Who’d ever have thought that a moving mutt modelled from clay, or a sculpted sheep, could achieve iconic status? But that’s what happened to Gromit and Shaun – just two of the beloved stable of characters from Aardman Animations. Now amongst the characters immortalised in the new Aardman Classics series from Royal Mail, Gromit in particular displays all the quirky, endearing characteristics that have given Aardman’s animated output the status of national treasures.
The Royal Mail eight-stamp set gives collectors the chance to own stamps showcasing classic hand-crafted stop-motion animations from Aardman Studios including and of course, . But behind these household names is a story that really did start in the most modest way. In an everyday house, after school. Actually, in the kitchen. Aardman founders Peter Lord and David Sproxton, friends from, which ran from 1964 to 1976, originally designed to appeal to children with hearing impairments. One of the presenters was artist and educator Tony Hart. Peter and David were overjoyed when one of their animations, featuring a character called Aardman, was accepted. Needing a name for their bank account so the show’s producers could pay them, the quick-thinking pair came up with ‘Aardman Animations’. As the pair carried on working with the BBC into the 1970s while they were at university, they developed their first character, Morph, for Tony Hart’s solo art show, . Amongst the show’s watchers was another young creative, National Film School student Nick Park. Watching Morph assume various forms on was pivotal to the development of his own stop-motion project, , which starred a man and a dog. Their names were Wallace and Gromit.
