Imagine having a successful, "thriving" business and having to shut it down because nobody wanted to take it over after you retired.
this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
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Yeah, the facts aren't adding up here. Why wouldn't Aardman buy them up if they were the only supplier and successful?
Just because you are a big buyer of product X, it does not necessarily mean you are the best-suited person to run a company producing it.
Sp you're telling me that eating McDonald's every day doesn't make me qualified to he the CEO of McDonalds? I wish someone would have told me this earlier.
No, you are what you eat.
Eat the rich.
I was wondering.
If we were to kill Bezos and cut him into 8 billion pieces and feed it to the entire population of Earth.
Could we make everyone rich?
Or does it take a specific threshold of cannibalism to make someone into what they eat?
Sounds like it was the one nugget you really could have used
I appreciate you.
Just because you own it doesn't mean you have to run it. Thats what CEOs are for. They often don't own the company they run.
The German headline was a nice play of words: "Aardman geht die Knete aus" - with "Knete" being clay, but also a colloquial for money. I was wondering how such a successful studio was going broke, when the article clarified that it actually was the material that is running short.
Sort of like english "dough"?
Yep. Hadn't thought of that.
Well actually "Knete" is even more specificly the kind of clay that aardman uses instead of a general term describing "clay" - it is typically this colorful material that children are given. The term comes from the verb "kneten" which means pushing and forming something - like dough (kneading - very similar word). One makes a dough by kneten-ing it. So the verb is used in many situations where something is forcefully manipulated like that, but the thing is almost only the children's toy, less frequently the professionally used material for animation films - PLUS "money". Colloquially having had a massage we sometimes say "ich bin richtig durchgeknetet worden" - I was being kneaded through and through". "Clay" in German would be more accurately described by "Ton". So the headline is even better than you described. ( But "Ton" means a bunch of completely different things) Sorry for being nit-picky.
Ich weiß.
This is absolutely sad because they have made what I consider the absolute best claymation films in the world, especially Chicken Run and The Wrong Trousers.
I hope they find another supplier and if not, I at least hope they at least consider not going outta business and switch animation styles to something more similar and stylistic as when they worked on Chop Sockey Chooks.
Chicken run is an absolute bomb of a movie and awesome for a 7-10 year olds movie night.
Imagine being a painter but they stopped making paint... Hopefully with this movie they can buy Newclay's production.
Film photographers come to mind. If I'm not mistaken, anyone with certain types of undeveloped film are more out of luck because Kodak stopped making some of the chemicals required to develop the film.
You know Pentax is making a new film camera... I have a working theory that we're heading towards an analog resurgence. If Kodak isn't making film anymore then that's their loss.
Record sales are only going up as well.
But I guess that's all relative. There's plenty of clay left in the world just not that clay.
Kodak makes film, they just stopped making the chemicals to develop some of their films (Kodachrome being the biggest loss).
On the newclay websites they advertise that they are selling their IP until Dec 31st. Maybe Aardman can buy the IP and license it to a subcontractor supplier or something? Or preferably open source it.
I think this article is slightly misleading-
Aardman doesn’t use any run-of-the-mill clay when crafting their feature-length films. Newplast is a nylon-reinforced clay that doesn’t require the same steps other similar materials need, like glazing and firing.
It sounds like they are in trouble if they want to continue things the way they've been doing them, but they can look at other options. So it's a problem, but not necessarily one that will end Aardman. They could always do things like adopt Will Vinton's Claymation techniques. Or go the Henry Selick route and have a lot of solid interchangeable parts for his characters.
So I think we shouldn't be so pessimistic and think Aardman will only ever make one more movie. I am sure they are already exploring other avenues.
The OG Wallace and Gromit three-movie VHS box set was my jam as a kid
was Aardman their only customer or something?
According to the article the clay manufacturer isn't shuttering due to lack of business but because the owners want to retire and can't find somebody to take it over. Seems odd to me.
Since I don't think there is a lot money to make in the clay businesses, it makes sense that it's not easy to find a successor - since he would have to be in for the fun of it and not for money.
I mean if big feature films use them, I'm sure there's a significant chunk of money involved
How many clay animation films are being produced?
And it said a couple skids of clay were enough to do a couple movies.
I too am in the material arts. I do it because I love it and I make a living. Although sometimes you get paid like a parking meter, a nickle an hour. Anyone in the clay business probably already has a clay business. They need some halfwit with "a passion for clay" to happen by and buy it and then go tits up two years later because they can't service the debt they took to "live their dream".
No they were one of their major customer but for Aardman they were their only supplier it seems. They still got sometime to figure things out so I don't think it will have any major impact.
“Something went wrong.”
The article feels misleading tbh. It doesn't say why they wouldn't be able to find another supplier, even if the clay is a little bit different?