Aardman Co-Founder David Sproxton's Tips for Success in the Animation Industry, Part 3 (of 3): 6 Pre-Production, Production, and Post-Production Tips

David Sproxton

In this – the third and last post in our series of articles on career tips and advice accrued from David Sproxton’s in-depth interviews in Aardman's “Aardocs” – we go over six of David Sproxton tips for success in the animation industry that cover everything from the most part of any production to how to keep a sense of scope when working in 3 second increments daily to what he and Aardman as a whole learned from utilizing Kickstarter to revamp their beloved and iconic character, Morph.

You can go read the first article in this series – Sproxton’s advice about pre-production – by going here, and you can read the sophomore article in this series – Sproxton’s advice specifically geared towards production – by going here.

1. Story development is the most important stage of any production.

“On all the animated features – Pixar and DreamWorks and everybody else – they take about five years from start to finish,” Sproxton stresses, “Probably three-and-a-half of those years is in the creative and the writing and the design side…You may be developing visualization as you go along and design work and stuff, but the making of it is probably the last 15-18 months.”

Sproxton reiterates a similar proverb many times over across both of his interviews: story is the most important stage in each of their production – it is the bedrock upon which the film is built.



When discussing the production of Chicken Run – their first feature film – Sproxton extrapolates on the challenges Aardman faced in producing the film from a technical aspect, but in summation and in reference to the writing process he says, “Actually, we learned an awful lot about scale, added complexity of writing, and how you produce a thing in a reasonable timeframe. Features are never an easy thing but the writing bit is still the hardest bit to do. Then the logistical puzzle of, ‘How the hell do you bring this thing in?’”

On all the animated features – Pixar and DreamWorks and everybody else – they take about five years from start to finish. Probably three-and-a-half of those years is in the creative and the writing and the design side.

Sproxton elaborates on this thought in reference to the writing and development process for their second (and Oscar®-winning) feature film, Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit, “For Were-Rabbit, Nick and Steve Box and Bob Baker* used our old building which is just a Victorian shed and they just locked themselves in there for the better part of two years. And it is pin-boards and it’s one of those things where you simply have to have a lot of time to concentrate and to think through and to discuss and to work things out. It’s a long – you know, you’re trying to tell this story in 85-90 minutes – and, ‘What are the strands and what’s going to work?’”

Features are never an easy thing but the writing bit is still the hardest bit to do.

*In this statement, Sproxton touches on another tip that we’ve already covered in a previous post – collaboration is key. Never undervalue the help of other trusted individuals when working on a production. If you aren’t a screenwriter or if you don’t have confidence in your ability as a storyteller, that’s perfectly fine. Instead of writing your film yourself, find a diligent writer who you can trust to help you bring to life your vision and then work closely with the writer to bring about your film. However, trust the writer to do their part. On any film that revolves around characters or has any sort of a plot, you should refrain from rushing into production without a well-planned screenplay. If you do, there’s an remarkably good chance that your end product will suffer from it.

For Were-Rabbit, Nick and Steve Box and Bob Baker* used our old building which is just a Victorian shed and they just locked themselves in there for the better part of two years. And it is pin-boards and it’s one of those things where you simply have to have a lot of time to concentrate and to think through and to discuss and to work things out.

2. When you’re the director of an animated piece, keep in mind the scope of a project and the end goal so that you can properly work towards making the film you set out to make.

“How do you keep directorial control of it [a film]?” Mark Cosgrove asks Sproxton, posing the very weighty question to him in a light, quick manner.

(From the left) Peter Lord, Nick Park, David Sproxton. Photo by Julian Hanford.

“Well that, actually, at the nub of it, the directors are like that [presses hands together] – very, very close up to it working with the animators. How do you keep them focused on the story and the character when they’re always dealing in three or four second chunks, and some of that’s out of sequence?” Sproxton asks, clarifying the question before then answering Cosgrove and himself. “We worked on Chicken Run with a lovely writer called Karey Kirkpatrick and his task was to be the guardian of the story. And that was then, in a way, passed onto the editor…That is one of the big issues. How do you actually remember why you’re doing this scene and the intent of this scene?”

