1st Logo (1989?-December 31, 1998)[]
Visuals: On a sunny sky blue background, there is a the top of a clay green planet with a river running through it, trees, etc. The planet turns right and a red/yellow polkadot bowtie shaped butterfly places itself on a patch of blue and white, which appears to be a suit. As this is happening, the letters
A
A
R
D
M
A
N
in various shapes, arrange and form themselves to the right so they are in separate wooden boxes which form in the same time. A brown pillar, a staircase, A wooden pillar with a yellow and black zigzag plank, and two pieces of wood also arrange and form themselves as a picture frame. A smiling clay face drops from behind the top part of the frame to the suit where the eyes are not shown. Then four clouds drop into place in the sky, as
Aardman Animations
presents
(in white)
fades in below. All of this takes place inside a small white box against a black background.
Variants:
- Sometimes, a still version of this logo exists with different text and a copyright notice below.
- On Not Without My Handbag and The Wrong Trousers, the logo is shown to be altered, the smile is different, the number of red pots on the bowtie has slightly reduced and the last "A" in the vertical stacked "AARDMAN" is in a different style.
- The print version appears on the end card of Rex the Runt. It has the font from the next logo and it seems to be the face speaking through a megaphone with stars (the one on the far right being the one from the next logo) shooting out of it.
- An alternate version without the URL was spotted on the original airings of show's first series.
- There is an alternate version of this logo shown on the VHS Aardman Animations Vol. 1. The box, instead of the normal animation, shows a time-lapse video of a man in a set building the logo together. After a while, the camera zooms in to the logo and the finished result is the altered variant. The text "Aardman Animation presents" is in a different font.
- At the end of the same VHS, the normal logo plays, but the text says "Coming Soon: Aardman Animations Vol II", in a different font.
- At the end of Adam, the copyright text fades in after the still logo appears.
- On The Morph Files, the normal logo plays, but the the text is already there and it says "An AARDMAN ANIMATIONS Production" and there is a copyright notice underneath.
- At the end of HumDrum, the logo is cut off at the top.
Technique: Stop-motion animation with the use of forced perspective.
Audio: Two ominous violin notes, followed by a 3-note flute tune, a musical "thud" as the head falls into place, and two more short bass violin notes as the clouds fall into place and bounce. At the beginning of the logo, water can be heard.
Audio Variants:
- A slightly lower pitched version was found when Cartoon Network aired The Wrong Trousers on April 21, 2012 and on later North American prints of A Close Shave (due to the PAL-to-NTSC conversion).
- On the Aardman Animations Vol. 1 variant, we hear an eerie tune with several synth toms, crash-like sound effects and a harp-like noise when the logo zooms in.
- At the end of A Close Shave, we hear sheep bleating over the logo.
- At the end of The Wrong Trousers, we hear the final note of the closing theme.
- The closing variant may be silent or have the closing theme of the short.
- On the commentary tracks to the first 3 shorts on the Blu-ray of Wallace & Gromit: The Complete Collection, the logo is silent.
Availability: Seen on many Aardman shorts from the time period.
- The most notable of these are the Wallace & Gromit shorts A Grand Day Out, The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave.
- The logo was removed on the 2001 DVD containing all three shorts (from BBC Video/Warner Home Video; a still version with copyright information was seen at the end of TWT and ACS), but was put back in for A Close Shave on DreamWorks' Wallace and Gromit in Three Grand Adventures (and the 2005 region 4 DVD release containing all 3 shorts, with the TWT and ACS still copyright versions retained at the end of the respective shorts). It also doesn't appear at the start of The Wrong Trousers on its British VHS release, having been replaced by a title card (the copyright version is retained at the end however). The British VHS release of A Close Shave retains this this logo at the start.
- The logo is intact on the CBS-Fox VHS prints of the shorts, as well as streaming video versions.
- This does not appear on Creature Comforts (original 1990 short film), Next, Going Equipped, Pib and Pog, Owzat, Al Dente, Indent, Pop, War Story and Stage Fright, as they use an in-credit text instead.
- It's intact at the start and end of Adam on Aardman Animations' YouTube account.
2nd Logo (January 1, 1999-December 3, 2021)[]
Visuals: On a black background is the Aardman logo, taking the wordmark and one of the stars on the top left of the text from the 1st print logo. The entire logo is red and has tiny spots surrounding it.
