How Aardman’s talking animals stood the test of time

In 1989, English animator Nick Park of Aardman Animations took his signature Claymation characters and wittily merged them with classic documentary-style filmmaking to create the Academy Award-winning short film, Creature Comforts.  

Unique, relatable and instantly adored by the British public, the unscripted vox-pop style interviews paired with quirky animated animals became an Aardman classic, leading to two television series for UK TV channel ITV, and a series of commercials for the Electricity Board’s Heat Electric campaign.  

Above: Nick Park's original Creature Comforts sketches. 

The series also travelled to the USA, where it was used to tell real-life stories from people in America. Over the last 35 years, Aardman have used the Creature Comforts style across many campaigns, including Creature Discomforts for the Born Free Foundation during the Covid-19 Pandemic, a similar CGI series for the National Lottery in 2019, and the impactful film Turtle Journey, created for Greenpeace in 2020.  

Most recently, cryptocurrency platform Coinbase’s entertaining and hand-crafted campaign Human Nature leverages Aardman’s stop-motion magic to explore everyday money worries in a relatable and honest way.   

We caught up with animation directors Rich Webber and Steve Harding-Hill to find out how 28 hand-made puppets, 416 mouth replacements and a total of 16,400 frames helped to start conversations among Americans facing new economic challenges, and how, over so many years, the signature talking animals have retained their enduring appeal. 

What was the brief like for the Coinbase campaign?

Rich Webber: Coinbase approached us with a great brief, the main objective was to capture the opinions of the American general public on the cost of living, their views on shrinkflation, inflation and what the American dream means.

The Aardman team then whittle through hours of audio and pull-out soundbites and edit these together to make a natural sounding conversation with strong narratives.

What was the creative process like for making these spots, and how has it changed over the years since the original Creature Comforts sketches? 

RW: This process hasn’t really changed at all. We send an interviewer into the homes of our interviewees – to ensure a relaxed environment – with a list of questions that we have tailored with an eye on the likely responses. Sometimes the answers will go a little off-piste and if the interviewer thinks this is a good direction of thought, they will pursue it, and we often get great unexpected and natural responses.

The Aardman team then whittle through hours of audio and pull-out soundbites and edit these together to make a natural sounding conversation with strong narratives, which then gets whittled down to minutes duration. While we do this, we are constantly thinking about characters and situations that could work with the tone and tenor of the voices. We then draw up the conversation into an animatic, and place in background gags and any additional characters and scenarios. 

All the characters are built with modelling clay, which is great for versatility and expression, each with their own set of mouth shapes which are replaced every two frames of animation. 

From that point we mock up the set from cardboard on the studio floor to give us an idea of the build and the camera lens needed, then progress to the final set and character build. All the characters are built with modelling clay, which is great for versatility and expression, each with their own set of mouth shapes which are replaced every two frames of animation. 

The audio file is broken down phonetically and the replacement mouths are sculpted to sounds like F, V,OH, OO, B, M, P, ECT. The animators use a guide recording that I create of myself for the gesturing, expression and timing, and then add in their own amazing acting and sculpting skills to bring the characters to life. 

How did you go about designing characters to match the voiceovers? 

RW: The animal characters were chosen based on what people were saying, and the way they said it. For example, two women we interviewed became lizards because one of them mentioned she sweated a lot, so casting them as lizards in a hot desert felt appropriate; and at one point the interviewee was eating, so it felt natural to have her eat a bug halfway through. 

At one point the interviewee was eating, so it felt natural to have her eat a bug halfway through

Do you often get approached by brands looking for a Creature Comforts-style campaign? What made this one stand out as something you genuinely wanted to take on? 

RW: When it comes to animal characters designed to fit unscripted voices, Aardman invented it, so we do get approached a lot, however we are very selective and often try to steer the technique to create something new which we’ve done numerous times, like capturing real people speaking but then animating them in a more 2D graphic style. 

[The] subtlety and slapstick of re-creating those voices as animal characters gives it a natural warmth that resonates with audiences.