The film studio behind Shaun the Sheep holds 5 world records!
Are you a fan of Wallace & Gromit and Shaun the Sheep? 🐑
Or maybe Chicken Run and Arthur Christmas? 🎅
All of these were created by Aardman, an award-winning animation studio based in the UK.
Aardman are seen as champions in the world of claymation - a form of stop-motion animation in which adjustable clay characters are shot in different positions and made to look like they can move when the frames are played back in quick succession. 🎥
The company currently holds 5 world records!
Let’s find out what they are…
Highest-grossing stop-motion animated film
Aardman secured their first GWR title in 2000 after releasing their debut full-length movie, Chicken Run. 🐔
The film made $227,793,915 (£185,172,711) at cinemas worldwide, according to the movie statistics website The-Numbers.com.
Chicken Run has held on to this record for a whopping 25 years! 😮
How impressive is that?!
If you could make a film, what would it be about? 💭
Most claymation feature films made by a studio
Aardman has released 8 full-length claymation movies, including:
- Chicken Run (2000) 🐔
- Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) 🐇
- The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists (2012) 🏴☠️
- Shaun the Sheep Movie (2015) 🐑
- Early Man (2018) ⚽
- A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon (2019) 🚜
- Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget (2023) 🐔
- Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (2024). 🐧
Have you seen any of these films?
Due to the intricacy of claymation, projects require a lot of time and patience. ⏲️
During the peak production periods of Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, a team of 30 animators would only be able to make up to 127 seconds of the film each week.
It took them 5 weeks to create the 17-second shot of Police Constable Mukherjee on the telephone - the longest scene in the movie. 🎬
Most clay used in a feature film
Do you enjoy playing with clay?
The talented animators who work for Aardman get to do this every day. 🤩
They have such a cool job!
For Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit, 2,844.9 kg (6,272 lb) of clay was used - that’s equivalent to the weight of 4 adult polar bears! 🐻❄️🐻❄️🐻❄️🐻❄️
It’s really no surprise that it took Aardman 5 years to make this film!
Highest-grossing stop-motion film studio
Since 2000, Aardman has released 6 stop-motion films that have been shown in cinemas all over the world. 🍿
These movies have grossed $756,529,838 (£494 m) altogether.
Imagine how much clay you could buy with all that money! 💵
This record doesn’t include their films that were created with computer-generated-imagery (CGI) – Flushed Away (2006) and Arthur Christmas (2011) – or their releases that went direct to TV or Netflix, such as Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget.
Fun fact – for Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, the clay chickens were dusted with icing sugar to give them a matte effect and make sure they weren’t too shiny on camera. 🐔
Largest stop-motion animation set
In 2011, Aardman teamed up with the phone brand Nokia to produce a record-breaking advert.
It was filmed on a sandy beach in Carmarthenshire, Wales, UK. 🏖️
The set measured 1,025.04 m² (11,033 sq ft), making it even bigger than a football pitch! 🫨
The commercial tells the tale of a fisherman who gets swallowed by a sea monster.
Fun fact – the advert was filmed on a Nokia N8 phone. 📱