Wallace & Gromit Creators Mark 50 Years With Spook-tacular Shaun Story
Aardman Animations, the studio behind Wallace & Gromit, is celebrating its 50th anniversary by showcasing the meticulous stop-motion technique behind a new Halloween-themed Shaun the Sheep project.
British animation studio Aardman Animations, known worldwide for characters such as Wallace and Gromit, is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.
The craft behind the camera
As part of the anniversary coverage, attention has turned to the studio's signature filmmaking method: stop-motion animation using clay figures, a technique Aardman has refined over five decades. Footage shows an animator carefully lifting the eyelid of a clay sheep model — one of the characters from Shaun the Sheep — using a crochet hook. This method, described as a technique as old as cinema itself, has been perfected by Aardman into a highly precise craft.
A new spooky tale
The anniversary has also been linked to a new, Halloween-themed Shaun the Sheep production, described as "spook-tacular." No further details about its content or release date were provided in the source material.
Aardman Animations has become one of the world's most recognisable stop-motion studios. Its work on franchises including Wallace & Gromit and Shaun the Sheep continues to rely on handcrafted, frame-by-frame animation, built with simple tools such as a crochet hook to achieve subtle, lifelike movements in its clay characters.