Variants:
- On Creature Comforts: The Series, the white logo is in the center of a brown background with copyright info underneath it.
- On Wallace & Gromit's Cracking Contraptions, the logo is on the white background with the copyright info below.
- On early episodes of Shaun the Sheep, this logo is shown at the top, with the 2005 CBBC logo (a green egg shape with a big "C" on it and the BBC logo below in white) in the center. Copyright info is shown below. On later episodes of the said show starting with "Abracadabra", it's the same as early episodes, except the 2005 CBBC "3D Bugs" logo in the center is replaced with the 2007 CBBC "Stylized CBBC" logo. Also, the word "CBBC" in white in a squared-off font with a thinner black outline and a green shadow and the BBC logo below in black.
- On Timmy Time, Wussywat the Clumsy Cat, Digby Dragon, The Peculiar Adventures of Hector, episodes of the 2016 Morph reboot on YouTube and Purple and Brown, the logo is in-credit. The white version is also used in-credit on Creature Comforts and later episodes of Shaun the Sheep, while the black in-credit version appeared on some videos on the Morph YouTube channel.
- On Flushed Away, an animated version, mostly like a prototype version of the next logo, is used. The text appears by rolling up on a invisible roller, and the star pops in after it emerges.
- A filmed variant was spotted on a Russian print of Flushed Away.
- On the sneak preview trailer of Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (then titled just Wallace & Gromit), the still logo arranged horizontally with the star at the left and the word at the right.
- Sometimes, the star is slightly shifted further away from the word.
Technique: A still image, fading effects or a scrolling effect.
Audio: None, just the ending theme of the show or a film.
Availability: No longer current; the logo can be seen at the end of Aardman-produced shorts and feature films, and the variant is seen on Aardman-produced TV shows. The logo variant can be seen on Flushed Away.
- The logo first appeared in Angry Kid and its final appearance overall was in Shaun the Sheep: The Flight Before Christmas, which premiered in international territories on Netflix on December 3, 2021 and then on BBC One on Christmas Eve, 2021.
3rd Logo (June 23, 2000-March 1, 2009)[]
Visuals: The logo begins by cutting to a full view of a scenery that is made up of different shaped gears that rotate in different directions. The camera slowly zooms towards a blue square with a red Aardman star on it that has little gears inside. The square has a small head, arms and legs, and is running on a green gear that operates the scenery. The green gear has copies of the third, fourth, fifth and seventh letters of “Aardman” in red and green, whilst the other letters in red spin around in different directions on sticks behind a teal gear with a smaller green gear in front of it. The background behind the square consists of three light blue gears and a yellow gear with clouds attached on with sticks, and green anamorphic planes flying around in either direction on sticks. It has two brown gears with trees on, dark blue gears that have houses on, and dark green gears that have three different types of cartoony cars. The rest of the scenery have brown gears with different houses and buildings, teal gears that have cartoony people, and green hands performing finger counting gestures. As the camera reaches its position, a human hand reaches out from the right and grabs hold of the square. The thumb presses the head like a stopwatch which freezes the scenery in place and the letters form "Aardman" below.
Variants:
- There is said to be a full open-matte version of the logo, as the logo is presented in its widescreen format, even on some VHS releases where the logo is letterboxed.
- At the beginning of Wallace & Gromit The Curse of the Were Rabbit and the Disney+ print of Chicken Run, the logo is shortened where it fades to the point seconds before the hand comes in.
- On the Pathé print of Chicken Run and the video game adaptation of Flushed Away, the logo fades in instead of cutting in.
- On the video game adaptation of Flushed Away, the logo has a teal tint.
- An in-credit version is used on later episodes of Rex the Runt.
- On Chop Socky Chooks and some episodes of Planet Sketch, the logo is cut to its last few seconds.
Technique: Stop-motion animation.
Audio: For the normal version, it has a sly jazz tune with ticking that stops when the logo does, also when the hand comes in, we hear a man groaning.
Audio Variants:
- On the Pathé print Chicken Run and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, the opening theme of the movie is heard.
- On Chop Socky Chooks, the logo is silent.
Availability: It debuted on the UK version of Chicken Run along with other regions where Pathé distributed the film (DreamWorks print omit it due to the duration of their logo).
