The studio’s co-founders on accidentally creating Morph, not wanting a yacht in the Maldives and being each other’s best ally
Aardman’s Peter Lord and David Sproxton in 2006 and 2026, with their puppets of Fowler and Babs from Chicken Run, and Morph
Aardman’s Peter Lord and David Sproxton in 2006 and 2026. Later photograph: Pål Hansen/The Guardian. Styling: Andie Redman. Archive photograph: Aardman Animations
Peter Lord and David Sproxton are the founders of Aardman Animations. The pair began animating as teenagers, selling their first short – starring a superhero called Aardman – to the BBC’s Vision On in 1972. In 1977, they created Morph for the children’s programme Take Hart. The studio’s breakthrough into adult audiences came via Channel 4’s Conversation Pieces series, and its animators, including a young Nick Park, went on to make Wallace & Gromit, whose films have won multiple Academy Awards. Aardman became employee-owned in 2018, with Lord and Sproxton transferring majority ownership to staff to safeguard the company’s independence. They were knighted earlier this year.
Peter (on left)
We’re sitting there smiling happily and in front of us are some puppets, because that’s what we’re famous for. In this case, Fowler and Babs from Chicken Run, and Morph.
In 2006, we were in between productions – we had finished Chicken Run and the next was Flushed Away and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. I was going to California quite a lot to jolly the production along. While it was exciting to be in Hollywood, we never aspired to be part of it when we started Aardman.
I was born in Bristol, but when I was nine my parents moved to Sydney, Australia. As a small, not very sporty boy, I found the school system there fairly terrifying. Then, when I was 12, we ended up in suburban Surrey. My new school was a very old-fashioned place where teachers wore gowns. On my first day, there was only one spare seat in the class. It was next to Sproxton, brackets, DA. By chance, we also got off at the same train stop, which was Walton-on-Thames.
Over the years, we got closer. I liked that he was very different from me. I was very arty, and David extremely practical – good with his hands and able to understand how to build things. The turning point was when David’s father got a camera. We would sit around David’s kitchen table and work away on ideas.
During our university holidays we would meet up and think of ideas for animations. Dave would create sets and props, and I’d make a puppet. It was a partnership of mutual interdependence.
We created Morph accidentally. It was just a lump of Plasticine that turned into a little person and then developed over time as a character, which is where the fun lies. After a few years, we got the gig to do The Amazing Adventures of Morph – 26 five-minute episodes. When we found out, it was one of those fabulous high-five moments – not that we would ever have high-fived. But making children’s TV was the sum of our ambition and we were thrilled.
Over the years, disagreements would flare up, inevitably because it’s quite stressful. But mostly it has gone smoothly, partly because we both feel the same about the really important things: how you treat your people. It sounds cheesy, but we’re not in it for the money, and never have been. I’m not saying we haven’t made money. We have. I’m very happy. But we didn’t want a yacht in the Maldives. My car is 20 years old. Dave’s was even older when it finally packed up. Money has never been the motive. It’s always been to make a community.
Dave was the best man at my wedding, his brother was the photographer and his father was the vicar. Perhaps because of his father’s background, Dave is a fantastically ethical person. He has a very strong sense of what is right and is extremely unselfish. In comparison, I seem possibly venal. If a project comes up that we could take on, he’s always looking to share it with somebody else.
Faced with all the questions, the challenges of life and of running a company and of creative decisions, we’ve become each other’s best ally against the world.
David (right)
We took this photo when our CBEs were announced in 2006. I had bought the shirt in the late 90s from somewhere like Benetton and thought it was jolly, so it became my uniform.
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That year was a busy period for us, with significant business changes, lots of ideas and films we wanted to make. Animation was in the ascendancy.
Peter and I went to a state-run grammar school in Woking. He was left-handed, I was right-handed, so we didn’t have much space between us. I noticed he was always doing figurative drawings in his notebook. He also had a very strong Australian accent. It was quite hard for me to actually work out what his surname was.
As we got to know each other, we discovered that both our fathers worked for the BBC: his dad was in the sales side, and my dad was a religious programmes producer. Both our mums taught art, so there was a curious commonality there.
I was better on the organisational side, and Pete had the more imaginative stuff covered. We also had shared beliefs and motives. My father was an ordained Congregational minister, so there was a strong value system in place. That we were both being brought up in the 60s and early 70s was important, too. There was an optimistic creative dynamic to the Beatles period, the youth revolution, the happy hippy stuff. The world was our oyster.
For the first six years, I was running around like a wotsit. Eventually, we built up a team of skilled people. When Creature Comforts won an Oscar [in 1991, for best animated short], it was a huge moment, because the Brits didn’t get many Oscars in those days. The ceremony in LA went on for five hours back then, so there were lots of ad breaks. I remember going to the gents during one break and turning around, thinking, “My God, I’m having a pee with Jack Nicholson.”
When we did the deal with DreamWorks for Chicken Run, the question was: how do we divide our forces? I had broadly said to Pete and Nick [Park], “You go and direct Chicken Run and I’ll sort out everything else.” In retrospect, that might have been a dumb thing to say, because it took me out of the day-to-day film production side. I stepped back from doing the camera work – the shooting and the directing – and ended up doing more management and overseeing. I missed being on the studio floor. Did I tell Pete? Probably not at the time. It was the right thing to do, and I was doing it for all the right reasons. Even if I would visit the studio and gnash my teeth, thinking, “God, I wish I was doing that, rather than sitting in finance meetings.”
Outside work we have supported one another, too. We were both deeply affected as our parents got older and eventually popped their clogs. Pete ended up with three kids, and I suppose that’s where our social time began to divide up a bit. I guess if I’d had kids, too, we would have done a lot more together. But that wasn’t to be.
Pete is a natural storyteller and is an inspiration to others, often just by his presence. He’s not the best of timekeepers, but that’s always been part of his makeup and is not unusual for someone so creative. He has got an incredible mind, and I am always asking myself: how do we make this stuff from his imagination actually happen? Really, that question is at the core of everything that I do.