In short, Sproxton presents us an answer to this puzzle that directors, writers, and lead animators can apply to their own projects: dub someone as the guardian of the story and the overall creative vision. Task them (or, if this person is you, yourself) with the job of keeping a sense of the overall scope of the project and, furthermore, with communicating to the other people working on the project what they need to do in order to successfully create the film. A good director works with animators and different heads of production with the goal of making all contributions to the film count. Communication is huge here, so make sure you can properly communicate with those with whom you are working. Both of these things are vital pieces to making every piece of a production and each job count.

We worked on Chicken Run with a lovely writer called Karey Kirkpatrick and his task was to be the guardian of the story. And that was then, in a way, passed onto the editor.

Peter Lord (left) and David Sproxton (right). Photo by Charlie Gray

3. Track the progress of your project by using a story reel.

In proceeding to answer answer Cosgrove’s question about maintaining directorial control, Sproxton continues, “How do you basically make sure that the blueprint that you’ve put down works? As long as you make that – which is the story reel* – the story should be in place. But it is actually quite a big issue to remind people of. Because the production period is about 18 months. It’s a long haul. And it’s broken down into days, which are broken down into two or three second chunks.”

From his answer we learn another excellent way to preserve creative vision on a project and also how to best serve the story in the production phase of a project: Keep a visual reminder – specifically a story reel – so as to keep a sense of perspective of moving towards the end goal – “the final product.” When working with a story reel, replace each of the finished shots with those storyboarded section in the reel, so that you can keep track of how quickly your production is moving towards finishing the project.

*A story reel is another work for an animatic, which is essentially a “blueprint” film made from the storyboard (which is a phase of pre-production you can read more about in the second post of this series) that is then strung together before production and that are properly paced to map out the timing of the particular storyboarded scene. On top of the timed storyboards, another key element to creating a story reel is inserting temporary sound effects and voice overs.

4. When on a production, work on “getting up to speed” – don’t rush a production before a production assembly line has been established and a schedule has been made up.

“There’s a curious rule of thumb that everybody says, whoever you talk to in the feature animation business,” says Sproxton. “You make the first third of the film in the first half of the schedule and the other two-thirds in the final half. So in the first so many months you’re actually getting up to speed, finding out how it works, and getting in a kind of routine. And, of course, you’ve got what looks like an endless task ahead of you and what gradually happens is you start dropping these shots into the story reel. Obviously, in the second half [of production] you just start to fill in the gaps and you know exactly what you want and it does actually accelerate. It’s quite strange. It actually happens. It just gets faster and faster. You know, you’re motivated by seeing this finished work. As you’ve gotten halfway through the movie suddenly, ‘Hey, this movie is really beginning to work!’ The energy level rises again and you start really cranking through it.”

5. Don’t be afraid to reach out to professionals and successful people in the industry for help or advice.

In each of their careers, David Sproxton, Peter Lord, and Nick Park each came to points where they had to make a critical decision – to either reach out to professionals in the industry for help to further peruse their filmmaking careers or to otherwise attempt to peruse making their projects on their own, left to their own devices.

You know, you’re motivated by seeing this finished work. As you’ve gotten halfway through the movie suddenly, ‘Hey, this movie is really beginning to work!’ The energy level rises again and you start really cranking through it.

David Sproxton on the set of Take Hart

The first case study for this principal comes actually in the form of Sproxton’s father (who worked for the BBC at the time) doing the asking on behalf of his son even before Sproxton and Lord had coined the name of their company.

“He went to see Dad and they got chatting and Dad obviously said, ‘Actually, my boy is doing some animation. Could you take a look at it?...’ Patrick Dowling said, ‘Sure, fine. I’ll take a look at it…I think we showed him that and he said, ‘Look, here’s a 100 feet of film. Here are the themes for the next series of Vision On. Just fill it up with what you like.’”

Now, it should be noted that Sproxton’s father worked for the BBC at the time, so Sproxton does, indeed, seem to have had a leg-up in getting his work seen by a producer. However, this principal is still absolutely applicable to someone without connections to BBC producers. If the current producers at the BBC don’t reply to your email or call, find someone else. In fact, with the advent of the internet this principal should be far, far easier for the average person to get their work seen than it was even for David Sproxton.

(From the left) Peter Lord, David Sproxton, and Nick Park.

