Loyd Price, Aardman Animator Who Helped Lay The Foundation For Its Feature Animation Team, Dies

Loyd Price, an animator and supervisor whose contributions to Aardman included both its films and training a generation of artists, has died. The studio announced his passing in a tribute from co-founder Peter Lord, remembering a colleague who combined an exacting understanding of animation with a commitment to the people making it.

Price’s credits included A Close Shave, Chicken Run, and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. He also co-directed the Wallace & Gromit’s Cracking Contraptions shorts with Chris Sadler. As supervising animator on Were-Rabbit, he helped incoming animators understand how to perform its familiar characters.

His explanation of that work reveals an artist concerned with the thought behind a movement. Speaking to Andrew Osmond for Animation World Network in 2005, Price described the particular demands of sustaining Gromit’s silent performance across a feature. Audiences had to understand him through his eyes, brows, ears, and head angle. Animators needed to inhabit the character and act out the subtleties themselves.

“To be honest, the animation process is almost secondary,” Price told AWN. “What’s the feeling? What’s the emotion? What’s the character doing?”

That emphasis on acting helps explain what makes Gromit such a compelling screen presence. The smallest adjustment can reveal an entire train of thought. Price’s work on the character earned him the Visual Effects Society’s award for outstanding animated character in an animated motion picture in 2006.

Discussing Shaun the Sheep Movie in a video on The Movie Times YouTube channel, Price described the animator’s responsibility: “You have to bring that character to life and convey that performance. So really, it’s acting. It’s acting in slow motion.” He recalled watching completed footage with his fellow animators every two weeks: “We’re watching it, and we’re laughing at it. We’ve slogged all the way through animating this, spent days doing one shot, and you’re still finding it funny. That’s nice when you see that.”

That pleasure in the work extended to details audiences might only catch on a second viewing. “With Aardman films, there’s always that attention to detail. It’s in the sets, it’s in the puppets, it’s in the animation,” Price said. “There’s always bits of stuff going on in the background. There’s always little visual jokes that you don’t see straight off.” Behind those layers was a shared commitment to the craft: “That’s about people really wanting to do it and putting the time and effort in.”

His influence also extended across the studio floor. Lord recalled that Price trained animators in the late 1990s, helping develop the team that would become central to Aardman’s feature production.

“He was patient and encouraging, kind and demanding, with a superb analytical eye,” Lord wrote in a touching post. Price learned the individual strengths and interests of the artists he supervised, and stood up for them when difficulties arose. Lord also remembered his strong sense of fairness and willingness to propose practical solutions.

At a time when the studio was expanding from series into features, and theatrical ones at that, Price’s ability to explain performance, recognize talent, and support artists was a substantial creative contribution in itself. He helped others develop the judgment and confidence the work required, and that would help grow Aardman into one of the world’s best-loved animation studios.

Lord recalled a retirement party packed with animators Price had guided throughout their careers. That communal spirit reflects his contribution to Aardman, the performances he helped create, and the artists he helped equip to carry that work forward.