Peter Lord and David Sproxton, co-founders of Aardman Animations, have reflected on accidentally creating Morph, their Oscars moment with Jack Nicholson, and the partnership that has lasted more than 50 years.
From school desks to Plasticine
The pair met at school in Woking, where they sat next to each other. Lord, who had moved from Sydney to suburban Surrey aged 12, remembers the first day: "There was only one spare seat in the class. It was next to Sproxton, brackets, DA." They also discovered they got off at the same train stop, Walton-on-Thames.
Sproxton recalls the early days: "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."
They 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. Lord says: "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."
Oscars, DreamWorks and stepping back
Their breakthrough into adult audiences came via Channel 4's Conversation Pieces series, and their animators, including a young Nick Park, went on to make Wallace & Gromit, whose films have won multiple Academy Awards. When Creature Comforts won an Oscar in 1991 for best animated short, Sproxton remembers: "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 they did a deal with DreamWorks for Chicken Run, Sproxton said to Lord and Park: "You go and direct Chicken Run and I'll sort out everything else." He admits: "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."
A partnership built on shared values
Lord says disagreements have flared up over the years, "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." He adds: "We're not in it for the money, and never have been. 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."
Sproxton describes Lord as "a natural storyteller" and "an inspiration to others, often just by his presence." He says: "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."
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.