As for Nick Park, he, in fact, had two of these points of decision of reaching out to professionals to help them on their projects, both of which unquestionably helped to further Nick Park’s career as well as his most famous creation – Wallace & Gromit. The first of these individuals Nick Park contacted was the cherished British actor and Last of the Summer Wine veteran Peter Sallis in attempts to see if Sallis would like to help Park complete his film by voicing Wallace & Gromit: A Grand Day Out’s only talking character, Wallace.

Sproxton elaborates, “I think he [Nick Park] had seen him [Peter Sallis] in probably Last of the Summer Wine and wanted that sort of Northern voice. Nick’s got a lovely story about him in that, you know, he phoned up Peter and, of course, actors will, because it’s a National Film School, go out of their way and say, ‘Yes, I’ll help you out. You’re starting your career.’ So they’ll do them [student films] almost for nothing. And he did a session with him to do these lines [for A Grand Day Out] and that was it. For years and years and years. And so Peter Sallis says, ‘I got this phone call seven years later and it was this chap called Park.’ And it was Nick on the other end of the phone saying, ‘I finished.’ ‘Finished what?’ ‘I finished Grand Day Out.’ ‘Oh, my God! That film I recorded seven years ago.’ And, you know, that’s how long it took from when he did recording to getting the film finished.”

Nick Park standing in front of Wallace & Gromit sets. Photo courtesy: Guardian Media Group/Sam Frost.

The other of Nick Park’s decisions to reach out to professionals for help that we can learn of is his contacting no other than Sproxton and Lord themselves.

Sproxton tells the story, “We got a call from our National Film School saying, ‘We got this young student with us who’s seen your work. Can you come up and talk to him about animation?’ And this was Nick Park, who was working on his student film – a small little film called Grand Day Out. And by that time he’d shot not a lot of it. We got to know him and we got to realize that there’s a kind of kindred spirit. You could see from the footage that he’d done that he was a naturally very gifted animator with an understanding of performance and the school was helping a bit but basically he was left to his own devices so it was taking forever. Actually, he came down and we said, ‘Come and help us do some Morph work.’ Which he did in the summer and we paid him for that and helped him through. And we actually then helped him with his storyboard on Grand Day Out and we helped him edit that.”



Don’t afraid to reach out to professionals in the industry for help – they might just respond.

We got a call from our National Film School saying, ‘We got this young student with us who’s seen your work. Can you come up and talk to him about animation?’ And this was Nick Park, who was working on his student film – a small little film called Grand Day Out.

6. Use the tools at hand. Find your audience by connecting with them directly through the web.

Mark asks Sproxton, “I think that some people might have been surprised that here’s Aardman making feature films, financing, and doing Kickstarter. When you see the social media world, did you think, ‘well!’ Of course, you’re talking directly to your audience. So how did that come about? Was it an immediate thing?”

In response to Cosgrove, Sproxton expounds upon Aardman’s venturing to attempt to relaunch Morph through Kickstarter. Throughout it, Sproxton stresses that the internet can be the best tool for finding and sustaining an audience.

Morph and his counterpart Chas. Courtesy of: Aardman Animations.

Concerning the benefits of Kickstarter in relation to funding, Sproxton tells the story of another project they were working on at the time, “There was another idea, actually, about the first World War, which we were pitching to Channel 4 and all in all it took about 18 months for them to say, ‘No.’ We had various discussions and meetings about it but at the end of the day to say, ‘That’s not quite what we’re after.’ So you’d been holding your breath for 18 months to get a ‘no’ whereas with Kickstarter, you kind of know within about a week. The perceived wisdom is if half your money comes in within the first week or so, you’ll get the rest of it by the end of the month. Now, you couldn’t get a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ from a bank in that time. So that’s the big difference is actually, ‘Yeah, yeah, there’s really positive stuff coming out of this. Looks like we’re going to go ahead.’”

Sproxton, over the course of his interview, names the other benefits of utilizing the internet: you can reach an audience directly and release your project to them, you can get funding straight from your audience, you and you alone are in charge of your final product, and you can generate enthusiasm from your audience.

It should, of course, be noted that without the internet this blog could have never been a reality.

David Sproxton (left) and Peter Lord (right). Photo taken by Charlie Gray.

You can go watch Sproxton’s original interview by going here.

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