Chris Holliday, “Aardman’s Animal Farm: “Loaded” Livestock and Illustrative Aesthetics in Shaun the Sheep (2007–),” in Children, Youth, and International Television, edited by Adrian Schober and Debbie Olson (London: Routledge, 2022), 151-170.
This chapter focuses on Aardman’s successful stop-motion television series Shaun the Sheep (2007–), the studio’s first venture into long-form children’s television animation which – since its original broadcast in March 2007 – has been sold (in partnership with BBC Worldwide) to 170 different territories. While the international appeal of Shaun the Sheep has been largely attributed to its evocation of silent film acting, this chapter situates the performance-based seriality of Shaun the Sheep and its ‘Claymation’ style firmly within scholarship on animation to explicate its specific meaningfulness of expression. Shaun the Sheep’s character design and nationally-specific pastoral setting can be understood according to the animated medium’s proclivity for “condensation,” a process of narrational and characterological compression that replies upon pictorial suggestion. Not only does this representative process of “condensation” function as Shaun the Sheep’s orthodox visual register, it also accounts for its dual register and humour that appeals to both adults and children. By also connecting Aardman’s series to writing on cartoonal/political caricature, children’s book illustrations, and the educational imperative of children’s entertainment more broadly, this chapter argues that the ideological “loading” of educational and expressive content into Shaun the Sheep’s stop-motion images is central to the programme’s socialising project.
