Peter Lord

Sir Peter Duncan Fraser Lord (born 4 November 1953) is a British animator, director, producer and co-founder of the Academy Award and BAFTA Award-winning Aardman Animations studio, an animation firm best known for its clay-animated films and shorts, particularly those featuring plasticine team Wallace & Gromit. He also directed Chicken Run along with Nick Park from DreamWorks Animation, and The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! from Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation which was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the 85th Academy Awards.

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

Life and career Lord was born in Bristol, England. He attended Woking Grammar School and in collaboration with David Sproxton, a friend of his youth from that school in the 1960s, he realized 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 to 1981, Morph appeared in his own TV series The Amazing Adventures of Morph.

Experiments with animated clay characters synchronized 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 finalized their style of detailed and lovingly designed clay animation characters from stop-motion techniques (though directed by Stephen R. 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 & Gromit-shorts in collaboration 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 The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! (2012).

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.

Three of Lord's films–War Story, Adam, and Wat's Pig–have been preserved by the Academy Film Archive.

In 2021, he was featured in the film Cartoon Carnival, a documentary about the origins of animation.

Lord was knighted in the 2026 Birthday Honours for services to the animation industry, the creative industries and to charity.

Filmography

Feature films

TV series

Year Title Notes 1977–1983 Take Hart Animator 1977–1978 Animated Conversations Director; animator 1980–1981 The Amazing Adventures of Morph 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 & Gromit's Cracking ContraptionsExecutive producer 2003–2006 Creature Comforts 2005–2007Planet Sketch 2006 Planet Earth Thanks 2006 Purple and BrownExecutive producer 2007 The Peculiar Adventures of Hector 2007–present Shaun the Sheep 2008 Chop Socky Chooks 2009–2012 Timmy Time 2010 Wallace & Gromit's World of Invention 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 2008 A Matter of Loaf and Death 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

Video games

Year Title Notes 2025 Chicken Run: Eggstraction Voice of Captain Drumstick

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