LEGO and Aardman team up for a new animated short!
Posted by CapnRex101,
LEGO and stop-motion animation have been closely associated for many years and LEGO has today announced a partnership with one of the masters of stop motion, Aardman Animation! The press release follows:
The LEGO Group and Aardman partner to inspire creativity in young builders through stop motion
Today, the LEGO Group and multi-award-winning Aardman Animations, stop motion masters and creators of the Wallace & Gromit franchise, have announced a new partnership, to help inspire young builders and encourage creative storytelling using stop motion inspired by the LEGO brick.
Both brands are committed to inspiring kids through creativity and play and are teaming up to set young builders a creative challenge using the LEGO Play app, where kids can use the animation tool within the app to share their own animated stories with a chance to see their ideas featured in an amazing Aardman story.
An animated short to announce the challenge sees Aardman bringing their unique style of storytelling to inspire kids to use stop motion, as an alien called ‘Boop’ (made from Aardman’s iconic clay) finds themself transported to a world of LEGO bricks. In that world, Boop meets LEGO minifigures who they befriend, but where their story goes is something the LEGO Group and Aardman are inviting young creatives to decide by asking them to help finish the story.
The animated short can be seen here: https://www.lego.com/aardman-boop
Anna Rafferty, SVP of Digital Consumer Engagement at the LEGO Group, said: “To work with the iconic Aardman Animations is incredibly exciting, and we’re thrilled to see our two brands inspiring kids in this way for the first time. We hope young builders find this a unique opportunity and, together with Aardman, we’re excited to explore more opportunities to collaborate together in the future.”
Sarah Cox, Chief Creative Director of Aardman, said: “It is safe to say that at Aardman we are all huge fans of the LEGO Group – so to get to collaborate with our dream partners has been a complete joy. Our partnership has been one of mutual respect, openness and a shared commitment to creativity and play which unites the brick and the clay.”
Aardman has produced the 1 min animated short staring Boop, and 5 mini stop motion challenge films including Build Your Own Boop, set to release monthly, encouraging young builders to get creating on the LEGO Play App
In addition, Director Magda Osinska, will be hosting a video workshop to inspire young creators and filmmakers. The workshop will be hosted on LEGO.com and will be supported by video tutorials from fan creators and influencers.
LEGO Play is a kid-safe, creative app for all brick lovers, builders and creators and is where kids can share their own creations with friends, watch videos, play games and unleash their creative super-powers. Creative kids wanting to share their animations as part of this challenge on LEGO Play will need to join LEGO Insiders Club, which is a membership club for young builders where they can access exclusive content, create and personalise their own avatar and save and share their best builds. For more information on LEGO Play you can visit www.lego.com/en-us/apps/play-app and for more information on LEGO Insiders Club you can visit https://www.lego.com/en-us/insiders/insiders-club
Fans of LEGO sets and Aardman will be able to build and model the much loved and inventive Wallace & Gromit characters entirely in bricks for the first time with the newly announced LEGO Ideas Wallace & Gromit set. Faithful to the spirt of the beloved films, this unique model captures the quirky humour that defines the iconic duo. Combining nostalgia, creativity, and a building challenge, it will delight fans of all ages, whether they are LEGO brick enthusiasts or admirers of the most famous stop motion duo. Launch timings to be confirmed for 2026 and for more information visit https://ideas.lego.com/
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22 comments on this article
This will mean green light for the Ideas submission of Wallace and Grommit
@merman said:
"This will mean green light for the Ideas submission of Wallace and Grommit"
dont we have one set already confirmed?
Is this going to mean lots of Aardman sets (including Timmy the sheep Duplo?), a CMF series would be awesome too :)
Strange, it looks more like CGI than their traditional clay animations. Yet the scene with the animator at the end makes it look as if it was a physical set.
Something does not compute.
Huh, does this mean TLG is actively encouraging the use of non-LEGO items in an animation challenge? Since their key character is obvs made of clay.
We'll see, but I'ld prefer Lego Wallace and Gromit adventures....
This… is underwhelming. I’m not sure if I like the Friends musical or this better….
One of these days I really need to get around to seeing the Wallace and Gromit films. I've seen a good bit of Aardman's other stuff, just not those.
Note to self:
LEGO is also for children
:-o
For kids, 34 is still a kid.
Can you imagine an entire lego series made by Aardman?
@AustinPowers said:
"Strange, it looks more like CGI than their traditional clay animations. Yet the scene with the animator at the end makes it look as if it was a physical set.
Something does not compute. "
That's probably due to the use of several post-processing effects. I do believe this is stop motion though.
They've added camera shake, digitally animated faces, lens flare, digitally extended backgrounds, etc, all in post. The camera shake in particular is one that is rarely used in Lego stop motions, but very common in digital animation. However, it's a relatively easy addition to any sort of video.
@Wikimemia said:
" @AustinPowers said:
"Strange, it looks more like CGI than their traditional clay animations. Yet the scene with the animator at the end makes it look as if it was a physical set.
Something does not compute. "
That's probably due to the use of several post-processing effects. I do believe this is stop motion though.
They've added camera shake, digitally animated faces, lens flare, digitally extended backgrounds, etc, all in post. The camera shake in particular is one that is rarely used in Lego stop motions, but very common in digital animation. However, it's a relatively easy addition to any sort of video. "
Somehow takes away a bit of the charme of classic Aardman animation imho.
Well, seeing as they already did get the Aardman Studios license for the upcoming Ideas Wallace and Grommit Set. Reminds me of the Studios line what with getting kids to be more creative with bricks and storytelling.
@merman said:
"This will mean green light for the Ideas submission of Wallace and Grommit"
As mentioned in the article, a Wallace and Grommit Ideas set has already been submitted and approved.
@TheOtherMike said:
"One of these days I really need to get around to seeing the Wallace and Gromit films. I've seen a good bit of Aardman's other stuff, just not those."
There are only two feature films, with one theatrical and the other on Netflix (I found someone selling the latter on DVD, but I’m not sure if they’re bootleg or legit). There are, I think, three proper short films, and then there’s also a group of much shorter pieces called “Cracking Contraptions”. And there are custom W&G minifigs sitting in the upper deck of my Routmaster bus. I don’t know about the Netflix film, but everything else was done with old school claymation. They had a fire after Wererabbit, though, and I think they lost all the claymation models. They’d paired up with someone to do Flushed Away in CGI because of all the water involved, so I don’t know if they continued that way or went back to claymation.
@AustinPowers:
When they did Flushed Away, I believe they made sure to depict fingerprints pressed into the surface of the characters just to make it look like it was still animated with claymation, but the water would have been impossible to do without CGI, and I have no idea what they might have thrown in for camera effects.
Obviously, the alien doesn't feel any pain: I mean falling on those Lego bricks...should hurt.
I'm "inspired" to send their marketing department a thesaurus - and a dictionary.
I've always been a huge fan of Aardman and their work, so I hope this is good.
@merman said:
"This will mean green light for the Ideas submission of Wallace and Grommit"
The article literally announced it releasing in last paragraph though
@Eightcoins8 said:
" @merman said:
"This will mean green light for the Ideas submission of Wallace and Grommit"
The article literally announced it releasing in last paragraph though"
Yeah, but why not rub another dose of “you have to wait another year to buy it” salt in an AFOL’s wounds?
Aardman is one my fave stop-motion animation studios, them and Lanka...this is a really interesting team up, though I can't see sets from this ("Dad...why do these bricks 'squish'?" "Well son; those aren't Lego, those are clay":))