Screen Arts 22/9

Bruce Bickford

Bruce was an American stop motion animator that lived between 1947-2019. His claymation experiments began when he was a teenager but he didnt get famous until Frank Zappa collaborated with him for music videos between 1974-1980. His animation style is energetic and eccentric, almost like an acid trip.

Aardman Animations

Aardman Animations began as a team of 2 animators - Peter Lord and David Sproxton. They started in 1972 only to be joined by Nick Park in 1985. They have a distinct lovable character design and humour. Creature Comforts was a well known series they created, using almost a documentary style with claymation animals making human comments and complaints about everyday occurances. Another famous creation of theirs is Wallace and Gromit. They began working on films in 1997, creating Chicken Run(2000) and Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit(2005) which won the Best Animated Feature Oscar. These guys were a part of my childhood quite often, I loved Wallace and Gromit: A Grand Day Out and Chicken Run!

Compare and contrast Aardman and Bickford's animation styles. Do you have a preference?

I have never seen Bickfords animation out of class and I dont really like it. Im not a very expressionistic type of artist and so his themes and nonsensical type animation did not appeal to me. The humorous, relatable characters from Aardman are definitely more my style.

Do you like animation for children or adults or like both equally?

I like both equally. My favourite movies are from Disney, especially the ones that have the hidden things that only adults will notice.