Aardman’s new Wallace And Gromit movie, Vengeance Most Fowl, hit our screens this Christmas.
The rib-tickling romp saw Feathers McGraw alternately conspire and compete against the high-tech gnome, Norbot.
The film, whose claymation style involves endless hours of hands-on work, sticks to Aardman’s well-known plasticine look despite (or perhaps because of) its AI-adjacent theme.
But while we all recognise its timeless style, I for one had no idea how the animation studio got its name ― until I watched the BBC’s A Grand Night In: The Story Of Aardman, that is.
In the behind-the-scenes show, Aardman founders Peter Lord and David Sproxton talked about how they landed on the famous name.
“We’d been making these very short films for Vision On with a character we called Aardman,” Peter said (in reference to their work’s first 1972 BBC appearance).
“Aardman was like a superhero but absolutely incompetent.”
His name, Peter continued, was made up of “the ‘aard’ of ‘aardvark’ and the ‘man’ of ‘Superman.’”
When the BBC bought their work, Peter says they asked who they should make the cheque out to ― and the company nearly got a completely different name.
“We then discussed all the options: Pete and Dave Animation, Lord Sproxton Animation, you know?” the co-creator revealed.
“And we just... so we went for Aardman.”
Aside from nearly having a completely different name, Aardman’s first plasticine figure ― Morph ― didn’t appear until 1977 either.
What a cruel world it could have been...
