Braford Animation Festival: Peter Lord of Aardman Studios

At the Bradford Animation Festival I was lucky enough to meet THE Peter Lord of Aardman Studios, the birth place of Morph, Shaun the Sheep and Wallace and Gromit. It was a great experience that I'm never going to forget. The novelty aside, I learnt a lot about the animation industry that day and how it all worked and how work was done in a successful animation studio other than Disney.

I was really excited when I found out that we'd be having a talk and then a Q&A session with Peter Lord whilst at BAF because his animations are something I have grown up with as a child and it is his work that first got me in interested in animation so it was great to hear what tips and advice he had to give to all us hopeful animators out there. 

Peter Lord spoke about how he worked in his studio and how things were done, for instance Morph is still shot 'blind' today and they still use Plasticine to make him despite having all this fancy equipment around them that could achieve the same effect. He also went on to talk about the amount of time, effort and patience that goes into animation, which was great to hear because even the professionals still get frustrated with it. He also stressed the importance of collaboration within an animation company and encouraged us to put as much time and effort as we can into the parts of animation that we are good at, and excel at it, because we will never have to do all the things that make an animation by ourselves and we are more likely to be hired if we are better at one aspect or element than if we are good at all of them. 

Overall, I found Peter Lord's talk really useful and despite the fact that he made animating sound like the most difficult job world, it actually peaked my interest in the subject even more.