This November our students had the fantastic opportunity to visit the home of Wallace and Gromit, Shaun the Sheep and Chicken Run creators Aardman in Bristol. The annual trip included students studying across our degree programmes on Animation, Production Design, Illustration, Film, Model Making & Visual FX and our Masters degrees. This trip is one of the many opportunities our students benefit form through our partnership with the Aardman Academy.

Speaking of the trip Lecturer Joe Keen said “Our BA (Hons) Animation students loved the trip to Aardman. They benefitted greatly from having access to the artists, animators and industry professionals who gave talks, and workshops and gave valuable feedback on the student’s portfolios. It is also a great chance to spend time in Bristol and visit some of its art galleries and locations. It also really gives the students an understanding of the different roles within the animation industry.”

Animation student Clay Atkins described the trip as “useful and inspiring” and said that “as an animation student seeing the studios was particularly interesting. We had talks from directors, story board artists, and animators. We got to participate in workshops around those areas as well as get a tour of the studios. My favourite part of the trip was the talks. I enjoyed seeing the presentations by the different people as well as being able to participate in a Q&A.” During this year’s trip students were able to attend a prop making workshops for the up-coming Wallace & Gromit film; “we were tasked with creating a phone for Wallace, my group made a mouse phone that was invented by Wallace but would constantly try to run away from him.” 

Outside of the visit to Aardman students were able to explore Bristol and make connections, Clay commented “I enjoyed Bristol, I would definitely go again. The trip helped me bond with people on my course over exploring a new place together as well as sharing the exciting experience of going to the animation studio. We are all animation students so we could talk about that with each other.”

This year is the first year that MA students also attended the trip, Lecturer Alyson Agar commented; “Our MA Design Practice and MA Arts Practice students were able to access a whole array of specialist talks and workshops in stop –motion animation, puppetry, game design, set design and props, delivered by practitioners at the early stages of their careers and those who are senior members of staff and heads of department at Aardman. Students took part in set design and storyboarding workshops, enabling them to work together as interdisciplinary design teams and gain once-in-a-lifetime experience pitching their ideas to Aardman feeding directly back into their respective creative practices.” 

Film student Stuart Hunter said “having the opportunity to visit Aardman was a dream come true for me. Stop motion is in my opinion the pinnacle of cinema as every element has to be hand-crafted with painstaking meticulous precision. Being able to speak directly to Will Becher and Åsa Lucander in particular was a privilege and truly inspirational. Having the insight of Rachel Plant into the workings of Aardman was wonderful, I was shown into Studio 4 where the Aardman Academy courses were run which allowed me to see how the highest-level animators learn and teach.” 

Stuart said he felt inspired to explore stop motion further; “Another highlight was being shown around the Very Small Creatures set and workshop which furthered my keen desire to one day make a quality stop motion feature filmThe trip to Aardman has been nothing short of transformational for me.”

If you are interested in studying a creative subject at degree level make sure you check out our range of degree programmes today! We also offer postgraduate degree courses for students and practitioners that are looking to take their studies to the next level find out more here.