While the trademark thumbprint pressed into Gromit’s snout is the archetypal giveaway of British animation studio Aardman’s distinct material style, I was always more preoccupied by a splodge of jam. In several scenes of The Wrong Trousers (Nick Park, 1993),…
Growing up in Northern Ireland in the 1970s, the steam train was a throwback to the past. The little green steam engine, Ivor, who worked for The Merioneth and Llantisilly Railway Traction Company Limited that appeared on the tv screen…
Review of Jez Stewart, The Story of British Animation, London: British Film Institute, Bloomsbury, 2021. Jez Stewart’s role as a curator at the BFI National Archive positions him well as author of this detailed history of British animation. The book…
Recently I produced and directed a documentary about women working in the animation industry which highlighted the lack of women in key creative roles. The documentary, entitled British Animation Women Breaking the Mold, was broadcast on Sky Showcase Channel 192…
When our late father, Arthur Humberstone, died on the eve of the millennium, we did not anticipate that we were to inherit a historical animation archive. It was ordinary everyday life for us to pass the door of his pencil-scented…
Among the many recent commemorations of the centenary of First World War, its implications for animation history have received scant attention. In Britain the war stimulated considerable production of animated cartoons between 1914 and 1918, as explored in my recent…
