Sarah Smith.

Aardman Features is renowned as the British creator of animated classics such as "Chicken Run" and "Wallace and Gromit."  They also have "Shaun the Sheep Movie" coming out next year.

There is so much creativity at Aardman that it is starting to spread out across the landscape. Sarah Smith, who was Creative Director at Aardman, has opened a new CG animated features studio in the U.K. called Locksmith Animation.

The new studio has high hopes of creating top-quality animation to compete in the global marketplace - kind of what Aardman does. Smith was the director and co-writer of Aardman's "Arthur Christmas." Now that Aardman has a three-year deal with Sony, Sarah felt it was time to launch her own shop. No word yet on any projects in development.

Double Negative is going big-time - well, bigger-time.

Smith is backed in this new endeavor by Elisabeth Murdoch, daughter of you-know-who and head of the Shine Group and, more importantly for our purposes here, UK special effects house Double Negative. Maybe coincidentally or maybe not (likely not), Double Negative just announced the launch of a new Feature Animation division, to be led by ex-Dreamworks Associate Producer, Tom Jacomb.

Jacomb has over 12 years of experience as an Associate Producer/Line Producer on full CG Animated Feature Films. He is no slouch at building new studios, having already built 2 feature animation studios in London and Vancouver CA.

No, there isn't a chance that these announcements by Smith and Double Negative are unrelated. This is big news in the animation world.

Those kinds of connections are how you get something big started. This is a name you will be hearing about in the future - Locksmith Animation.

2020