Aardman's Newplast plasticine supply ran out in 2023 -- the clay it built Wallace & Gromit on is now back as HUE Clay

In 2023, the single factory that made Newplast -- the plasticine Aardman has animated on since its 1972 founding, across Wallace & Gromit, Chicken Run, Shaun the Sheep and Star Wars Visions -- closed. Aardman bought the remaining warehouse stock outright rather than risk an unmatched material mid-production, and kept working from that reserve while producing Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl and Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget.

The Newplast formulation has since been revived under new ownership as HUE Clay: an oil-based, non-hardening, gluten- and sulphur-free plasticine sold in the same 500g bars, described by its maker as one of the firmer modelling compounds of its type -- softened by warming and kneading rather than by starting soft. It sits at a different point on the hardness scale than US animation-clay staples such as Van Aken's Plastalina/Claytoon lines (worked very soft, suited to fast character animation) or Chavant's NSP (a firmer sculptor's clay used more for maquettes and moulds than continuous re-posing on camera).

The episode is a reminder that a stop-motion studio's material supply is production infrastructure: losing the exact clay a hero puppet library was colour-matched against is closer to losing a film stock than losing an art supply. SMDB has folded the full story into its Clay concept page.