Blast from the Past
December 11, 2012

Blast from the Past

Wallace and Gromit creators Aardman Animations has unveiled a new, quirky, gothic online film featuring none other than the classic TV character Morph.

The new Aardman Animations online film has been created to celebrate 38 years of Forkbeard Fantasy, the ground-breaking UK theater and arts company.

The unusual online film features newsreel footage of the precise moment that the pioneers of Liquid Film blended several secret ingredients and scientific wonder to create Plasticinematography – and a host of characters like the multi-eyed organism, a bucket of mouths…and Morph! The online film can be seen on The Space http://thespace.org/items/s0000cvu , the new digital arts service developed by Arts Council England in partnership with the BBC to provide a unique platform for artists and arts organisations to showcase their work.

To watch the exclusive Aardman Animations film, users have to navigate through Forkbeard in Space, a 360-degree panorama of Forkbeard’s studios inspired by the exhibitions, theater shows, installations, cartoons, animation props and filmic special FX of Forkbeard Fantasy’s 38-year history – and solve a series of puzzles to create Liquid Film.

Users then have to a play two online games, “The Fall of the House of Usherettes” and “The Bonehunter,” based on Forkbeard’s classic shows.

Users are then rewarded with the Aardman Animations film in which they can witness how liquid film created Plasticinematography and the multitude of characters.

Forkbeard in Space, the online games and the Aardman Animation online film is one of 51 commissions made by the Arts Council for The Space.


Interesting Morph facts:

Morph is an animated plasticine stop-motion character

Morph appeared with the late Tony Hart, beginning in 1977, on several of his UK TV programmes, notably Take Hart and Hartbeat

Morph was produced for the BBC by Aardman Animations

Morph's 30th birthday was celebrated in 2007

Morph lived in an artist's wooden pencil box

Some of the early plasticine models of Morph were destroyed in a fire at the warehouse they were being stored on October 10, 2005

Forkbeard Fantasy is a collective of artists who have been creating performances, theater shows, films, cartoons, automata, sculptures, special events, installations and interactive exhibitions across the UK and abroad without stop since the mid-1970s.