New Zealand’s University of Canterbury has signed a five-year exclusive agreement with the Aardman Academy, the training arm of the Aardman Animations, the British film and TV studio behind “Wallace and Gromit” and “Shaun the Sheep.”
The agreement enables the Christchurch-based university to become the only educational institution in New Zealand to specialize in Aardman’s unique version of stop-motion animation. It has the potential to upend the country’s animation industry.
The Aardman Academy was created at a time when the studio urgently needed more animators to produce “Chicken Run.” Released in 2000, the film went on to become the highest-grossing stop-motion film of all time. The Aardman Academy has since trained hundreds of world-class animators, directors, model makers and other specialists.
