By Michaela Gordoni
In 2023, the clay supplier for Aardman, the studio behind WALLACE AND GROMIT, shut down, sending warning bells throughout the studio.
“For many years, Aardman has used a type of clay manufactured by a company called Newplast. I think we used it over 25 years. That was the only company doing it,” said Jay Smart, senior puppet maker. “You sort of suddenly realize, well, there’s no other product out there. So, then you did start to wonder, well, what will happen when we sort of finally use up everything we’ve got here?”
“The founders of Newplast had decided, rightly so, they wanted to retire and move on,” explained managing director Sean Clarke.
The Newplast clay has a very specific formula that works well with production.
This greatly concerned the company, which is said to be the best claymation studio in the world. And what’s claymation without clay?
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“We can’t have like a Gromit or a Morph just suddenly collapsing over several hours. It is incredibly important that we get the clay right because it can really slow down animation,” said Kate Anderson, head of puppets.
When fans got wind of the news, they were very concerned.
Aardman issued a statement: “We want to reassure fans that there is absolutely no need to worry. We have high levels of existing stocks of modelling clay to service current and future productions and, much like Wallace in his workshop, we have been tinkering away behind the scenes for quite some time with plans in place to ensure a smooth transition to new stocks to continue to make our iconic productions.”
They stocked up on what they could and also tried to produce their own clay. They figured out how to do it but decided they didn’t want to make it, because their jobs are animators, not clay makers.
Newplast CEO Paul Dearing said, “We ran the business for 16 years and it was thriving, but we couldn’t find anyone who wanted to take over the firm after we retired so we sold off everything.”
“And then Hue came along. They do a lot of packages and products for schools and for students and decided to buy Newplast,” Clarke said. Hue bought the IP for the clay, and now Aardman buys from it.
Clay is the most important part of their craft, and Aardman never wants to get rid of the medium.
“It’s all about the soul, about the human input. And I really don’t understand why you would want to kind of have a machine to do that. there’s always going to be something lacking that to me it can only ever just be okay,” said Anderson.
“We’ll be using it for the next 50 years,” said Clarke. And we hope they do.
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