- The standard length version with the music served as the de-facto logo on Momentum Pictures releases of Aardman material such as the British VHS/DVD release of Aardman Classics (which is also where this variant debuted), the sampler VHS The Aardman Selection, all four DVD sets of Creature Comforts, and Wallace & Gromit's Cracking Contraptions (retained on the 2006 DreamWorks UK print featured on Disc 2 of Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, but only the first episode, the others start with none at least if "Play all" is selected).
- It also appears on the video game adaptions of Chicken Run and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Wallace and Gromit: Project Zoo and Flushed Away.
- On the Creature Comforts DVDs, the logo cuts to the DVD menu with a TV static effect.
- It also appears on the Universal Pictures VHS release of The Morph Files.
- It was also seen on the VHS/DVD releases of The Incredible Adventures of Wallace & Gromit and Creature Comforts.
- The still version appears on Series 2 of Rex the Runt.
4th Logo (November 23, 2011-February 14, 2020)[]
Visuals: On a black background, the Aardman logo is peeling up out of the blackness, while a printed reflection is seen at an angle below. When the logo fully appears, the reflection fades out, leaving just the logo as it turns into a flat version.
Variants:
- There is a cinematic variant, where the print blocks of "Aardman" are placed in the machine. A pair of tweezers puts the star print block in its matching slot. The camera zooms out and pan as the machine starts up and we see on the other side that "Aardman" and the star is printed on the conveyor belt. While this is an official variant, it did showed up on The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! short film So You Want To Be A Pirate! It eventually showed up on Early Man.
- On Shaun the Sheep Movie, there's a custom variant of the logo. On a gray background, we see the sheep from the TV series the movie is based off of huddled around, before moving to reveal that they all have the letters of "Aardman" printed on their bodies. They accidentally form "Amadran", and 2 of the sheep move around to form "Aardman". A tiny staircase is pushed into the picture, and a sheep wearing the red star climbs onto it.
- On Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon, there's also a custom variant that parodies Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It opens with a sheep wearing a smoking and playing the Shaun the Sheep theme on an electric keyboard over a black background. Every key he touches makes letters of the word "Aardman" appear over him, and the whole word appears once he finishes the music. He then touches another key which makes the movie's opening music begin and also the star in the logo appear, and then goes away, as the logo fades to a space background, which makes the Aardman star turn into one of the white stars in it.
Technique: CGI.
Audio: A quiet grinding noise plays as the logo slides in, then silence, or the opening music of the film.
Availability: Seen on Arthur Christmas, The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! and Early Man.
5th Logo (January 17, 2022-)[]
Visuals: On a very dark red background, a white star is seen turning around its vertical axis as it zooms in. Then, the star "explodes", revealing a pink-red background full of constantly changing fingerprints, as the text "AARDMAN" forms, but the first "A" is upside-down. Then, a tiny star emerges and lands on the first "A", turning it back upright. A few seconds later, everything slides down the screen.
Variants:
- A square video version of the logo exists. It can be seen on the company's Facebook page.
- At the end of Aardman's 2022 showreel, the logo is still and smaller with pink-red text on a black background.
Trivia: This was designed by Gavin Strange, who also designed the "Silly" variant of the BBC Two "Curve" IDs.
Technique: 2D animation.
Audio: A drum beat tune with ticks.
Availability: Current. First seen on Aardman's social media pages on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, and it also appears on the company's 2022 showreel.
Editor's Note: Opinions on this logo vary. Depending on who you ask, this logo is either seen as a refreshing change, or as too simplistic.
6th Logo (October 14, 2023-)[]
Visuals: We open on a background made out of red clay. Suddenly, the "AARDMAN" text, in the same font as the prior logo, slowly extrudes out of the clay, as if it was being pushed, accompanied by a drop shadow. Once it stops, a small ball made out of the same red clay falls down and bounces on the first "A" letter, morphing into the star shape and standing next to the text.
Technique: Stop-motion claymation.
Audio: A mysterious music box-like tune, with the bouncing of the ball against the "A" and a chime when the star forms. Like the 3rd logo, this was composed by Harry Gregson-Williams.
Audio Variant: On Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, the logo's music is replaced by the sound of the thunderstorm and rain.
Availability: Brand new. It debuted on Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget and it is seen on Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.
Editor's Note: None.