Aardman animation and Bruce Bickford

 Both Aardman Animation and Bruce Bickford are considered to be masters of Claymation. 

Bruce Bickford was born in 1947 in America, and begun experimenting with clay animation as a teenager when he was given a camera as a teenager. He is well known for his collaborative music videos with Musician Frank Zappa between 1974 and 1980. His style of animation has been regarded as energetic, and often has many fictional elements to it. some of his well known works include Prometheus Garden, as well as his animated segments within Zappa's music videos: Inca (1975) and Baby Snakes (1979). Bickford was often very private about his works, often footage only being seen from collaborations or the occasional clip within a documentary here and there.

Aardman Animations is a group with a very different style to Bickford, and the group was formed in 1972, starting as a small crew involving Peter Lord and David Sproxton. They began creating shows and shorts for the BBC, such as The Amazing Adventures of Morph. soon after, in 1985, they met Nick Park who would later join the group. Their style is distinctive as comedic and humorous, and they are regarded for their loveable character designs and roundness. 

They found commercial and critical success with their series of shorts titled Creature Comforts, a Documentary style animation where animals of a zoo where interviewed about their thoughts, days and living conditions within the zoo. The first short went on to win an Oscar, and the series received continuation with shorts including topics such as Pet Hates. Sport, and Feeding Time. They also found success with their well known Characters Wallace and Gromit, first starring in another Oscar nominated shot, titled A Grand Day Out in 1989. They would continuing working with these characters in shorts such as The Wrong Trousers (1993) and A Close Shave (1995). 

Aardman finally broke into feature length animation in 1997, with a partnership with DreamWorks to create Chicken run, which eventually released in 2000 after three years of production. They continued with their collaboration with another feature length film, in 2005's Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit, which went on to win the Best animated Feature Oscar that year. They continued with several other releases such as Flushed away, the studios first dive into 3D animation, as well as The Pirates! Band of Misfits, Shaun the Sheep the Movie and Early Man, which had formed after Aardman and DreamWorks split during te production of the Croods.