[PERSONAL] Bradford Media Museum - Meet the Aardman Team: Jay Clarke

Jay Clarke is one of the storyboard artists for Aardman animation, he has worked on the Shaun the Sheep Movie, Wallace and Gromit's World of Inventions, Chop Socky Chooks and many more. During the event, Clarke gives a 20 minute demonstration on how to draw Wallace and Gromit and explains what a story board artists role is in the animation production. Although the event was only 20 minutes, the information he provided was very useful, from learning how to draw expressions onto characters to the development process at Aardman. Below is a quick look at the event:

After the event, I went over to Clarke to ask him the following questions; How did he get started in the industry and what is his favourite medium of animation. The information he provided was incredibly useful, he stated that he and Nick Park attended the same university; Sheffield Hallam University studying film and animation, and he kept in contact with Park until he joined the Aardman team. He finds CGI increadible however has a love for stop-motion animation.

Once we had finished talking, I went and took a look at the Aardman exhibition they had for the week, which featured new models from the Pirates! (2012) movie as well as information about how Aardman integrate CGI into their movies to help workflow. Overall attending this event was an enlightening experience, I would hope that in the future Clarke would do a longer more in-depth event delving deeper into the pre-production at Aardman.