Footnote #31 - Claymation

The Fantasy/Animation podcast takes listeners on a journey through the intersection between fantasy cinema and the medium of animation. Available via Apple Podcasts, Spotify and many of your favourite podcast hosting platforms!

From the invention of Plasticine by William Harbutt in Britain in 1897 to the use of malleable materials in the earliest stop-motion ‘trick films’ of Edwin S. Porter, J. Stuart Blackton, and the Fleischer Brothers, the application of clay in animation has a history as long as the medium itself. In Footnote #31 of the podcast, Chris and Alex deliberate the evolution of clay animation, including the patenting of ‘Claymation’ in the early-1980s and its emergent synonymy with the Bristol-based Aardman studio; distinctions between more freeform and fluid clay animation and the moveable, modelled bodies of Wallace and Gromit; and how this craft-based handmade style came to embody (and continues to define) the Aardman studio’s animated spirit in an era of pervasive and pristine computer graphics.

**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**

Suggested Readings

  • Honess Roe, Annabelle, ed. 2020. Aardman Animations: Beyond Stop-Motion. London: Bloomsbury.

  • Moseley, Rachel. 2016. Hand-Made Television: Stop-Frame Animation for Children in Britain, 1961-1974. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

  • Norris, Van. 2014. British Television Animation 1997-2010: Drawing Comic Tradition. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

  • Ruddell, Caroline and Paul Ward, eds. 2019. The Crafty Animator: Handmade, Craft-based Animation and Cultural Value. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

FOOTNOTE PODCASTChristopher Holliday and Alexander SergeantAARDMAN, CLAYMATION, STOP-MOTION, CRAFT, LABOUR, BRITAINComment