DAVID SPROXTON (Producer)

DAVID SPROXTON (Producer) is the co-owner and Executive Chairman of Aardman. Together with co-founder Peter Lord, he has overseen the company’s growth from a two-man partnership into one of the pre-eminent animation houses in the industry. Over the years, Sproxton has served as a producer, director or cinematographer on a number of animated projects at Aardman.

Sproxton previously served as a producer on 2000’s “Chicken Run,” which marked the first feature collaboration between Aardman and DreamWorks Animation, and was a worldwide hit with both critics and audiences.

Sproxton and Lord met in grammar school and, in 1970, made their first animated film using Sproxton’s Bolex camera. A crude piece using cutouts and chalk drawings, it nevertheless showed enough talent for a BBC Children’s Television producer to offer the pair a chance to make short animated films for his program “Vision On.”

Following graduation from Durham University, Sproxton decided to pursue filmmaking full-time. In 1972, Sproxton and Lord formed Aardman and, in 1976, moved to their permanent home in Bristol, England. Their first professional creation was the character Morph, who went on to star in the BBC series “The Amazing Adventures of Morph.”

During this period, the duo made two short animated films, “Down and Out” and “Confessions of a Foyer Girl,” applying the groundbreaking technique of using recorded conversations of real people as the basis for the script. Later, five more films called “Conversation Pieces,” using the same “vox pop” technique, were commissioned by Channel 4. “Vox pop” was also utilized in Aardman’s “Lip Synch” series for Channel 4, which included Nick Park’s Oscar®-winning “Creature Comforts.”

In addition to Park, the studio is known for discovering and nurturing new filmmakers in the field of stop-motion animation, including Steve Box, who won a BAFTA Award for his direction of “Stage Fright.” Other talents developed under the Aardman banner include the Oscar®-nominated and BAFTA-winning Peter Peake, the director of “HumDrum”; Richard Goleszowski, who directs the “Rex the Runt” series for BBC 2; and Darren Walsh, whose “Angry Kid” series was released directly onto the Internet.