The legendary Aardman Animations are coming all the way to Barnes from Bristol next month to model their most beloved characters with children.

As part of Barnes Literary Festival, the Wallace and Gromit creators will be helping young fans model Shaun the Sheep, Gromit, and Hognob on Sunday May 13.

George Watson is an animator and artist who has been modelling at Aardman since 2013 – a recent big project was Early Man and he’s now working on the second Shaun The Sheep film.

“It’s important to show kids that creativity is an important subject because so much emphasis is put on academia,” he said.

“As funding is taken away from the arts it’s good for children to go to these festivals and see what’s out there and see that there is creativity out there.

“Children shouldn’t be afraid to be creative; pressure is put on children by parents and schools to be academic and pursue degrees.

“All the time I’ve been at Aardman nobody has asked me if I have a degree – although I do – it was my portfolio that got me in.”

He added that if young people are serious about animation, work experience is a good way to meet and impress potential employers, “the more people you know, the more likely you are to get employed”.

With more than forty years in the business, Aardman has gone from strength-to-strength with its charismatic ‘claymation’ style in a world increasingly dominated by computer-generated cartoons, particularly from giants Pixar and Dreamworks.

The thing that makes Aardman so different from its American peers is “very much the story-telling”, said George.

“It’s quite British, and that’s the what people like is that British sense of humour - and I think they just create such likeable characters as well.

“Stop-motion is not dead. People have been saying computer graphics will replace it since the eighties, but Aardman very much tries to use it as much as it can.

“It takes three years from production to post-production and that’s because it’s so much more involved, everything has been made by hand and made by someone and that’s what sets it apart.”

Barnes Children’s Literature Festival will run between May 11-13, see barneskidslitfest.org for more information.