Aardman Spins Toddler Babble Into Comedy Gold With ‘The Very Small Creatures’: ‘They Are Little Creatures, but Big Characters’
variety.comLeo Barraclough International Features Editor For more than 40 years, Aardman Animations has been producing classics like “Wallace & Gromit,” “Chicken Run” and “Shaun the Sheep.” Now, following in the footsteps of pioneers such as Peter Lord, David Sproxton and Nick Park, new recruits have come on board at the company’s headquarters on Spike Island in the port city of Bristol, in the West of England, replenishing its creative treasure chest.
Variety steps along the gangplank to meet some of the more recent additions to the crew: Dan Ojari and Mikey Please, the creators of Oscar-nominated “Robin Robin” (see here); kids’ comedy series “Lloyd of the Flies” creator and director Matthew Walker, and co-director and voice director Jane Davies (see here); and Lucy Izzard, the creator, writer and director of “The Very Small Creatures,” a BAFTA nominated preschool series (see below). “The Very Small Creatures,” commissioned by U.K.
pay-TV operator Sky, is a stop-motion series for one to three-year-olds. The show follows five toddler-like clay creatures who explore a child’s play area when no one’s around.
The characters originated in the early eighties as a colorful childlike crowd that interacted with Lord and Sproxton’s classic character Morph.
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