virtue in committing on set and living with the decision, rather than changing everything afterwards. These days every shot has some intervention.

And then there’s 3D printing: it enhances what our craftspeople do. But I’m dismayed by the thought it might take over. The puppet makers and model makers — those rooms full of esoteric skill — are one of the joys of the studio. I’d hate to see it replaced entirely by people at keyboards.

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Kickstarter, YouTube, and why Peter isn’t retiring

Grant: You used Kickstarter to bring Morph back. Why?

Peter: We wanted to do more Morph and couldn’t find anyone to fund it. So we tried Kickstarter — and I rather enjoyed it. We kept it personal: key backers came to the studio, we showed them what we do. It was nice.

And now of course social platforms move at a pace I can’t keep up with. The younger people here are brilliant at it. I’m rubbish — I never got the hang of it.

Grant: You and Dave have had this creative partnership for decades. How did you make it work?

Peter: Two things: mutual support and difference.

A partnership is a comfort — someone to celebrate with, someone to lean on. And difference matters: different skills, different minds. Dave is technical; he understands lenses and computers. I don’t.

We even see shots in mirror image — I’m left-handed, he’s right-handed. I assume Morph is on the left of screen; Dave assumes he’s on the right.

But the most important thing is we agree about what matters. We never ran the company to make money — we did it for the work, and for the community. That’s why neither of us has fancy cars and second homes.

Grant: Aardman is now employee-owned.

Peter: Yes. It would have made financial sense to sell. But we love the company. I never wanted it to become an asset traded around and bounced from owner to owner. Employee ownership protects what we built.

Grant: So you’re not retiring.

Peter: No. I’m developing films I want to get made — I won’t direct them, it’s too much work — but I want them to happen. I’m an executive producer: a critical, caring eye, occasionally reminding people, ‘Whatever else it is, it’s an Aardman film.’