Peter Lord

For the art historian, see Peter Lord (art historian).

Peter Lord
Born	(1953-11-04) 4 November 1953
Birth place	Bristol, England, UK
Nationality	British
Occupation	Animator, film producer, director

Peter Lord, CBE (born 4 November 1953) is an English animator, film producer, director and co-founder of the Academy Award-winning Aardman Animations studio, an animation firm best known for its clay-animated films and shorts, particularly those featuring plasticine duo Wallace and Gromit. He also directed The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! which was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the 85th Academy Awards.

Lord is the executive producer of every Aardman work, including Chicken Run, Arthur Christmas and Flushed Away.

Life and career

Lord was born in Bristol, England. In co-operation with David Sproxton, a friend of his youth, he realised his dream of "making and taking an animated movie". He graduated in English from the University of York in 1976. He and Sproxton founded Aardman as a low-budget backyard studio, producing shorts and trailers for publicity. Their work was first shown as part of the BBC TV series Vision On. In 1977 they created Morph, a stop-motion animated character made of Plasticine, who was usually a comic foil to the TV presenter Tony Hart. With his amoral friend Chas, he appeared in a series of children's art programmes including Take Hart, Hartbeat and Smart. From 1980-1981, Morph appeared in his own TV series The Amazing Adventures of Morph.

Experiments with animated clay characters synchronised with 'live' recorded soundtracks led to a series of films in the style of animated documentary. The first two were part of the BBC TV series Animated Conversations and were called "Down and Out" (1977) and "Confessions of a Foyer Girl" (1978) . These were followed in 1983 by Conversation Pieces, a series of five-minute long films produced for Channel 4. They were called "On Probation", Sales Pitch, "Palmy Days", "Late Edition" and "Early Bird".

In 1985 Nick Park joined the group.

Lord, Park and Sproxton developed and finalised their style of detailed and lovingly designed clay animation characters from stop motion techniques (though directed by Stephen Johnson their claymation is shown in the music video "Sledgehammer" (1986) by Peter Gabriel). In 1991 Lord animated Adam, a 6-minute clay animation that was nominated for an Academy Award. Park created the "odd-couple" Wallace and Gromit-shorts in co-operation with Lord and Sproxton. All three together worked as producers, editors and directors. Other awarded productions by Peter Lord are Chicken Run (2000), the first feature film from Aardman and the Academy Award-winning Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005).

In 2006, Lord, Sproxton and Park were all given "the Freedom of the City of Bristol". In that same year, Lord (along with Sproxton) visited the "Aardman Exhibit" at the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka, Tokyo, Japan, where he met Hayao Miyazaki. Miyazaki has long been a fan of the Aardman Animation works. In 2013 Lord was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the 85th Academy Awards for Pirates! Band of Misfits.

Lord was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) on 17 June 2006.

On 9 July 2015, Lord received a Gold Blue Peter badge.

In August 2016, Lord was appointed a visiting professorship at Volda University College.

Filmography

Feature films

Year	Film	Director	Producer	Writer	Other	Notes
2000	Chicken Run	Y	Y	Y		Story
	Chicken	Y		Y		Story
2005	Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit		Y
2006	Monsters Very Furry	Y	Y	Y		Story
	Flushed Away		Y	Y		Story
2008	A Matter of Loaf and Death	Executive producer
2011	Arthur Christmas		Y
2012	The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!	Y	Y		Y	Actor: "Additional voices"
2013	The Croods				Y	Special thanks
2015	Shaun the Sheep Movie		Y			Executive producer
2018	Early Man		Y

TV series

Year	Title	Notes
1977	Take Hart	Animator
1977-1978	Animated Conversations	Director; animator
1986	Pee-wee's Playhouse	Animation director
1986	No. 73	Himself
1995	The Morph Files	Director; executive producer
1998	Rex the Runt	Executive producer
2000	Omnibus	Himself
2000	The Panel	Himself
2002	Wallace and Gromit's Cracking Contraptions	Executive producer
2003-2006	Creature Comforts	Executive producer
2006	Planet Earth	Thanks
2006	Purple and Brown	Executive producer
2007	The Peculiar Adventures of Hector	Executive producer
2007-present	Shaun the Sheep	Executive producer
2008	Chop Socky Chooks	Executive producer
2009-2012	Timmy Time	Executive producer
2010	Wallace and Gromit's World of Invention	Executive producer
2014-present	Morph	Executive producer; script writer

Shorts

Year	Title	Notes
1983	Sales Pitch	Director; animator
1983	On Probation	Director; producer; animator
1983	Palmy Days	Director; animator
1983	Late Edition	Director; animator
1983	Early Bird	Director; animator
1986	Sledgehammer	Animator
1986	Babylon	Director; animator
1987	My Baby Just Cares for Me	Director
1989	War Story	Director; animator
1989	A Grand Day Out	Special thanks
1990	Going Equipped	Director; animator
1992	Adam	Director; writer; executive producer; art director; animator; model maker
1992	Never Say Pink Furry Die	Executive producer
1993	Loves Me, Loves Me Not	Executive producer
1993	The Wrong Trousers	Executive producer; additional animator
1993	Not Without My Handbag	Executive producer
1995	Pib and Pog	Executive producer
1995	A Close Shave	Executive producer
1996	Wat's Pig	Director; writer; executive producer; animator
1997	Stage Fright	Executive producer
1997	Owzat	Executive producer
1999	Humdrum	Executive producer
1999	Minotaur and Little Nerkin	Thanks
2001	Chunga Chui Leopard Beware	Executive producer
2001	Ernest	Executive producer
2005	Tales for the Rest of Us	Executive producer
2005	Ramble On	Executive producer
2006	Off Beat	Executive producer
2007	The Pearce Sisters	Executive producer
2011	The Itch of the Golden Nit	Executive producer
2011	Pythagasaurus	Executive producer
2012	So You Want to Be a Pirate!	Executive producer
2015	Heroes of Christmas	Inspiration
2015	Special Delivery	Story; creative director; voice of "Santa"
2015	Shaun the Sheep: The Farmer's Llamas	Executive producer

Books

• Peter Lord & Brian Sibley: Cracking Animation (1998) Thames & Hudson;

External links

• Peter Lord on IMDb
• Q&A With Peter Lord about The Pirates! Band of Misfits

v - e - dCritics' Choice Movie Award for Best Animated Feature
1998–2000	A Bug's Life – John Lasseter and Andrew Stanton / The Prince of Egypt – Simon Wells, Brenda Chapman, and Steve Hickner (1998) • Toy Story 2 – John Lasseter, Lee Unkrich, and Ash Brannon (1999) • Chicken Run – Peter Lord and Nick Park (2000)
2001–2010	Shrek – Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson (2001) • Spirited Away – Hayao Miyazaki (2002) • Finding Nemo – Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich (2003) • The Incredibles – Brad Bird (2004) • Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit – Nick Park and Steve Box (2005) • Cars – John Lasseter and Joe Ranft (2006) • Ratatouille – Brad Bird and Jan Pinkava (2007) • WALL-E – Andrew Stanton (2008) • Up – Pete Docter and Bob Peterson (2009) • Toy Story 3 – Lee Unkrich (2010)
2011–present	Rango – Gore Verbinski (2011) • Wreck-It Ralph – Rich Moore (2012) • Frozen – Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee (2013) • The Lego Movie – Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (2014) • Inside Out – Pete Docter and Ronnie del Carmen (2015) • Zootopia – Byron Howard and Rich Moore (2016) • Coco – Lee Unkrich (2017) • Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse – Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey and Rodney Rothman (2018) • Toy Story 4 - Josh Cooley (2019)