Aardman has announced the death of Loyd Price, an animator, supervisor and teacher whose contribution to the studio reached across more than three decades. In a tribute shared by the company on October 16, co-founder Sir Peter Lord remembered a colleague who helped bring beloved characters to life and trained the animators who would become central to Aardman’s feature filmmaking. [Aardman’s tribute]
For audiences, an animator’s work can become almost invisible. We remember a glance, a hesitation, a character appearing to think. Behind those moments are decisions made by an artist, one small movement at a time. Price’s career deserves to be remembered both for those performances and for his commitment to helping others find them.
Loyd Price’s career in character
Price learned his craft at Cosgrove Hall, a formative studio for a generation of British stop-motion artists. His professional credits later included The Nightmare Before Christmas, Chicken Run, Flushed Away and The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!—a range documented in Aardman’s announcement of its 2013 training partnership with the National Film and Television School. [Cosgrove Hall] [Aardman/NFTS announcement]
At Aardman, his work encompassed commercials and A Close Shave. On Chicken Run, released in 2000, he combined animation with animation supervision, Lord recalled. He also shared directing duties with Chris Sadler on the ten Wallace & Gromit’s Cracking Contraptions shorts, which began appearing online in 2002. [Lord’s recollection] [Contemporary reporting]
His understanding of performance is especially clear in Andrew Osmond’s 2005 interview for Animation World Network, conducted when Price was supervising animator on Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Discussing Gromit, Price described the challenge of sustaining a silent character’s emotional range across a feature. The eyes, brows, ears and angle of the head all mattered. So did acting out a performance and understanding what the character felt. [2005 interview]
“What’s the feeling? What’s the emotion? What’s the character doing?” he asked.
Those questions offer a useful way to watch his work again. Look past the mechanics and notice the intention: the thought that makes a movement feel necessary, the pause that allows an audience to understand.
That achievement received recognition from the Visual Effects Society. At its February 2006 awards, Price won Outstanding Animated Character in an Animated Motion Picture for Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. It was an award for a performance audiences understood without a spoken line. [VES winners list]
Passing the craft forward
Price’s teaching was already part of Aardman’s future in 1997. Speaking to Wendy Jackson that year, Lord described a training scheme with the University of the West of England in which students animated every day. Price was their teacher. The aim was practical experience: time with a puppet, observation and repeated attempts to make a performance work. [1997 interview]
That work continued through the Aardman Academy. In 2013, Price was a main tutor on the new 12-week Certificate in Character Animation with the NFTS. The following year, Aardman reported that it had hired five graduates from the first course into animation roles. By 2020, he was helping develop the curriculum for the Academy’s online Industry Training: Stop Motion 1 course. [2013] [2014] [2020]
Lord’s farewell captures the person behind that teaching: “patient and encouraging, kind and demanding, with a superb analytical eye.” He remembered someone attentive to individual animators’ strengths and ready to speak up for them. The many former pupils at Price’s retirement celebration were evidence of a career measured in people as well as films. [Aardman’s tribute]
That is a lasting gift to a craft sustained by shared knowledge. A film preserves a performance. A teacher gives another artist the confidence and understanding to create the next one.
Our thoughts are with Loyd Price’s wife Alison, his family, friends, colleagues and students. As we return to the characters he helped animate, we also remember the generosity that helped others take their place beside the camera.
